Government cites Gorsuch in appeal of sex discrimination rule

The Biden administration filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, asking the justices to temporarily block two lower court injunctions that bar the federal government from enforcing its new rule against sex discrimination. In its petition, the administration relied heavily on Justice Neil Gorsuch’s writings in two recent cases — one that upheld a reading of sex discrimination to encompass transgender status and the other that rejected the idea of ​​nationwide injunctions altogether.

In its petition, the government urged the justices to uphold at least parts of the law, such as those intended to protect pregnant and lactating students, while challenges to the parts related to gender identity continue.

The underlying cases were filed in Louisiana, where that state was joined by Mississippi, Montana and Idaho as plaintiffs, and Kentucky, where that state is joined by Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia as plaintiffs. The lawsuits challenged a 2024 rule implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 after the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, a landmark 6-3 ruling in which Gorsuch said civil rights protections for “gender” extend to sexual orientation and transgender status.

In Bostock, Gorsuch wrote that it is “clear” that “an employer who discharges an individual because he or she is homosexual or transgender discharges that individual for traits or actions that he or she would not have questioned in members of another sex,” which is “precisely what Title VII prohibits.”