TOPEKA – Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach today won a preliminary injunction halting the implementation of the Biden administration’s Title IX transgender regulations.
Biden’s Title IX regulations would have required public schools to allow biological males who identify as females to shower with biological girls in school locker rooms. It also would have required public schools and universities to allow biological males who identify as girls to compete in girls’ sports.
“Given… the evidence before the court, it is not hard to imagine that, under the Final Rule, an industrious older teenage boy may simply claim to identify as a female to gain access to the girls’ showers, dressing rooms, or locker rooms so that he can observe his female peers disrobe and shower,” Judge John Broomes wrote in the order.
Broomes, a Kansas federal judge, ruled in favor of the state of Kansas and attorneys general from Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming as well as three private organizations, Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation, and Female Athletes United.
Kansas Attorney General Kobach personally argued the case on June 20.
“We have had many wins in court, but to me, this is the biggest one yet,” Kobach said. “It protects girls and women across the country from having their privacy rights and safety violated in bathrooms and locker rooms and from having their freedom of speech violated if they say there are only two sexes.”
The federal district court injunction will have a sweeping effect, prohibiting the implementation of Biden’s transgender regulations in the four plaintiff states. In addition, the injunction covers schools throughout the entire country via the plaintiff organizations. The private organizations have members in all 50 states.
“The Department of Education’s reinterpretation of Title IX to place gender identity on equal footing with (or in some instances arguably stronger footing than) biological sex would subvert Congress’ goals of protecting biological women in education,” Broomes wrote in the order. “The Final Rule would, among other things, require schools to subordinate the fears, concerns, and privacy interests of biological women to the desires of transgender biological men to shower, dress, and share restroom facilities with their female peers.”
It is likely that thousands of schools across the nation will be covered by the ruling. If a single member of Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation, or Female Athletes United has students in any school in any state, that school is prohibited from complying with Biden’s Title IX rule. The organizations have until July 15 to notify the court which schools across the nation are affected.
The Kansas Attorney General’s Office stated that all Kansas school districts are now on notice that they must abide by the court’s injunction and that they are prohibited from changing any of the schools’ policies to reflect Biden’s Title IX transgender rule.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
