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A federal judge on Friday denied a request from Moms for Liberty, a far-right extremist group, to block federal protections for LGBTQ students in more than 800 counties across the country.
U.S. District Judge John Broomes, a Trump appointee in Kansas, issued a broad injunction earlier this month that blocks the enforcement of a new Title IX rule to protect LGBTQ students in Kansas and three other states. It also applies to schools attended by children of members of the groups that sued over the rule, Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United.
Finalized in April, the new rule expands protections under Title IX — a sex discrimination law aimed at protecting women’s rights in education — to include transgender students, whose rights have increasingly come under attack from Republican lawmakers. The rule, which is slated to go into effect on Aug. 1, set off a raft of lawsuits from GOP-led states. At least 15 states have temporarily blocked enforcement of the rule amid legal challenges.
Broomes asked the three plaintiff groups to submit a list of schools attended by their members’ children so those schools can be exempt from the rule. But Moms for Liberty said compiling such a list would be “impossible” and that it does not ask its members about their children’s schools. The group instead requested that Broomes block the Title IX rule in any county where its members live, rather than just in schools attended by their children.
In his ruling on Friday, Broomes said he did not have the jurisdiction to do so. Had he granted the request, the rule could have been blocked in hundreds of counties, including in those that contain Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco and most of New York City.
Broomes gave Moms for Liberty until July 26 to submit a list of schools attended by its members’ children.
However, the judge also ruled that the injunction applies to current and prospective members of the three plaintiff groups, “creating the possibility of a constantly expanding injunction,” as the legal blog Law Dork noted.