Parental rights group Moms for Liberty won an injunction to stop schools from complying with major Biden administration Title IX changes.
Title IX first came out in 1972, and it prohibits discrimination based on sex. After it passed, the availability of girls’ sports widely expanded.
The Biden administration rewrote the law through an executive order to include LGBTQ+ students’ gender identities. The new rule was to take effect on August 1. Still, a ban brought by Moms for Liberty and others effectively blocked it in schools that educate children of their members after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction.
Moms for Liberty and Young America’s Foundation filed the suit, joined by Republican-led states of Kansas, Wyoming, Utah and Alaska. The nonprofit Southeastern Legal Foundation represents them.
The plaintiffs claim the Biden Administration’s new Title IX rule violates the First Amendment rights of their members and their children because it would force students to use incorrect pronouns, affirm queer theory, and self-censor rather than advocate for their privacy and safety in sex-segregated spaces. The rule also violates the rights of parents to be in charge of the upbringing of their children.
Victor Bernson, vice president and general counsel for Young America’s Foundation, said, “Gender ideology is a bald-faced lie, men are men and women are women. With its new Title IX rules, the Biden administration is forcing everyone in college across the nation to repeat and live the lie that men can be women. It’s unconscionable.”
Moms for Liberty Co-Founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice said, “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. 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.”
They added, “This is a huge win for parents across the country and for America because this ruling protects and affirms our First Amendment Rights. Thanks to this preliminary injunction, the federal DOE is prohibited from enforcing Title IX at the schools attended by members of Moms for Liberty’s children.”
Several Delaware Valley school districts are on the list, including Sounderton, Upper Darby, Garnet Valley, Tredyffrin/Eastown, Haverford and Pennridge.
Upper Darby parent Terry Tracy said, “Let’s state the obvious. First, discrimination, bullying, and other forms denigration of any child, LGBT or otherwise, should not be tolerated in our schools or our society. Second, biological males should not be permitted in biological females’ locker rooms or sporting events, particularly those intended for young girls. Third, parents know better than today’s education bureaucrats.
“If progressives would abandon their obsession with treating our schools like social science laboratories and our kids like lab rats, then these three obvious realities would be the basis for formulating common sense policies that put the interests of our kids first,” Tracy said.
Justice and Descovich added, “We have submitted a list of schools, putting the Department of Education on notice that it cannot enforce or implement these new Title IX rules at these schools in 45 states. These lists are still being updated, and current and new members can still add their children’s schools to the list to protect them from the dangers of these new federal requirements in their K-12 schools.”
A spokesperson for the state Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
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