Last year, Mississippi joined 20 states in the lawsuit that challenges Biden’s expansive interpretation of anti-discrimination laws.
Last week, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee temporarily blocked the Biden Administration from enforcing new guidance on federal anti-discrimination laws.
The court wrote Friday that, “in applying Bostock to Title IX, the Department overlooked the caveats expressly recognized by the Supreme Court and created new law.”
The legal action comes after twenty states, including Mississippi, sued to stop orders that extend federal sex discrimination protections and expand guidance that would allow transgender persons access to female sports and bathrooms.
“Title IX has made a tremendous difference in leveling the playing field for girls’ sports,” said Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch. “The Biden Administration should not be so dismissive of the important impact it makes in the lives of young student-athletes.”
The argument against the Biden Administration’s guidance is that legal interpretations by the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are based on a misconstrued view of U.S. Supreme Court case law.
The following states were party to the challenge: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
“The District Court rightly recognized the federal government put Tennessee and other states in an impossible situation: choose between the threat of legal consequences including the withholding of federal funding- or altering our state laws to comply. Keep in mind these new, transformative rules were made without you- without your elected leaders in Congress having a say, which is what the law requires,” said Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III who led the lawsuit. “We are thankful the Court put a stop to it, maintained the status quo as the lawsuit proceeds, and reminded the federal government it cannot direct it’s agencies to rewrite the law.”
Anne Summerhays
