Red State Judge Refuses To Block Biden Admin From Pushing Title IX Rewrite

A federal judge in Alabama on Tuesday refused to block President Joe Biden’s Title IX rewrite which expands protections to include gender identity, contrasting the rulings in six other courts around the country.

Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Annemarie Axon denied the preliminary injunction requested by four southern states to halt the enforcement of the new Title IX rules that go into effect on Thursday, which introduce federal protections against discrimination for LGBT students based on “gender identity.” The rules have already been blocked in 21 states amid ongoing litigation involving more than half of the U.S. in ten separate lawsuits, according to NBC News.

“Plaintiffs have failed to ‘clearly’ establish that they are entitled to the ‘extraordinary and drastic remedy’ that is a preliminary injunction,” the judge stated in the 122-page ruling. “Although Plaintiffs may dislike the Department’s rules, they have failed to show a substantial likelihood of success in proving the Department’s rulemaking was unreasonable or not reasonably explained under APA’s deferential arbitrary-or-capricious standard.”

The lawsuit was filed in May on behalf of the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina against the U.S. Department of Education