Red States Sue To Protect God-Given Right To Harass, Discriminate Against Trans Kids
Also mad Biden admin rolled back rapist-friendly Trump regulations.
Texas is just the latest of several Republican-governed states to instruct state schools to ignore new Education Department rules that prohibit discrimination and harassment based on gender identity. On April 19, the department released new final regulations under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, updating Title IX to protect students and employees in schools receiving federal funding from “discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton complained in a statement that by prohibiting discrimination against transgender students, the rules force “compliance with radical gender ideology,” because Texas Republicans are quite sure trans people simply do not exist.
Paxton sued the Department of Education Monday to prevent the rules from taking effect. Among other threats to civilization, the rules prohibit states from keeping trans students and employees from using facilities that align with their gender identity and forbid bans on trans folks having their names and pronouns acknowledged. The rules also prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy, broaden the scope of what behaviors can be considered harassment, and roll back a Trump administration rule that required college students accused of sexual assault be allowed to publicly question their accusers in a trial-like setting as part of any disciplinary proceedings. As NPR explains, victims’ advocates argued that requirement retraumatized assault victims and had a chilling effect on reporting crimes, so schools will now be allowed
to question witnesses in live hearings or in separate meetings. If a school chooses to hold a live hearing, alleged victims have the right to attend remotely.
Paxton complained that this would somehow damage the right of accused rapists or harassers to “have access to a fair hearing,” because he is a sociopath.
Texas will pursue the lawsuit with the help of Stephen Miller’s far-right legal outfit America First Legal, and Paxton’s statement generously allowed Miller to provide the most rabidly hateful transphobic rhetoric, which started by calling the regulation a “vile obscenity” and then went on to misgender all trans people, because of course it did. We won’t repeat it, but trust Stephen Miller to know a vile obscenity when he sees one in the mirror each morning.
In addition to Texas, Republican attorneys general in four other states, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Montana, filed a separate lawsuit against the new rules, insisting the Education Department lacks the authority to interpret Title IX to include gender identity.
In writing the new rules, the Education Department cited the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. However, that decision from so very long ago that no one even remembers 2020 was made while Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still alive, and it doesn’t count anymore. Hence, the lawsuits: The Education Department can’t rely on Bostock any more because there’s a new regime on the Court now, with Amy Coney Barrett there to ensure that Neil Gorsuch can’t ruin things for Christian Nationalists anymore.
However, as Erin Reed points out, “several courts have ruled that trans and queer students are protected by Title IX, including the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in a recent case in West Virginia.” (Hey, we covered that when the Biden Administration brought the suit!) So it’s not inconceivable that federal courts may continue to act as if the Supreme Court really meant Bostock was the law.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona controversially said, when announcing the revised rules, that not allowing anyone to be bullied or discriminated against might be a good thing:
"Our nation's educational institutions should be places where we not only accept differences, but celebrate them. Places that root out hate and promote inclusion, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because our systems and institutions are richer for it."
Then Tucker Carlson fell over in a dead faint, because inclusion is not the American Way.
Rightwing culture warriors who think ramping up hatred will get their voters to the polls were quick to condemn the rule. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) declared that it “dumps kerosene on the already raging fire that is Democrats' contemptuous culture war that aims to racially redefine sex and gender." Then she looked around to make sure everyone had a torch and a pitchfork.
The new rules do not address the other big rightwing freakout against trans kids in education, the matter of banning transgender students from being on sports teams that match their gender identity. A rule on that is still being worked out, but no release date has yet been announced.
The new Title IX revisions will go into effect in August if they’re not blocked by courts, so there’s one more reason, on top of all the other ones, to keep Donald Trump from ever appointing even one more federal judge, ever.
[NPR / NBC News / Texas Tribune / Erin in the Morning]
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This isn't an attack on trans people only - it is an attack on the entire LGBTQ community. The screeching from the right about trans people is predicated on the notion that their audience doesn't know any trans people so they can attribute any sort of extreme behavior to them without anyone wondering what the hell they are talking about.
These kinds of attacks were part and parcel of demonizing the L and G parts of the queer community until people came out and then everyone knew someone who was gay and realized that they were just people and not some kind of satanic spawn that they had been led to believe by these twisted liars.
These peopol are evil.