Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman announced on Tuesday that they are leading six states in suing the Department of Education (ED) due to the overhaul of Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act.
Court documents show that the lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
The Biden administration has unveiled new rules aimed at safeguarding LGBTQ+ students and changing the ways in which sexual harassment and assault claims are adjudicated on campus.
Skrmetti and Coleman are targeting new provisions that are part of a revised Title IX regulation issued by the ED, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Biden to revamp those issued during the Trump administration.
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"The U.S. Department of Education has no authority to let boys into girls’ locker rooms," Tennessee Attorney General Skrmetti said in a statement.
"In the decades since its adoption, Title IX has been universally understood to protect the privacy and safety of women in private spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms," Attorney General Skrmetti said.
"The Biden Administration’s new rule would rip away 50 years of Title IX’s protections for women and put entire generations of young girls at risk. It’s wrong, and we are joining our colleagues in Tennessee to lead this fight for our daughters, granddaughters, nieces and all the women of our Commonwealth," said Attorney General Coleman.
Missing from the new rule, however, is a policy forbidding schools from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes competing against biological females.
Under the new rules, sex discrimination includes discrimination based on gender identity as well as sexual orientation. A school must not separate or treat people differently based on sex, except in limited circumstances, under the provisions and critics say that the change will allow locker rooms and bathrooms to be based on gender identity.
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LGBTQ+ students who face discrimination will be entitled to a response from their school under Title IX, and those failed by their schools can seek recourse from the federal government.
The Department of Education sent Fox News Digital a statement saying that "the Department does not comment on pending litigation."
"The Department crafted the final Title IX regulations following a rigorous process to give complete effect to the Title IX statutory guarantee that no person experiences sex discrimination in federally-funded education," the statement reads.
"As a condition of receiving federal funds, all federally-funded schools are obligated to comply with these final regulations, and we look forward to working with school communities all across the country to ensure the Title IX guarantee of nondiscrimination in school is every student’s experience."
