In an effort once again to keep a target plainly painted on the backs of transgender Texans, especially transgender youth, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed suit challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s recently released regulations under Title IX expanding the definition of “sex” to include not only gender but also gender identity.

The new requirements were issued to protect trans youth from legislation being passed in GOP-controlled states prohibiting them from participating in school sports. In a press release today (Monday, April 29), Paxton — who is also on a crusade to prevent Texas transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming health care anywhere by demanding private healthcare records from medical entities outside the state — claimed the Title IX rule “destroys protections for women in educational institutions by mandating compliance with radical gender ideology.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, by the way, has already ruled — in June 2020, in Bostock v. Clayton County —  that “sex” does, indeed, include sexual orientation and gender identity.

Title IX, for those who don’t known, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program that receives federal money, including K-12 schools, colleges and universities. Schools refusing to follow Title IX and the newly-issued regulation noting that “sex” includes gender identity could lose federal funds.

Earlier guidances issued by the Biden administration had noted that Title IX protections do extend to gender identity and not just gender. Recently issued requirements formally amend the Code of Federal Regulations, Paxton’s press release noted.

The press release declares, “This rule violates existing federal law, ignores the Constitution, and denies women the protections that Title IX was intended to afford them. The Biden administration has exceeded its authority and radically distorted the meaning intended by Congress when the law was made. Further, the changes would fundamentally transform the educational atmosphere of publicly funded educational institutions, forcing communities to capitulate to unscientific gender ideology and putting girls and women at risk in K-12 schools and on college campuses.”
Again, the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that “sex” includes “gender identity,” negating Paxton’s claim that the Biden administration has “radically distorted” its meaning.

The press release also claims the new rule “walks back many of the safeguards promulgated by the Trump administration to ensure that students accused of harassment have access to a fair hearing. At the same time, the Biden Administration redefines ‘harassment’ to include constitutionally protected activity, such as using biologically accurate pronouns.”

Paxton is quote as saying Texas “will not allow Joe Biden to rewrite Title IX at whim, destroying legal protections for women in furtherance of his radical obsession with gender ideology. This attempt to subvert federal law is plainly illegal, undemocratic, and divorced from reality. Texas will always take the lead to oppose Biden’s extremist, destructive policies that put women at risk.”

Right-wing group America First Legal is serving as co-counsel in the lawsuit with AFL President Stephen Miller declaring his organization is “honored to stand with the great Ken Paxton and the state of Texas in filing this emergency lawsuit to stop Biden’s war on women.” He called the regulation “a vile obscenity” that “forces women and girls to share locker rooms and restrooms with men. It forces them to call a he, a she, and to pretend in every way that a man is a woman, humiliating, degrading, and erasing women. This is an abomination, [and it] must be defeated for the sake of American women and for the sake of our daughters.”

Stephen Miller is the former Trump advisor widely acknowledged as the main architect of that administration’s heinous immigration policies that, among other things, separated parents attempting to immigrate from their children and putting the children in cages at detention centers. He is also known to be a white nationalist.

— Tammye Nash