Federal courts’ orders complicate the Department of Education’s enforcement deadline.

by Brendan Clarey, for The Center Square

(The Center Square) – The Biden administration’s Department of Education will not be allowed to enforce its Title IX rule changes in 21 states and thousands of K-12 schools nationwide as lawsuits continue ahead of the rule’s implementation deadline Thursday. Possible court orders regarding the rule’s deadline could still change what schools are required to do. 

The new rules add gender identity and pregnancy protections to the law. Under the new rules, schools that receive federal dollars must, for example, allow students to access bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity.

The parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty was among the leaders in challenging the constitutionality of the law.

There are only four states where Moms for Liberty does not have members with students in elementary, middle and high schools, which are also blocked from enforcing the rule due to pending litigation. 

The 21 states where the Biden administration has been prohibited from implementing its rule expanding the definition of sex discrimination to include gender are Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

There are currently only four states where Moms for Liberty did not say it had members with children in schools: Louisiana, New Mexico, Utah and Vermont. All other states have at least one school where the Biden administration is blocked from enforcing its order.

Confusingly, school districts with campuses on the list from the grassroots organization have still approved policies implementing the Biden administration’s required changes. 

The cumulative effect of the court orders means school districts are stuck between the Biden administration’s requirements for compliance and possibly violating the rights of those in organizations suing the government over its expansion of a 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational settings to include gender identity.

Critics of the law have called it an illegal rewrite, and a coalition of Republican attorney generals, conservative organizations and individuals have filed lawsuits. 

Federal courts have ruled that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their arguments and prohibited the Biden administration from enforcing the rule where it may affect members of suing organizations and states.

Moms for Liberty, which secured the widest-ranging injunction, is one of the organizations that sued the Department of Education. On its website, the organization says the order applies to current and future members, and the list can be updated to include new members. 

Moms for Liberty has been outspoken in recent weeks. 

“We have been handed a major win in our federal legal battle to protect K-12 public school children from the dangers of gender ideology in public schools, which gut parental rights,” Moms for Liberty cofounders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice said last week. 

“A district court in Kansas halted the implementation of the Biden policy through a preliminary injunction, finding that the Biden Title IX rewrite violated Moms for Liberty members’ children’s First Amendment rights because it is so vague no one knows how to comply with it,” the cofounders said in a joint statement about the list of schools. 

You can see the entire list of schools where the Title IX rule is blocked from taking effect here:

Without the injunction, the Biden administration estimated the changes would cost over $98 million in the first year after taking effect due to the cost of training, litigation and other administrative costs. 

• This story originally published at Chalkboard News.