Biden administration asks Supreme Court to let it enforce anti-discrimination rules for pregnant women in schools
The administration asked the court in two separate requests to let it enforce some of the new rules starting next month while lower courts consider the legality of other rules that were meant to shore up civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students.
Earlier this year, the Department of Education unveiled changes to rules under Title IX, the decades-old law that bars sex discrimination in schools, including sexual violence and sex-based harassment. The changes were set to take effect nationwide in August.
Among other things, the new rules would prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions like childbirth, termination of pregnancy or recovery from pregnancy.
But a number of GOP attorneys general sued the administration to block enforcement of the expanded protections for LGBTQ+ students. Those changes aim to curb discrimination “based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics,” according to the Department of Education.
Last month, two federal judges in separate cases blocked enforcement of all of the new Title IX rules in 10 states.
The Biden administration asked appeals courts to modify those injunctions so that they only covered the changes related to LGBTQ+ students – which were specifically challenged in court – but the courts recently denied those requests.
Now, the administration has turned to the Supreme Court, arguing that the lower courts “plainly erred” when they blocked enforcement of the changes in full.
“The district court’s sweeping injunction prevents the Department from fulfilling its statutory mandate to effectuate Title IX,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in court papers. “The harm is particularly acute here because Title IX is one of the core federal civil rights statutes that guarantees nondiscrimination in the Nation’s education system.”
Prelogar said that if the Supreme Court does not scale back the injunctions, the Department of Education “will be unable to vindicate the critical protections of that statute in a wide swath of the country because of an overbroad injunction.”
Specifically, the solicitor general pointed out that the GOP-led lawsuits did not challenge the rule changes that address protections for pregnant and postpartum students, including access to lactation spaces and prohibitions on retaliation.
The states challenging the changes, Prelogar told the court, “do not contend – and the lower courts did not purport to hold – that those provisions conflict with Title IX, the Constitution, or any other federal law.”
“The legal disputes concerning Title IX’s application to gender-identity discrimination thus provide no justification for delaying or blocking the implementation of those important and unrelated reforms,” she wrote.
The lower-court orders blocked the changes to Title IX from taking effect in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, West Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho.
Compliance with Title IX rules is required to receive federal education aid.
The Supreme Court is now the focus of the Biden administration's efforts, as they argue against the lower courts' decisions that blocked enforcement of the Title IX rule changes in full, citing the significance of Title IX in guaranteeing nondiscrimination in education. Despite the injunctions, the GOP-led lawsuits do not challenge the rule changes addressing protections for pregnant and postpartum students.
