by Kara Dansky
(crossposted from here)
Throughout his administration, President Biden has issued a series of orders, memos, fact sheets, and interpretations (missives, for short) that have redefined the word sex to include “gender identity” throughout federal administrative law. The first of these, signed on day 1 of the administration, was Executive Order 13988: Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation. It ordered federal agencies to come up with ways to redefine sex, based on a complete misconstruing of the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Various agencies did as they were told. I wrote about much of this in May of 2021, here.
In August of 2021, twenty states sued the administration, arguing, among other things, that several of these missives were promulgated in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.
In October of that year, the U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA) filed a motion for leave to file an amicus (friend of the court) brief in that lawsuit, along with the brief itself. We argued, essentially, that redefining sex to include “gender identity” constitutes unlawful sex discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The court ultimately denied our motion for leave to file, but it did so in a decision that made it very clear that the judge read the brief and considered it carefully.
On Friday, the court issued a ruling granting the states’ motion for a preliminary injunction in the 20 plaintiff states (but not nationally), and denying the administration’s motion to dismiss the case, with respect to the administration’s missives that redefine sex to include “gender identity” for purposes of Title VII and Title IX enforcement. I don’t have a URL of the decision that I can post, but I was able to download it from the federal judiciary’s database.
This is extremely good news and worthy of celebration. For now, the Biden administration’s 2021 missives that redefined sex to include “gender identity” for Title VII and Title IX enforcement purposes are not in effect in the 20 plaintiff states. The federal defendants will most likely appeal the decision and from there, it’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen.
You won’t see any honest or fair reporting on this development in the mainstream media, so for additional details, please see this video, where WDI USA vice president Lauren Levey and I discuss the decision.
