Louisiana has told the state’s public schools to ignore President Joe Biden’s newly released Title IX rules prohibiting anti-transgender discrimination that are set to go into effect nationwide on August 1. The state’s head of education has hinted at a coming lawsuit against the new rules, and the anti-LGBTQ+ legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has already agreed to sue.
In a Monday letter, Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley said the new rules “likely conflict” with state laws banning trans athletes from playing on sports teams matching their gender identity, even though Biden’s new rules don’t mention trans athletes. The Biden administration has said that schools receiving federal funding will be expected to follow the rules or risk federal lawsuits, Department of Education investigations, and possible loss of funding.
Brumley also said the new rules “likely conflict” with two bills in the legislature: one allowing teachers to misgender and deadname trans students, and a second forbidding discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in all grade levels, WVUE-DT reported.
“The Title IX rule changes recklessly endanger students and seek to dismantle equal opportunities for females,” Brumley wrote to the schools. He said his department is looking at “1,500 pages of new rules” and called a legal challenge against them “inevitable.”
“Brumley has made it very clear through his actions and through his letters that his concern for LGBTQ students is nil,” SarahJane Guidry, executive director of the state LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, the Forum for Equality, told the aforementioned news station. “With such a small population of youth being impacted by this, but so harshly and so harmfully, it really goes to question what the motives of these legislators and this administration really is.”
ADF, an anti-LGBTQ+ legal group, has pledged to take legal action against the new rules, saying that they “ignore biological reality” and will harm women’s sports. Numerous animals in biology can change genders, and many scientists believe that a variety of genetic, hereditary, and hormonal factors may cause trans identities in humans.
Brumley spoke at a July 2023 meeting of the East Baton Rouge chapter of Moms for Liberty, an anti-LGBTQ+ “parents’ rights” group. The national organization has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a hate group watchdog organization.
