Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced on April 29 that her office has filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s Title IX rule changes.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who joined Ms. Murrill at a press conference in Baton Rouge, said the Biden administration has lost its moral compass.
“We do not intend to comply.”
Title IX was passed in 1972 to protect women from sex-based discrimination. The new version of Title IX expands the rule to include discrimination based on gender identity.
The attorney general said the 400-page rule was ambiguous in its definition of gender identity, which describes it as “an individual’s sense of their gender, which may or may not be different from their sex assigned at birth.”
“These rules eviscerate Title IX. They are entirely contrary to what Title IX was intended to achieve”, Ms. Murrill said.
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She went on to list some consequences of the rule change, saying it prohibits single-sex bathrooms, and compels educators and students to use preferred pronouns of transgender students.
Ms. Murrill said the suit, filed just 13 minutes after the late-night release of the new rules on April 19, seeks immediate injunctive relief to protect the state against retaliation from the federal government.
Louisiana was joined in the lawsuit by the attorneys general of Idaho, Mississippi, and Montana.
At stake is $2.6 billion in federal funding for Louisiana schools is at stake since Title IX compliance is a requirement to receive educational grant money from the federal government.
Although Ms. Murrill said she had not yet received an overt threat to Louisiana’s funding, she said: “I’m sure it’s coming because we are not going to comply.”
She also said the new rule will probably result in a rash of litigation.
“You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t. If you don’t protect biological women you violate Title IX. If you do protect biological women, you violate Title IX,” she said.
The new Title IX rules don’t deal with the question of transgender athletes. The Biden administration said it would address this issue at a later time; they are unlikely to be finalized until after this year’s general election.
But Ms. Murrill said the rule already implicitly applies to athletics.
“I think that they understood the political consequences if they had addressed athletics at this time, but make no mistake, this rule governs so much about athletics: locker rooms, bathrooms, scholarships.
“So it doesn’t really matter that they’ve said they’re going to come back later and issue another rule; that just means they’re going to wait and see how this goes, and then they’re going to be even more specific if they can get away with it,” she said.
The attorney general also said the rule would have a chilling effect because resistance could result in an investigation or lawsuit.
“Coaches are unable to speak, this rule gags them. There is a lot of retaliation that has been built into the system, which has been very effective,” she added.
When asked how the lawsuit and subsequent conflict over the rule changes might affect the high rate of suicide and mental health issues among transgender students, she said: “Let’s address that problem. We can address that problem. I’m not denying that they may face some challenges when they’re in school.”
She continued: “I don’t think that means we have to deny what the effect of this rule is on biological women and on Title IX. It’s just apples and oranges.”
Ms. Murrill said she wanted all students to feel safe at school, but “that doesn’t mean my niece has to change in a bathroom with a student who is not a biological female.”
When asked for comment, a Department of Education spokesperson said that it does not comment on active litigation.
The spokesperson added that all schools are required to comply with the new regulations as a condition of receiving federal funding.
“The department crafted the final Title IX regulations following a rigorous process to give complete effect to the Title IX statutory guarantee that no person experiences sex discrimination in federally funded education,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
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