SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Attorney General's Office has signed on to a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration's new rules designed to protect transgender youth in schools.
Utah joined Kansas, Alaska and Wyoming alongside the groups Moms for Liberty, Young America's Foundation and Female Athletes United in filing the lawsuit in federal court in Kansas.
"Instead of focusing on the true mission of Title IX, which is to protect women and girls from discrimination in education and to protect and promote women’s and girls' sports, the Defendants attempt to rewrite it entirely to (1) institutionalize the left-wing fad of transgender ideology in our K-12 system and tie school funding to it, (2) mandate that colleges and universities punish students who refuse to comply with these views through a campus grievance process that is akin to 'kangaroo courts,' and (3) require schools to provide benefits to students and employees seeking voluntary abortions (even in states where it is outlawed) in direct conflict with Title IX’s abortion neutrality provision," Kansas' lawsuit alleges. "None of this has anything to do with Title IX."
Title IX bans sex-based discrimination in federally-funded education. The Biden administration has put forward a rule that includes LGBTQ+ students under Title IX's protections, including bathroom and pronoun use in public school settings. The U.S. Department of Education has said the new rule is designed to protect children from harassment and a hostile environment.
Republican attorneys general from all over the nation have filed lawsuits challenging the Title IX expansion.
"This is the very definition of improper and illegal federal coercion. Holding a sword over school districts, without Supreme Court or other legal precedent and in the absence of Congressional authority, the current administration once again bypasses America’s democratic process and threatens to defund schools that do not bend to its dictates," Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said in a statement to FOX 13 News.
"The policy is so extreme, both progressives and conservatives seem largely united in opposition to the rule as it attempts to force a redefinition of gender on schools in America. In doing so, the Biden Department of Education vastly overreaches and defies common sense, rendering Title IX much less protective of women and girls in athletics and unraveling decades of gains in women’s sports."
Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, expressed support for such a lawsuit.
