Attorney General Miyares Joins Fight to Preserve Title IX, Student Privacy, and Fairness for Women in Education

RICHMOND, Va. - On Tuesday, Attorney General Jason Miyares joined a six-state coalition in suing the federal Department of Education (DOE) to challenge its dangerous overhaul of Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act, which would harm Virginia students, families, and schools. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

“The Biden Administration's unlawful rule would jeopardize half a century of landmark protections for women, forcing the Administration’s social agenda onto the states by holding federal funding hostage. They are avoiding Congress and the constitutional process because they know it will not pass,” said Attorney General Jason Miyares. “We cannot roll back Title IX in the name of false equity.”

For fifty years, Title IX has helped equalize women’s access to educational facilities and programs by barring discrimination based on sex by federally funded schools. At the same time, because of the enduring physical differences between men and women, Title IX has always allowed the sex-segregated spaces—like bathrooms and locker rooms—that are ubiquitous across the nation.

Now, in the guise of confronting “gender identity discrimination,” DOE has finalized a rule essentially abolishing sex-based distinctions in educational activities and programs and forcing Virginia to accept radical gender ideology in its schools. And DOE has done so in blatant defiance of Congress’s repeated refusal to extend Title IX’s protections to anything other than sex.

If DOE’s unauthorized rewrite of Title IX is allowed to stand, Virginia schools will have to allow males self-identifying as female—in every grade from preschool through college—to use girls’ and women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, play on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and access other female-only activities and spaces or risk losing billions in federal funding.

The sweeping Title IX mandate would upend schools’ long-lawful practices protecting student privacy, unfairly undermine women’s academic and athletic achievements and related advancement in society, and punish States for following their laws. DOE lacks the authority to implement such changes.

The following states joined Virginia in this Tennessee-led lawsuit: Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. Other state coalitions are filing similar challenges in the jurisdictions of other federal circuit courts of appeal.

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