Southlake Carroll ISD heads to court over Title IX protections for trans students
Lawyers for a conservative legal group argued Monday in Fort Worth federal court that the Carroll Independent School District’s ability to protect its female students would suffer if new Title IX rules extending protections to transgender and nonbinary students are allowed to go into effect.
The Southlake school district is suing the U.S. Department of Education to delay the implementation of the new rules, which are scheduled to go into effect Aug. 1. In a hearing Monday, lawyers for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the district in the case, argued that, in enacting the rules, the department is improperly redefining the concept of a student’s sex to include their gender identity as well as sex assigned at birth.
But Pardis Gheibi, an attorney for the Education Department, argued that the new rules don’t broaden the definition of student sex, but rather redefine how districts handle certain student behaviors.
Title IX changes expand sex discrimination protections
The Biden administration released the long-awaited rules in April. Although the department already interpreted Title IX as offering protections to LGBTQ+ students, the new rules make that policy more explicit. Among other changes, the new rules would bar school districts from creating a hostile learning environment for trans and nonbinary students. The changes don’t include new rules dealing with student athletes. Those changes are expected later this year.
The rule changes caused immediate outcry among Republican governors. Following the change, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Education Agency and public colleges and universities to ignore the new policy.
Passed in 1972, Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school district or educational program that receives federal funding. The law makes no mention of LGBTQ+ students. But Education Department officials argue that discriminating against trans and nonbinary students is inherently sex-based discrimination.
During Monday’s hearing, Gheibi pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock vs. Clayton County, Georgia, in which the court sided with Gerald Bostock, a county employee who was fired because he was gay. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the county violated Title VII sex discrimination rules because it punished Bostock for behavior — in this case, being attracted to men — that would have been acceptable if he’d been born a woman.
Gheibi acknowledged that the ruling dealt with Title VII rules and not Title IX, but said there’s no reason to think the same line of reasoning wouldn’t apply to trans students. For example, a district couldn’t discriminate against a trans girl who wore a dress to school, because that choice of attire would have been acceptable if she’d been assigned female at birth.
But lawyers for Carroll ISD argued the new rules turn Title IX on its head, undoing the law’s protections for female students. Mathew Hoffman, an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, gave the example of a cisgender female student who’d survived a violent rape and felt uncomfortable changing clothes next to a trans woman. In such a case, the department’s new rules would create a hostile environment for the cisgender student, he said.
Judge Reed O’Connor at times appeared sympathetic to Carroll ISD’s argument, pressing Gheibi on the question of how the department decided that the potential harm of forcing trans students to use locker rooms corresponding with their birth sex outweighed the potential harm to, for example, cisgender girls who are forced to undress next to a student who was assigned male at birth.
Gheibi pointed to research showing the psychological damage exclusionary locker room and bathroom policies can do to trans students. She was unsure if the department consulted similar research on how the presence of trans students affected their cisgender classmates, but said officials heard a range of viewpoints when developing the rules.
The case isn’t the first Title IX challenge to come before O’Connor. Last month, the judge ruled in favor of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a challenge to initial guidance documents Biden administration officials released ahead of the rule change. In 2016, he ruled against the Obama administration in a challenge to Title IX guidance requiring that trans students be allowed to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
A ruling in the Carroll ISD lawsuit is expected in the coming weeks.
This story was originally published July 8, 2024 at 3:24 PM.
