A U.S. District Court vacated the Biden administration’s proposed rewrite to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 on a nationwide basis following a lawsuit filed in April 2024 by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and 5 other state attorneys general against the federal Department of Education (DOE).
This vacatur order takes the unlawful agency action off the books and prevents the rule from being applied anywhere in the country.
“I’m proud to have successfully defended Title IX from the federal government’s power grab that threatened to upend half a century of landmark protections for women and punish States for following their own laws,” said Attorney General Jason Miyares.
For over 50 years, Title IX has prohibited sex-based discrimination in federally-funded schools, protecting students’ rights based on their biological sex. The Biden DOE’s new rule sought to redefine sex discrimination to include gender identity discrimination, effectively eliminating biological distinctions in educational settings and compelling states to adopt radical gender ideology.
In June 2024, the district court granted a preliminary injunction preventing the new rule from going into effect in Virginia and other coalition states. The Biden Administration sought emergency relief from that decision, which the Supreme Court of the United States correctly rejected. Back at the district court, the parties briefed motions for summary judgment so the district court could come to a final—not just preliminary—determination on the rule.
Today, the district court vacated the Biden Administration’s rule nationwide, affirming that the Biden administration’s proposed Title IX rewrite exceeds DOE’s authority under the Title IX statute passed by Congress, violates the Constitution, and was the result of arbitrary and capricious agency action.
Read the order here.
