Trump-appointed judge upholds Biden’s Title IX LGBTQ+ amendments

A judge in Alabama has ruled in favour of amendments to Title IX – an anti-discrimination civil rights law – which protect LGBTQ+ students from discrimination.

Several states have petitioned federal courts to block the amendments. But, while the majority of federal judges have implemented temporary bans on the rules being implemented, US district judge Annemarie Axon took a different view.

The judge, who was nominated by then president Donald Trump in 2018, argued that while the Alabama legislature might not like the newly implemented rules, they failed to “show a substantial likelihood of success in proving the rule-making was unreasonable or not reasonably explained”.

Axon went on to say: “At their core, plaintiffs’ arguments are not that the department [of education] exceeded the zone of reasonableness, but rather that plaintiffs disagree as a policy matter. The evidentiary record is sparse, and the legal arguments are conclusory and underdeveloped.”

In her 122-page ruling, Axon drew on the 2020 US Supreme Court ruling in the case of Bostock vs Clayton County, which found sex-based discrimination in the workplace held true for LGBTQ+ people, and argued that because Title IX does not define sex as strictly biological, then it is reasonable to amend it to extend to queer pupils.

The Cotton State’s Republican attorney general, Steve Marshall, expressed surprise at the decision and said “Alabama’s young women deserve better”.

Twenty-six states, including Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Texas – most Republican-controlled – have sued the Department of Education over the amendments.

Axon’s ruling came in the same week that fellow federal judge, Jodi W Dishman, blocked the amendments in Oklahoma, after legislatures sued the Department of Education in May.

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