Conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with his liberal colleagues on Friday by dissenting to the majority’s decision to deny the Biden administration’s request to block a lower court injunction on Title IX rules.
In 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order and the Department of Education (DoE) adopted new rules that in part reversed a Trump-era interpretation that excluded gender identity and sexual orientation from being protected under Title IX, a 1972 civil rights law that bans sex-based discrimination in education.
Several Republican-led states that have been attempting to roll back LGBTQ+ rights filed lawsuits over the new rules, with two suits—Department of Education v. Louisiana and Cardona v. Tennessee—resulting in lower federal courts temporarily blocking the entirety of the new rules while the cases play out in appeals court.
In a 5-4 majority decision on Friday, the Supreme Court declined a DoE emergency request to reinstate portions of the new rules that are not related to gender identity and sexual orientation, with the majority writing that they were not given “a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim conclusions.”
Gorsuch joined liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent, arguing that the gender identity and sexual orientation rules should be paused during the appeals because they are related to alleged “injuries” suffered by the states, but the rest of the new rules should resume.
“I would grant most of the Government’s stay requests and leave enjoined only its enforcement of the three challenged provisions,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissent. “The lower courts went beyond their authority to remedy the discrete harms alleged here.”
Friday’s decision does not indicate how the Supreme Court might rule on any of the new Title IX rules, including the provisions regarding gender identity and sexual orientation.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
Alex Wong
