Supreme Court Blocks Biden Administration on LGBT Student Protections

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined President Joe Biden's administration's request to enforce a rule protecting LGBT students from discrimination based on gender identity in 10 Republican-led states. This decision halts the Education Department's efforts to expand Title IX protections while litigation is ongoing.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Friday to let President Joe Biden's administration enforce a key part of a new rule protecting LGBT students from discrimination in schools and colleges based on gender identity in 10 Republican-led states that had challenged it.

The justices denied the administration's request to partially lift lower court injunctions that had blocked the entirety of the rule expanding protections under Title IX, a law that bars sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, while litigation continues. The lower court decisions had prevented the U.S. Education Department from enforcing the new rule, announced in April and set to take effect on Aug. 1, in Tennessee, Louisiana and eight other states.

The administration had sought to restore a key provision of clarifying that discrimination 'on the basis of sex' encompasses sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as the rule's numerous other provisions that do not address gender identity.

(With inputs from agencies.)