U.S. District Court Chief Judge Louis Guirola, Jr., of the Southern District of Mississippi, questions the student law school advocates during a moot court competition between the state's two law schools, Mississippi College School of Law and the University of Mississippi School of Law in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2017. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
- U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola wrote that the Court cannot accept the suggestion that Congress, with a ‘clear voice,’ adopted an ambiguous or evolving definition of ‘sex’ in Title IX.
U.S. District Court Judge Louis Guirola has granted a preliminary injunction and nationwide stay against the Biden Administration’s updated Title IX rule that the Department of Health and Human Services was incorporating into the Affordable Care Act to address sex discrimination in the healthcare field.
The Biden Administration’s rewrite of the Title IX final rule broadened the law to prohibit discrimination based on “sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”
As previously reported, the original intent of the 1972 law was to give women an equal playing field in educational attainment, particularly at public schools and institutions of higher learning that receive federal financial aid. However, presidential administrations supportive of the LGBTQ movement have used Title IX to expand protections and access for people who identify as lesbian, gay or transgender.
The Department of Health and Human Services was seeking to include the new Title IX rule as the ACA law passed in 2010 prohibited discrimination “on the ground prohibited by title IX… under any health program or activity, any part of which is receiving Federal financial assistance… or under any program or activity that is administered by an Executive Agency…” The ACA also adopts the “enforcement mechanisms provided for and available under” Title IX “for purposes of violations of this subsection,” as presented to the court.
Judge Guirola wrote that a “statute cannot be divorced from the circumstances existing at the time it was passed, and from the evil which Congress sought to correct and prevent.”
“Consequently, this Court cannot accept the suggestion that Congress, with a ‘clear voice,’ adopted an ambiguous or evolving definition of ‘sex’ when it acted to promote educational opportunities for women in 1972,” Judge Guirola said. “Title IX and its regulations not only permit, but at times require, consideration of sex as well as separation on the basis of sex… For all of the reasons noted above, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have demonstrated that there is a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their claims and that they will suffer irreparable harm in the form of either compliance costs or lost federal funding.”
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Mississippi against the Title IX updated rule was brought by the states of Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia.
The group of states claimed the new Title IX rule would require them to “use taxpayer funds to pay for unproven and costly gender-transition interventions through Medicaid and state health plans — even for children who may suffer irreversible harms.” They further contend that the rule “unlawfully coerces [their] compliance by threatening to strip billions of dollars in federal funding that assists their most vulnerable populations.”
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch was glad to see the multistate effort halt what she called a “reckless rule.”
“Injecting gender identity into our state’s medical system is a dangerous pursuit of a political agenda from the Biden Administration. Medical professionals should not be forced to provide gender transition surgeries or drugs against their judgment and hospitals should not be prohibited from providing women-only spaces for patients,” Fitch told Magnolia Tribune on Wednesday. “I am proud to lead the multistate effort with Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to stop the Biden Administration and push back on this reckless rule.”
The Biden Administration has faced three other defeats related to its rewrite of Title IX in recent weeks. The first came by way of Louisiana-based U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in mid-June. He called the rule an “abuse of power” when issuing a preliminary injunction against the Administration’s expanded rule in four states, including Mississippi, saying it “would subvert the original purpose of Title IX: protecting biological females from discrimination.”
READ MORE: Biden’s Title IX expansion blocked by federal judge
Judge Danny Reeves followed Doughty a week later, where the Kentucky-based court blocked in rule in six other states. Reeves said at the time, “There are two sexes: male and female,” criticizing pronoun rules as a threat to free speech.
Then earlier this week, a third federal judge granted an injunction against the rule in four more states. Judge John Broomes of the U.S. District Court of Kansas wrote, “The legislative history supports a finding that the term ‘sex’ referred to biological sex… As discussed, one of the principal purposes of the statute was to root out discrimination against women in education.”
You can read the full ruling from Judge Guirola below.
Frank Corder
