Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr filed a lawsuit this week to safeguard women athletes from competing against biological males and to protect freedom of speech in schools against the Biden administration’s changes to the Title IX rule.
“Today we have taken action to defend women’s rights to fair competition,” Carr said in a press release, “and we will keep fighting until we end this absurdity once and for all.”
The role of Title IX is to prevent sex discrimination in school programs that receive federal funds. The new rule uses an altered definition of “sex” to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.”
“The Biden administration is destroying women’s sports by gutting commonsense provisions that protect female athletes and demanding that biological males be allowed to compete against females,” said Carr.
Specifically, the final regulation “[defines] ‘sex-based harassment’ as a form of sex discrimination that includes sexual harassment and harassment based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, or gender identity….”
Seen as an attack on the First Amendment’s freedom of speech, the statement from the Georgia Attorney General’s Office said that “the new rule effectively requires schools to ensure that students use a classmate’s ‘preferred pronouns’ or risk losing federal funding.”
Parental rights organization Parents Defending Education has also joined the lawsuit.
In a statement to The Georgia Star News from Parents Defending Education, President and founder Nicole Neily said, “The Biden Administration made a conscious decision to capitulate to the demands of a vocal group of activists over the strident objections of hundreds of thousands of American citizens. The Education Department overstepped its authority by redefining the word ‘sex,’ erasing the sanctity of female-only spaces, and stomping on the free speech of students and teachers alike. We are proud to stand alongside the Attorneys General from Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina to defend our country’s women and girls and look forward to our day in court.”
Additional plaintiffs include attorneys general from Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina, the Independent Women’s Law Center, the Independent Women’s Network, and Speech First, Inc.
The lawsuit comes as the final changes to Title IX will take effect on August 1.
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson praised the regulation as “life-changing for so many LGBTQ[plus] youth,” and that “administrators should take note and immediately act to implement anti-bias and anti-bullying and harassment programs that ensure misgendering stops,” and “that cruelty against LGBTQ+ students ends.”
However, in a similar action on Monday, America First Legal joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in filing another lawsuit against the federal government to prohibit changes to the Title IX regulation.
Stephen Miller, president of America First Legal, called the rule “an abomination” and said that “as outside counsel for Texas we will battle this regulation in court with all the legal fight we can bring. It must be defeated for the sake of American women and for the sake of our daughters.”
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Debra McClure is a reporter at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network. Follow Debra on X / Twitter
