Department of Education v. Louisiana
The Court refused to lift broad lower-court orders that had frozen a new federal Title IX rule in its entirety, meaning the whole rule — including provisions on pregnancy accommodations, anti-retaliation, and harassment procedures that had nothing to do with gender identity — stays on hold in the affected states while appeals continue.
All nine justices agreed the rule's gender-identity and harassment-definition provisions should remain blocked, but four justices argued the Court went too far by leaving the entire rule frozen and depriving people in those states of unrelated protections.
“all Members of the Court today accept that the plaintiffs were entitled to preliminary injunctive relief as to three provisions of the rule, including the central provision that newly defines sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
The Court noted that all nine justices agreed the rule's gender-identity and harassment provisions should remain blocked.
How it got here: Federal district courts in Louisiana and Kentucky blocked the entire new Title IX rule; the Fifth and Sixth Circuits declined to pause those blocks; the Education Department applied to the Supreme Court for emergency partial stays.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Department of Education issued a major update to Title IX regulations, expanding the definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity and sexual orientation, adding new protections for pregnant students, and overhauling schools' procedures for handling harassment complaints. Multiple groups of states sued, arguing the gender-identity provisions went beyond what Congress authorized. Federal district courts agreed and blocked the entire rule from taking effect in those states.
The question before the Court
Should the Supreme Court let most of a sweeping new Education Department rule — which redefined sex discrimination to include gender identity — take effect in the plaintiff states while federal appeals over its most controversial provisions continue?
The Court's answer
No — the Court refused to temporarily unblock most of the new Title IX rule while federal appeals continue. The government conceded the rule's three most controversial provisions — redefining sex discrimination to include gender identity, addressing transgender students' access to sex-separated spaces, and revising the definition of hostile-environment harassment — should stay blocked. It asked the Court to let the rest of the rule take effect in the meantime.
The Court found the government had not provided enough detail to overcome the lower courts' conclusion that the blocked provisions are so intertwined with the rest of the rule that they cannot be cleanly separated for temporary enforcement. The government also failed to identify specifically which other provisions could stand independently. With the Sixth Circuit having already scheduled oral argument for October, the Court concluded the appeals courts were moving quickly enough that emergency intervention was unwarranted.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Students and employees in the plaintiff states cannot benefit from new Title IX protections — including updated rules on pregnancy accommodations, anti-retaliation procedures, and harassment complaint processes — because the entire rule is frozen, not just its gender-identity provisions. The broader fight over whether the Education Department can redefine sex discrimination to cover gender identity continues in the appeals courts.
What changes now
The entire Title IX rule remains blocked in the plaintiff states while the Fifth and Sixth Circuit appeals proceed. The Sixth Circuit has expedited its docket and scheduled oral argument for October 2024. The Supreme Court expects the appeals courts to rule promptly. This order does not decide whether the rule is valid; the merits will be fully litigated in those appeals, with the possibility of a future return to the Supreme Court.
What this does not decide
This order does not decide whether the Title IX rule — or any of its provisions — is lawful. It only addresses whether to temporarily unblock parts of the rule during an appeal. The question of whether federal law allows the Education Department to extend sex-discrimination protections to cover gender identity remains entirely open.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent in part — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson, agreed the three challenged provisions should remain blocked but argued the majority went too far by leaving the entire rule frozen. She contended the broad injunctions violated the traditional principle that equitable relief must be tailored to redress the actual injuries claimed, and that blocking dozens of unchallenged provisions — covering things like pregnancy accommodations and anti-retaliation rules — needlessly harms both the government and the public. She would have stayed the injunctions except as to the three disputed provisions.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- To obtain an emergency stay — a temporary pause on a lower court's order while an appeal plays out — the party asking for relief (here, the government) must show it is likely to win the appeal, that it will suffer irreparable harm without the pause, that the other side won't be equally harmed, and that the public interest supports the pause.
- The government sought only a partial stay: it accepted that the rule's three most disputed provisions (the gender-identity definition of sex discrimination, the provision on access to sex-separated spaces consistent with gender identity, and the revised definition of hostile-environment harassment) should remain frozen, and asked only to revive the remaining, unchallenged parts of the rule during the appeal.
- The key legal question was 'severability' — whether the frozen provisions are so intertwined with the rest of the rule that the whole rule must stay blocked, or whether the unchallenged parts are independent enough to take effect on their own. The lower courts found the former, reasoning that the new definition of sex discrimination runs throughout and affects many other provisions, and that schools would face confusion trying to apply some parts of the rule but not others simultaneously.
- The Court found the government had not met its burden to overcome those conclusions. Crucially, the government never specifically identified which provisions it claimed were sufficiently independent of the enjoined gender-identity definitions — a gap that left the Court unable to make a principled partial-stay order.
- Because the Sixth Circuit had already expedited its case and scheduled oral argument for October, the Court concluded the circumstances did not justify emergency intervention, and expected the appeals courts to act with appropriate speed.