Texas Tribune / Austin Price
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration Monday after it extended Title IX to LGBTQ students.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration Monday for expanding federal sex discrimination protections under Title IX to include LGBTQ+ students.
Title IX is a sweeping civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination at federally funded colleges and K-12 schools. The revised Title IX rules, which are set to go into effect in August, redefined sex discrimination and sex-based harassment to prevent misconduct based on sex stereotypes, pregnancy, gender identity and sexual orientation. It codifies initial guidance documents that prompted Paxton to sue the Biden administration last year.
Texas joins a growing number of Republican-led states that have berated the changes, setting the stage for a legal fight over LGBTQ+ student protections. They say the Biden administration misinterpreted the intent of Title IX.
“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,” Paxton wrote in a Monday statement. “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.”
In its final interpretation of Title IX, the Biden administration sought to extend a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case decision related to workplace discrimination to students. The high court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII, a civil rights law that bars employment discrimination on the basis of sex, applied to gay and transgender workers.
The Title IX changes also walk back rules set during the Trump administration that required “live hearings” in which students accused of sexual misconduct could question accusers in a courtroom-like setting. The Biden administration kept Trump-era provisions that allow informal resolutions and prohibit penalties against students until an investigation is complete.
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
This article originally appeared in the Texas Tribune.
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