The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a ban on extra support for transgender students, marking the latest major step in the legal battle over LGBT rights. The ruling highlights the complexities and controversy surrounding the protection of transgender students in schools while leaving in place restrictions on measures designed to support them and ensure equal access to education.
Judge halts Biden’s transgender student protections: Republican victory, blow to rights
The US Supreme Court has temporarily halted a new Biden administration order aimed at protecting students from discrimination based on gender identity.
On Friday, a court ruled against the White House’s request to allow some states to temporarily implement the rule, a major victory for Republican-run states that opposed the measure and a blow to transgender rights activists.
However, this ruling does not resolve the issue, leaving the possibility for further proceedings in the lower courts.
A new federal rule passed by the Biden administration in April expands the reach of a 1972 law known as Title IX that prohibits discrimination based on sex at educational institutions that receive federal funding, including most universities and colleges.
The rule was created to clarify the law’s definition of “sex” to include gender identity. Ten Republican states challenged the measure, and it went into partial effect in some areas on Aug. 1.
They filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the law from being implemented in their territories and won in trial courts in Louisiana and Kentucky.
Now, the Supreme Court’s decision sends the case back to the lower courts. The vote was 5-4. Notably, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the three liberal justices in his dissenting opinion.
Tennessee’s attorney general, who objected to the Biden administration’s new rule, said the Supreme Court’s decision was “a victory for students’ privacy, freedom of expression and the rule of law.”
Human Rights Watch’s Katherine Oakley criticized the Supreme Court for blocking measures to protect transgender students’ rights
According to the New York Times, Human Rights Watch’s Catherine Oakley expressed disappointment that the Supreme Court had allowed far-right forces to block key civil rights protections for young people.
In recent years, transgender rights have become a central political issue in the United States. In Republican states, conservatives have passed laws restricting students’ access to bathrooms that do not match their biological sex at birth and restricting transgender girls from participating in sports teams.
The new ruling did not specifically address athletic events, but required schools to treat transgender students equally with their peers, including access to restrooms. The court’s majority said it would decline to stay lower court decisions that found “the new understanding of sex discrimination intertwines with and affects several other provisions of the new rule.”
