The Supreme Court denied the emergency request of the Biden Administration to partially reinstate their new Title IX Rule on Friday. The administration asked for the less controversial changes that do not deal with gender identification to be allowed to proceed while the more divisive ones are litigated by lower courts.
The vote was close:
The court voted 5-4 with the conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joining three liberal justices to dissent.
The issue was protections for pregnant and parent students, as well as the procedures that schools must follow in response to sexual misconduct allegations.
#BREAKING: By 5-4 vote (with Justice Gorsuch joining the three Democratic appointees in dissent), #SCOTUS *rejects* Biden administration applications to put most of its new Title IX guidance back into effect. Rule remains blocked pending further litigation: pic.twitter.com/L0W0op2FwI
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) August 16, 2024
The decision didn’t address the other controversial Title IX changes that Biden has been pushing.
The administration did not include the most important of the new regulations – protections for transgender children – in its plea to the Supreme Court. The same lower court orders have blocked them in 25 states, and hundreds of colleges and schools throughout the country.
Biden’s mission is to undermine the original purpose of Title IX which was to protect females in sports and academics.
The judges decided that they did not feel the government had shown that they needed to act:
According to an unsigned court order, “On this limited record as well as in its emergency applications the Government hasn’t provided this Court with a sufficient base to disturb the lower courts interim conclusions that three provisions found to be likely illegal are intertwined and affect other provisions.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the liberal justices, however, in their dissent.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented along with two other liberal Justices on the Court and conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch. They agreed with the Biden Administration that the lower courts’ rulings were too broad.
Sotomayor wrote: “By preventing the government from enforcing scores regulations that respondents had never challenged, and which bore no apparent relation to the alleged injuries of respondents, the lower court went beyond its authority to remedy discrete harms that were alleged in this case.”
Many cases are pending in federal courts across the country regarding Biden’s attempts to radicalize Title IX. Some of these cases may end up at the Supreme Court. This is not over.
