CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who co-led a six-state coalition has claimed victory in its challenge to the federal Department of Education’s overhaul of Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act.
Morrisey says the potential changes would have harmed West Virginia students, families and schools.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky granted summary judgement January 9 in State of Tennessee v. Cardona in favor of the coalition by denying the DOE’s cross-motion for summary judgement. The ruling blocks the Biden administration’s attempt to change the meaning of “sex” in Title IX — a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics — to include “gender identity.”
Morrisey
| File photo
“This is a victory not only for the rule of law, but also for common sense and the safety of every student,” Morrisey said. “The Biden administration’s Title IX revisions would have ended sex-based protections for biological women in all aspects of education, and this would have marked a retreat from the progress women have made.”
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys represent a West Virginia high school female athlete and Christian Educators Association International in the lawsuit alongside the State of Tennessee.
The district court ruling applies nationwide and to every part of the Biden Title IX rule, meaning the rule is completely invalidated, and the U.S. Department of Education is unable to enforce it anywhere.
“This is a colossal win for women and girls across the country,” said Kristen Waggoner, ADF CEO, president and general counsel. “The Biden administration’s radical attempt to redefine sex not only tossed fairness, safety, and privacy for female students out the window, it also threatened free speech and parental rights.
“With this ruling, the federal court in Kentucky rejected the entire Biden rule and the administration’s illegal actions. We are thankful for the leadership of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and other state attorneys general who challenged this blatant overreach alongside our courageous clients. This ruling provides enormous relief for students across the country, including our client who has already suffered harassment by a transgender student in the locker room and on her sports team.
“The U.S. Supreme Court can further protect girls like our client by granting cases brought by the ACLU against West Virginia and Idaho laws that protect women’s sports.”
Indiana, Ohio and Virginia joined the West Virginia-, Kentucky- and Tennessee-led coalition in the lawsuit, which was filed in April 2024.
“This is a huge win for Tennessee, for common sense, and for women and girls across America,” Skrmetti said. “The court’s ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and illegal rulemaking.
"Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office next week.”
If the DOE rewrite of Title IX would have been allowed to stand, Morrisey says West Virginia schools could have been compelled to allow males self-identifying as female — in every grade from preschool through college — to use girls’ and women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, play on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and access other female-only activities and spaces or risk losing billions in federal funding.
On April 29, the Biden administration announced it would redefine “sex” in Title IX rules to include “gender identity,” requiring schools to disregard longstanding sex-based protections that respect the biological differences between men and women. ADF attorneys joined several states, women’s groups, athletic associations and school boards in achieving five injunctions that halted enforcement of the rule change in some jurisdictions as the lawsuits proceed.
The district court ruled the Biden administration rule change exceeded authority and was “arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
“When Title IX is viewed in its entirety, it is abundantly clear that discrimination on the basis of sex means discrimination on the basis of being a male or female,” the court wrote in its opinion. “As this court and others have explained, expanding the meaning of ‘on the basis of sex’ to include ‘gender identity’ turns Title IX on its head.
“Title IX (allows) males and females to be separated based on the enduring physical differences between the sexes.”
The athlete ADF represents is a 15-year-old girl in West Virginia who was forced to compete against a transgender athlete on her middle school track-and-field team. The transgender athlete displaced her several times, even taking away her spot to compete in a conference championship. The transgender athlete was also given access to the girls’ locker room, and the ADF client had to endure vulgar, sexual comments that the transgender athlete directed at her.
ADF says the transgender athlete finished ahead of nearly 300 female competitors in three years of competition on the girls’ team. That same transgender athlete is the plaintiff in the West Virginia case, now pending at the Supreme Court, that resulted in a ruling undermining West Virginia’s law protecting women’s sports.
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Kentucky case number 2:24-cv-00072