(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — Together with his counterparts in five other states, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sued the U.S. Department of Education over the recent overhaul of Title IX, saying the profound changes trample all over the lawmaking power of Congress.
“This regulation turns the statute upside down,” Yost said. “Title IX was meant to protect equal opportunity for women. This new rule says there are no opportunities that are exclusively for women and men who identify as women can use the programs and facilities designed for women.”
For 50 years, Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act has helped to ensure that women have equal access to educational facilities and programs by prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded education. At the same time, the law has acknowledged the enduring physical differences between men and women, permitting the maintenance of sex-segregated spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and student housing – as commonplace nationwide.
Under the guise of addressing “gender identity discrimination,” the states’ lawsuit maintains, the Department of Education this month finalized new regulations that would essentially eliminate sex-based distinctions in educational activities and programs. The changes would compel Ohio and other states to adopt radical gender ideology in their schools, even though Congress – the lawmaking branch of our government – has repeatedly declined to extend Title IX beyond sex, the suit says.
If this unauthorized rewrite of Title IX by the executive branch is allowed to stand, the suit says, Ohio schools will have to allow males from preschool through college who self-identify as female to use girls’/women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and student housing, play on girls’/women’s sports teams, and access other female-only activities and spaces, or risk losing billions in federal funding.
The sweeping Title IX mandate would disrupt schools’ long-lasting practices of protecting student privacy and safety, unfairly undermine women’s academic and athletic accomplishments and their associated societal advancement, and punish states for following their own laws.
The attorneys general say the department lacks the authority to implement such changes, and federal bureaucrats’ have no jurisdiction to fundamentally redefine the concepts of male and female.
The lawsuit, led by Tennessee, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Joining Ohio and Tennessee in the suit are Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Other state and private party coalitions are filing similar challenges in the jurisdictions of other federal circuit courts of appeal.