FORT WORTH - A Texas federal judge has struck down a Biden-era rule that changes the meaning of "sex" in Title IX to include gender identity, in a ruling that will keep transgender girls from competing in female sports.
Fort Worth federal judge Reed O'Connor on Feb. 19 sided with the Carroll Independent School District, which had urged the judge to join a colleague in Kentucky in blocking the rule.
O'Connor had already written the rule "undermines over 50 years of progress for women and girls" when he delayed its execution date.
He now cites the Kentucky ruling when he writes, "Because the distinction between male and female is at the heart of Title IX, 'throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless.'"
O'Connor became the latest in a line of federal judges hearing challenges to the rule to worry about First Amendment issues. The rule allows hostile environment and sex-based harassment claims based on a failure to use gender-identity pronouns.
"As a consequence, recipients of Title IX funds, including teachers, are forced 'to be an instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view [they find] unacceptable,'" O'Connor wrote.
"The Final Rule functionally turns recipients of federal funds into federally commandeered censors of speech, forcing schools to require engagement in or, at a minimum, to prohibit certain kinds of speech, which in turn represses what has long been regarded as protected forms of expression and religious exercise.
"Therefore, the Final Rule violates the protections of the First Amendment."
The issue rears its head in high school athletics, the subject of Texas' Save Women's Sports Act. The Southeast Texas Record previously reported video footage of a former school administrator advising an undercover journalist on how to bypass the law.
State Attorney General Ken Paxton started a probe of Irving Independent ISD and Dallas ISD, sending letters to their superintendents that ask for documents that will show if they are complying with the SWSA.
“The idea of school district officials turning their backs on female students and sacrificing the integrity of women’s athletics to advance the radical transgender agenda is disgusting, but that seems to be exactly what occurred here,” Paxton said.
“Any systematic effort by a school district to sidestep state law and allow biological boys to play in girls’ sports in Texas will be rooted out, and my office will explore all avenues to hold those responsible to account.”
Carroll ISD sued the U.S. Department of Education last year. Its school policy prohibits employees from requiring the use of pronouns that are "inconsistent with a student's or other person's biological sex," among other things.
Its lawsuit said the DOE's rule, published last April, trampled constitutional rights. In granting a preliminary injunction against it, Judge O'Connor wrote "Defendant's arguments also prove too much. Perhaps unintended, efforts to eliminate discrimination on the basis of gender identity ironically seem to function as impermissible sex discrimination under Title IX."