Gov. Greg Abbott tells Texas to Ignore the New Federal Protections for LGBTQ+ kids put in place by the Biden Administration
On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott told the Texas Education Agency to ignore a rule from the Biden administration that added LGBTQ+ children to federal protections against sex discrimination.
Title IX is a broad civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination at publicly funded colleges and K–12 schools. The Biden administration recently changed the rules for Title IX. The new rules, which start in August, changed what sex discrimination and sex-based abuse are. This is to stop bad behavior because of sex stereotypes, pregnancy, gender identity, or sexual orientation. That’s why Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration last year: it makes official the first guidance papers.
Congress made Title IX to keep women safe. Even though Biden didn’t have the power to do so, he changed Title IX to protect guys who say they are women, Abbott wrote on the social media site X on Monday.
Paxton said Monday that he had sued the Biden administration to stop the Title IX changes, which was the same day Abbott’s order came out. More and more Republican-led states, including Texas, have spoken out against the new rules. This sets the stage for a court battle over protecting LGBTQ+ students. They say that the Biden government got the meaning of Title IX wrong.
As its final interpretation of Title IX, the Biden administration tried to make a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case ruling about discrimination in the workplace apply to students as well. Bostock v. Clayton County: The high court said that Title VII, a civil rights law that doesn’t allow discrimination at work based on sex, applied to transgender and gay workers.
Rules made during the Trump administration required “live hearings” where students accused of sexual misconduct could ask accusers in a setting similar to a courtroom. These changes to Title IX also roll back those rules. The Biden administration kept rules from the Trump administration that let problems be solved informally and don’t allow students to be punished until a review is over.
