Arkansas, Iowa among six states suing Biden administration rule that expands protections for LGBTQ students

Arkansas and Iowa are among six states who sued the Biden administration over its recent changes to Title IX, which expands protections for LGBTQ+ students in the country, Axios reported on Wednesday.

All of the states, which also include Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, are led by Republicans. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders had already signed an executive order last week preventing the state from following the new guidelines.

At least 14 other states have also filed challenges of their own, Texas and Florida among them.

The decision by the DeSantis administration took place on April 30, when Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed the motion. Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas took similar actions on that same day.

And same as Huckabee Sanders, Texas Governor Greg Abbott had already directed the Texas Education Agency to disregard the rule bout sex-based discrimination in education programs, which is set to take effect Aug. 1.

The federal government's guidelines have introduced a series of amendments the landmark 1972 civil rights legislation that forbids sex-based discrimination in federally funded colleges and K-12 schools.

Concretely, it seeks to broaden the reach of the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which clarified that Title VII, a civil rights statute prohibiting employment discrimination based on sex, also extended protection to gay and transgender employees.

However, there are contradictory interpretations regarding the scope of this ruling on school sports. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the new rules under Biden's administration failed to specify whether transgender and nonbinary students could participate on a sports team aligned with their gender identity, leaving open the possibility for schools to apply exceptions.

Republican governors have blasted the Biden administration in different statements accompanying their decision to sue. "You (Biden) have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they were girls and to accept every student's self-declared gender identity. This ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX exceeds your authority as President," wrote Abbott in a public letter.

"Florida's response to Joe Biden trying to inject gender ideology into education, undermining opportunities for girls and women, violating parents' rights, and abusing his constitutional authority: We will not comply," said Ron DeSantis. According to a recent analysis by Axios, "rejecting the guidelines could threaten the millions of dollars Florida's schools receive annually."