(States Newsroom) — A federal judge has struck down an attempt by Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina to halt enforcement of the Biden administration’s final rule for Title IX, shortly before the final rule takes effect nationwide on Thursday.
The administration’s updated regulations — which seek to extend federal discrimination protections for LGBTQ students — have been met with a wave of GOP pushback since being announced by the Department of Education in April.
Though the final rule is slated to go into effect on Thursday, it’s now blocked in 22 states and has faced mounting legal uncertainty.
“In short, although Plaintiffs may dislike the Department’s rules, they have failed to show a substantial likelihood of success in proving the Department’s rulemaking was unreasonable or not reasonably explained,” Judge Annemarie Carney Axon of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama wrote Tuesday in a 122-page opinion.
Axon, who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump, also wrote that “the evidentiary record is sparse, and the legal arguments are conclusory and underdeveloped.”
In late April, the group of Southern states, all with GOP attorneys general, sued the administration in federal court in Alabama over the regulations. Multiple organizations also tacked onto the lawsuit, including the Independent Women’s Law Center, the Independent Women’s Network, Parents Defending Education and Speech First.
They quickly appealed Tuesday’s ruling later in the day to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
Since the department released the final rule, 26 states in total have signed onto lawsuits seeking to block the updated regulations from taking effect.
Across multiple temporary injunctions, the final rule is blocked in Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
On Wednesday, Judge Jodi W. Dishman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma halted the final rule from taking effect in the state. Oklahoma individually sued the administration back in May.
To further complicate the matter, when Judge John Broomes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas temporarily blocked the measure in the Sunflower State, Alaska, Utah and Wyoming earlier in July, he extended it to also include “the schools attended by the members of Young America’s Foundation or Female Athletes United, as well as the schools attended by the children of the members of Moms for Liberty,” all groups that sued alongside those four states.
This means the final rule is blocked in schools across the country, including in states that never challenged the updated regulations. Despite Axon’s Tuesday ruling, the final rule will still be halted in any K-12 school or college in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina that is impacted by the earlier Kansas decision.
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
