Just a day after a federal judge struck down an attempt by Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina to halt enforcement of the Biden administration’s final rule for Title IX, a federal appeals court granted the states’ request for an administrative injunction Wednesday — temporarily blocking the updated regulations from taking effect in those Southern states.
The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on the eve of the updated regulations taking effect brings the total number of states where the rule is temporarily blocked to 26.
The administration’s rule — which seeks to extend federal discrimination protections for LGBTQ students — has been met with a wave of GOP pushback since being announced by the Department of Education in April.
The final rule is slated to go into effect Thursday, but faces mounting legal uncertainty.
“This is a big win in our fight to protect children,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement following the appeals court ruling. “We’ve argued that the Biden administration does not have the authority to make this change, and with this temporary injunction, we now have time to make our case in court without our children being put in danger.”
The 11th Circuit decision reversed what had been a victory for the final rule’s advocates in federal court in Alabama on Tuesday.
In a 122-page opinion, Judge Annemarie Carney Axon of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama wrote that “in short, 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.”
Axon, who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump, also wrote that “the evidentiary record is sparse, and the legal arguments are conclusory and underdeveloped.”
In late April, the group of Southern states, all with GOP attorneys general, sued the administration in federal court in Alabama over the regulations. Multiple organizations also tacked onto the lawsuit, including the Independent Women’s Law Center, the Independent Women’s Network, Parents Defending Education and Speech First.
They quickly appealed Tuesday’s ruling later in the day to the 11th Circuit.
In a statement on Tuesday, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said “we are surprised by district court’s decision today to deny the State’s request to immediately halt Biden’s Title IX degradation.”
He added that “Alabama’s young women deserve better.”
Since the department released the final rule, 26 states in total have signed onto lawsuits seeking to block the updated regulations from taking effect.
Across multiple temporary injunctions, the final rule is also blocked in Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
On Wednesday, Judge Jodi W. Dishman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma halted the final rule from taking effect in the state. Oklahoma individually sued the administration back in May.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond praised the ruling, saying: “Our students deserve the protections that have long been provided by Title IX,” per a statement Wednesday.
To further complicate the matter, when Judge John Broomes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas temporarily blocked the measure in the Sunflower State, Alaska, Utah and Wyoming earlier in July, he extended it to also include “the schools attended by the members of Young America’s Foundation or Female Athletes United, as well as the schools attended by the children of the members of Moms for Liberty,” all groups that sued alongside those four states.
This means the final rule is blocked in schools across the country, including in states that never challenged the updated regulations. Despite Axon’s Tuesday ruling, the final rule was still set to be halted in any K-12 school or college in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina that is impacted by the earlier Kansas decision.
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Janelle Stecklein contributed to this report.
