TN Attorney General’s Office Responds to Federal Government Appeal of Preliminary Injunction of Title IX Overreach
Nashville- The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office recently filed a response brief in Tennessee v. Department of Education at the Sixth Circuit. This brief defends the preliminary injunction issued by the Eastern District of Tennessee in July 2022 to protect Tennessee and 19 other states from U.S. Department of Education and EEOC guidance documents that purported to redefine sex discrimination under Title VII and Title IX. The now-enjoined guidance attempted to force schools to allow biological males to compete on girls’ sports teams, to prohibit sex-separated showers and locker rooms, and to compel individuals to use biologically inaccurate preferred pronouns.
Following President Biden’s instruction to rewrite Title IX, the U.S. Department of Education declared that “it will fully enforce Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” and that the interpretation will “guide the Department in processing complaints and conducting investigations.” The Department of Education has already initiated an investigation based on its guidance documents in Texas, a state not protected by the preliminary injunction. And the EEOC guidance has now been vacated. The multistate coalition states in the brief, “the interlocutory appeal presents important issues of constitutional law and statutory interpretation and implicates billions of dollars of federal funding for Plaintiff States.”
Tennessee is leading this coalition and joined by Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia in filing the brief.
To read the brief in its entirety, click here.
To read the District Court’s ruling, click here.
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