The Biden administration’s appeal to overturn a ban on extending sex discrimination protections to transgender students in several Republican-led states was turned down by the US Supreme Court on Friday.
The administration of President Joe Biden took action in April to include gender identity in the list of prohibited categories for sex-based discrimination in schools.
The administration filed a petition with the Supreme Court to get involved after courts in ten states with Republican majorities temporarily stopped the regulations.
But in a 5-4 decision, the judges declined to take action while the legal process at the state level is still playing out.
Conservative justice Neil Gorsuch and the court’s three liberal justices issued a partial dissent.
The protections were part of a larger set of new rules on anti-discrimination, all of which will remain blocked in the Republican states while the legal challenges proceed.
The dissenting justices wanted the less controversial rules to take effect.
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor highlighted that the court’s decision “leaves in place preliminary injunctions that bar the Government from enforcing the entire rule — including provisions that bear no apparent relationship to respondents’ alleged injuries.”
“Those injunctions are overboard,” she added.
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