Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued to stop an unlawful federal rule issued by the Biden Administration that destroys protections for women in educational institutions by mandating compliance with radical gender ideology.

The Department of Education’s new regulatory requirements under Title IX expand the definition of “sex” to include one’s self-professed “gender identity.” Title IX is a civil rights law granting protections to women by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program that receives federal money, including K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. The new rule contorts these protections for women by forcing schools to accommodate the wishes of men claiming to identify as women (or “transgender”) to enter female-only spaces and join female-only organizations. This would force schools to permit biological males to use female restrooms and lockers. If schools refused, federal funding would be withheld.

While the Biden Administration initially attempted to implement this agenda through informal agency guidance, the Department of Education has now turned to formally amending the Code of Federal Regulations. This rule violates existing federal law, ignores the Constitution, and denies women the protections that Title IX was intended to afford them. The Biden Administration has exceeded its authority and radically distorted the meaning intended by Congress when the law was made. Further, the changes would fundamentally transform the educational atmosphere of publicly funded educational institutions, forcing communities to capitulate to unscientific gender ideology and putting girls and women at risk in K-12 schools and on college campuses.

In addition, the new regulations promise to repeat the Department’s ill-advised 2011 Dear Colleague Letter, which had a detrimental impact on publicly funded education across the country, including in Texas. This rule walks back many of the safeguards promulgated by the Trump Administration to ensure that students accused of harassment have access to a fair hearing. At the same time, the Biden Administration redefines “harassment” to include constitutionally protected activity, such as using biologically accurate pronouns.

“Texas will not allow Joe Biden to rewrite Title IX at whim, destroying legal protections for women in furtherance of his radical obsession with gender ideology,” said Attorney General Paxton. “This attempt to subvert federal law is plainly illegal, undemocratic, and divorced from reality. Texas will always take the lead to oppose Biden’s extremist, destructive policies that put women at risk.”

America First Legal is serving as co-counsel. AFL President Stephen Miller said: “America First Legal is honored to stand with the great Ken Paxton and the State of Texas in filing this emergency lawsuit to stop Biden’s war on women. Biden’s new Title IX regulation is a vile obscenity: it forces women and girls to share locker rooms and restrooms with men. It forces them to call a he, a she, and to pretend in every way that a man is a woman, humiliating, degrading, and erasing women. This is an abomination, and as outside counsel for Texas we will battle this regulation in court with all the legal fight we can bring. It must be defeated for the sake of American women and for the sake of our daughters.”

Michael Berry