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gender identity
In 'Attack on Trans Students,' Federal Judge Strikes Down Biden's Title IX Protections
The Republican judge cited the Supreme Court's recent decision that stripped federal agencies of their regulatory power.
Jan 10, 2025
In a decision that was partially underpinned by the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of a 40-year-old legal precedent last year, a federal judge in Kentucky on Thursday struck down President Joe Biden's expanded protections for transgender youths and other vulnerable students, saying the administration overstepped in introducing the rules.
Chief Judge Danny C. Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky ruled that the Education Department did not have the authority to expand the protections provided by Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which since 1972 has prohibited sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.
The ruling applies to the new definition in Title IX that was proposed by the department last April, which prohibited "discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex-related characteristics (including intersex traits), pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity."
Right-wing activists and politicians objected in particular to the protections for gender identity.
The rules stopped short of requiring schools to allow transgender students to play on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity—a key fixation of the far right—but required schools and staffers to accept students' identities on a daily basis, for example by calling them by their preferred pronouns rather than according to their sex assigned at birth.
The rules have been blocked in 26 states as Republican leaders in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and other states have filed legal challenges.
In his ruling, Reeves, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote that "the entire point of Title IX is to prevent discrimination based on sex."
"Throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless," he said.
Reeves wrote that "the final rule and its corresponding regulations exceed the department's authority," citing Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court case in which the court's right-wing majority overturned the so-called Chevron doctrine. The legal precedent held that judges should defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretation of a law if Congress has not specifically addressed the issue at hand.
The judge also rejected the Education Department's position that protections for transgender people against workplace discrimination—which were established in 2020 in the Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia—should also apply in schools that receive federal funding.
At Law Dork, journalist Chris Geidner wrote that Reeves rejected "Bostock's application to Title IX and [cited] his newfound authority in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo to determine 'the statute's single, best meaning' himself."
"As such, he took that authority to decide what Title IX means, the department's view notwithstanding, and set aside the rule," wrote Geidner.
Reeves also wrote that requiring teachers and schools to use students' preferred pronouns and names "offends the First Amendment" and violates the free speech rights of teachers.
That assertion, said Jennifer Berkshire, author of The Education Wars, "really shows you how fake the rhetoric of 'parents rights' is."
"The idea that using a student's preferred pronouns is in any way an imposition on teachers is patently absurd," added Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Massachusetts. "If you can handle using nicknames, you can handle correct pronouns."
Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, said the judge turned "longstanding legal precedent on its head in a direct, disproportionate attack on trans students," and noted that the harm caused by the ruling will extend beyond transgender students.
"Today's decision displays extraordinary disregard for students who are most vulnerable to discrimination and are in the most need for federal protections under the Title IX rule," said Goss Graves. "The Biden administration's Title IX rule is essential to ensure that all students—including survivors of sexual assault and harassment, pregnant and parenting students, and LGBTQI+ students—are able to learn in a safe and welcoming environment. With these protections already removed in some states, students who experience sexual assault have had their complaints dismissed, or worse, been punished by their schools after reporting; pregnant students have been unfairly penalized for taking time off to give birth to a child; and LGBTQI+ students have faced vicious bullying and harassment just for being who they are."
Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of the LGBTQ rights group GLSEN, told The New York Times that the ruling "shows a stunning indifference to marginalized youth facing harassment and discrimination, as well as hardworking school administrators and principals who are working to build safer learning environments for their increasingly diverse student populations."
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Florida House Republicans Advance Bill to 'Deny the Legal Existence' of Trans People
"Rest assured that the passage of this discriminatory bill would have a detrimental and real-life impact on the trans community," said one Florida ACLU leader.
Mar 01, 2024
The ACLU of Florida on Friday led condemnation of a bill passed by the Republican-controlled lower chamber of the state Legislature that "seeks to deny the legal existence of transgender individuals by requiring individuals to identify as their sex assigned at birth instead of their gender on their driver's licenses and ID cards."
Dubbed the Trans Erasure Bill by opponents, H.B. 1639 passed by a vote of 75-33. The ACLU notes that the legislation "also requires health plans to cover the widely discredited practice of conversion therapy and creates additional obstacles for health plans to cover gender-affirming care."
"H.B. 1639 is harmful, vague, and does nothing to improve the lives of Floridians," ACLU of Florida policy strategist NR Hines said in a statement. "It is eerily silent on the consequences for transgender individuals who identify their gender on their driver's license or other government-issued identification instead of their sex assigned at birth."
"It weaponizes state agencies and private insurance companies to threaten the safety and inclusion of transgender people," they asserted. "It is a cruel bill aimed at erasing transgender Floridians out of public life entirely. We have deep concerns about the life-altering impacts on the trans community."
Hines continued:
Last month, we learned of the death of a transgender student after they experienced violence on school grounds in Oklahoma. Nex Benedict should still be alive today. While this violence didn't occur in Florida, the fear and hate towards trans people that some elected officials are spreading directly leads to these unsafe situations.
Rest assured that the passage of this discriminatory bill would have a detrimental and real-life impact on the trans community. Thankfully, there is currently no Senate companion bill, and Senate leadership has stated the bill will not be heard.
"We hope this remains true," Hines added. "Trans people belong and deserve the freedom to be who they are."
LGBTQ+ rights—and especially trans rights—are under attack across the country. The ACLU is currently tracking 471 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in a majority of states, including 11 pieces of proposed legislation in Florida.
Last year, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a failed GOP presidential candidate, signed a bundle of bills that activists condemned as the most extreme slate of anti-trans laws in modern history. Among these were S.B. 254, which bans gender-affirming care for minors, while prohibiting nurse practitioners from providing such healthcare to adults.
Last June, federal Judge Robert Hinkle temporarily blocked the enforcement of certain provisions of S.B. 254, saying they constituted "purposeful discrimination" against transgender people.
DeSantis also signed H.B. 1069, which expands the so-called "Don't Say Gay or Trans" law to prohibit educators from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K-12.
H.B. 1521 empowers cisgender people to order transgender people to leave publicly available restrooms—in places including airports, sports arenas, convention centers, beaches, parks, and public and even private healthcare and educational institutions—or face criminal trespass charges that could result in up to a year behind bars for those who refuse to comply.
The Human Rights Campaign—the largest LGBTQ+ political advocacy group in the United States—issued a first-ever national emergency declaration for LGBTQ+ people last June, citing the torrent of discriminatory and dangerous legislation emerging from Republican-controlled legislatures across the country.
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Charges for Suspect in 'Hate-Motivated' Knife Attack on Canada University Gender Studies Class
A "right-wing culture war and transphobic propaganda is never just about discourse, debate, or the 'potential for violence,'" said one gender studies professor in response to the attack. "It's about actual violence."
Jun 29, 2023
Police in Ontario, Canada on Thursday said the stabbing of multiple people in a University of Waterloo gender studies class was a "hate-motivated incident related to gender expression and gender identity" as they charged the suspect with several crimes.
Geovanny Villalba-Aleman, a 24-year-old former student at the school, was identified by the Waterloo Regional Police Service as the suspect and has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault, four counts of assault with a weapon, and two counts of possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.
Villalba-Aleman is accused of stabbing a 38-year-old professor and two students, aged 19 and 20, after entering the classroom of a Philosophy 202: Gender Issues class on Wednesday afternoon and asking the professor "what the class was about," according to The Imprint, the school's student newspaper.
After the professor answered and said she was the instructor of the class, Villalba-Aleman allegedly "closed the door, took out two knives, and began attacking the professor."
A student told The Imprint that the attacker "missed the professor and 'ended up attacking one or two other people.'"
The three victims were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
The stabbing is the latest attack in Canada that was allegedly motivated by gender-related hate.
In 2018, a man killed 10 people in Toronto when he drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians, later saying he had been motivated by his anger over being rejected by women.
Wednesday's attack comes amid a surge in anti-transgender rights legislation in the United States, with right-wing lawmakers passing more than 80 bans this year on gender-affirming healthcare, discussions about LGBTQ+ issues in schools, and students playing sports and using restrooms in accordance with their gender identity.
In the Canadian province of New Brunswick this month, conservatives changed rules for public schools to "recognize the role of parents" regarding the names and pronouns children use. A previous policy, adopted in 2020, stated that teachers should respect all children's chosen names and pronouns.
"It's the first well-documented instance of Canada copying U.S. anti-trans policies, which usually focus on solving a problem that doesn't exist through blatantly discriminatory practices," wrote Nate DiCamillo at Quartz.
The attack at University of Waterloo demonstrates that a "right-wing culture war and transphobic propaganda is never just about discourse, debate, or the 'potential for violence,'" said Jeremy Johnston, a gender studies professor at Western University in Ontario. "It's about actual violence."
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