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Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Education Secretary Miguel Cordona and the Education Department unlawfully imposed a new Title IX rule that violates the U.S. Constitution and exceeded their authority, a federal judge ruled Thursday. The ruling is a "victory for the protection of girls' privacy in locker rooms and showers, and for the freedom to speak biologically accurate pronouns," Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said Thursday in a prepared statement.
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Skrmetti initiated the federal lawsuit, making Tennessee the lead plaintiff in the case.
"This is a colossal win for women and girls across the country," Alliance Defending Freedom President, Chief Executive Officer and general counsel Kristen Waggoner said in online announcement.
"The Biden administration's radical attempts to redefine sex not only tossed fairness, safety and privacy for female students out the window, it also threatened free speech and parental rights," Waggoner added.
Cordona and the Education Department's rule change said "adopting a policy or engaging in a practice that prevents a person from participating in an education program of activity consistent with the person's gender identity" violates Title IX, U.S. District of Eastern Kentucky Judge Danny Reeves said in his 15-page ruling.
The Education Department's rule change defined sex discrimination to include "discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation and gender identity," Reeves wrote.
The proposed rule change described "gender identity" as individuals' "sense of their gender, which may or may not be different from their sex assigned at birth," Reeves said.
The proposed Title IX rule change also defines "sexual harassment" as including conduct that is "subjectively and objectively offensive" and "limits or denies a person's ability to participate in or benefit from the recipients education program or activity," Reeves said.
The revised definition of harassment was not limited to speech that occurs on school campuses and might include content on social media or other platforms.
Attorneys general for Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky filed challenges to the Title IX rules changes and named Cardona and the Education Department as defendants.
The Christian Educators Association International intervened in the case as a plaintiff.
The plaintiffs argued the new Title IX rules exceeded the Education Department's lawful authority by implementing the changes, while Cordona and the Education Department argued they legally exercised their rule-making authority in making the changes.
The federal Administrative Procedures Act requires a court to declare unlawful an agency action that exceeds the agency's authority, which Reeves ruled Cordona and the Education Department did when changing Title IX.
"There is nothing in the text or statutory design of Title IX to suggest that discrimination 'on the basis of sex' means anything other than it has since Title IX's inception," Reeves said.
Title IX prohibits recipients of federal funding from treating a "person worse than another similarly situated individual on the basis of that person's sex, i.e., male or female," Reeves wrote.
He said Cordona and the Education Department erred when they relied on a 2020 Supreme Court ruling regarding Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in revising the Title IX rule.
In that employment discrimination case, the Supreme Court ruled an employer engaged in discrimination when it illegally fired a transgendered worker.
That case caused the Cordona and the Education Department to take its ruling "far too broadly" by applying it to Title IX and "bathrooms, locker rooms or anything else of the kind," which the Supreme Court ruling specifically excluded from the 2020 ruling, Reeves said.
Reeves concluded the Title IX rules change exceeds the Education Department's authority and granted the motions for summary judgment filed by the four states and two commonwealths and the Christian Educators.
"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 male or female" as determined by "'reproductive biology'" or "'biological distinctions between male and female,'" Reeves said.
"Expanding the meaning of 'on the basis of sex' to include 'gender identity' turns Title IX on its head," Reeves said.
"While Title IX sought to level the playing field between men and women, it is rife with exceptions that allow males and females to be separated based on the enduring physical differences between the sexes," he added.
Reeves cited the lawful separation of the sexes in living facilities, boys and girls conferences, and social sororities and fraternities as examples of lawful ways in which institutions that receive federal funding lawfully separate men and women based on sex.
"The entire point of Title IX is to prevent discrimination based on sex," Reeves said. "Throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless."
The Biden administration in April announced its intent to redefine "sex" to include gender identity in Title IX rules, which threatened federal funding for any non-conforming schools, colleges or universities that accept federal funds.
The Biden administration has not said whether or not it intends to appeal the ruling.
