Texas Judge Reed O’Connor has issued an expansion of an injunction he enacted last June that will further restrict the Department of Education’s trans-inclusive Title IX rules in the state of Texas.
In his expansion, O’Connor — an appointee of President George W. Bush ‘— wrote, “The Court also declares unlawful the interpretation in the Guidance Documents as well as in any future agency action that the anti-discrimination provisions of Title IX include sexual orientation or gender identity.”
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The sweeping injunction blocks the protections nationwide.
The initial ruling ruling issued by O’Connor already provided restrictions on 2021 documents from the Department of Education (DOE) that interpreted Title IX’s prohibition against sex-based discrimination as including transgender people.
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O’Connor’s new expansion is more sweeping. It completely restricts any interpretation by the DOE of Title IX as trans-inclusive, and instructs “schools, school boards, and other public, educationally based institutions,” to ignore the DOE’s 2021 directives.
“To allow Defendants’ [DOE’s] unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress,” O’Connor wrote in his August 5 opinion detailing his rationale. “That is not how our democratic system functions,” he wrote, adding that, “the Department lacks authority to redefine sex in a way that conflicts with Title IX.”
His ruling only applies to the DOE’s 2021 rules and the department’s implementation of them. It does not apply to the Title IX rules issued by the Biden administration earlier this year.
Texas is one of 26 states that has blocked enforcement of the DOE’s rules. Republican attorneys general have also been suing the DOE for trying to enforce these rules.