(The Center Square) — Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced Monday she is leading a lawsuit with Mississippi, Montana and Idaho to fight the Biden Administration's new Title IX rules.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Western Louisiana, seeks the overturn of the rules on constitutional grounds, an injunction preventing the administration from enforcing Title IX “in accordance with erroneous interpretation” in the rule and attorney fees and court costs. 

The lawsuit says the rule is a “a naked attempt to strong-arm our schools into molding our children in the current federal government's preferred image of how a child should think, act and speak. The Final Rule is an affront to the dignity of families and school administrators everywhere and is nowhere close to legal.”

The lawsuit also says the new rule will “gut the very essence of Title IX and destroy decades of advances in equal educational opportunities, especially for women and girls.”

“With the stroke of a pen and 400 pages of rules written by would-be lawmakers in Washington, D.C. conference rooms, the DOE published Title IX regulations intended to remake American societal norms through classrooms, lunchrooms, bathrooms and locker rooms of American schools,” Murrill said at a Monday news conference with Gov. Jeff Landry. “Make no mistake: These rules eviscerate Title IX. They are entirely contrary to what Title IX was intended to achieve and what we have implemented and intended Title IX to mean and protect for 50 years.

“Title IX was intended to prevent pervasive discrimination against biological women.”

She also said the federal government's overreach was like a degree and dimension “like no other.” 

“Whatever lever, whatever power the governor's office has or the statutes vest in me, we will 100% be standing behind this Legislature, this attorney general and behind the BESE board because we do not intend to comply,” Landry said. “We are not going to pretend there is some kind of sexual category other than the ones the Almighty has set forth. There's only two of them. We look forward to this fight because this fight is right.”

Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley, who was flanked by some members of the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, said that this was a “line in the sand issue and a bridge too far for the state of Louisiana” and voiced his support for the lawsuit. 

Title IX prohibits educational institutions that receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex in both educational programs and activities.

The new rules finalized by the Department of Education and which are supposed to go into effect Aug. 1. expand the definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity and pregnancy, but the agency didn't issue any rules relating to transgender athletes. Among the changes include a prohibition on single-sex bathroom and locker rooms and requirements that a school use pronouns based on a student's preferred gender identity. 

(The Center Square) – Several Republican attorneys general have sued over the Biden administration's Title IX rule change, arguing it is illegal. More states are expected to follow.

The lawsuits come after the Biden administration's Department of Education rewrote the Title IX statute to expand the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity.”

Title IX, which is part of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Title IX was created to prohibit discrimination against women in all educational programs that receive federal money, including K-12 schools, colleges and universities. The new rule redefines biological sex and requires schools to allow men and boys, claiming to be women and girls, respectively, to use female-only facilities and join female-only sports or lose federal funding.

The lawsuits were filed after Republican governors and state education commissioners last week said their states would not comply.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was among the first to speak out, saying, “Florida rejects [president] Joe Biden's attempt to rewrite Title IX. We will not comply and we will fight back. We are not going to let Joe Biden try to inject men into women's activities … undermine the rights of parents and … abuse his constitutional authority to try to impose these policies on us here in Florida.”

On April 25, Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, Jr., sent a letter to all superintendents and charter school leaders stating, “at Governor Ron DeSantis' direction no educational institution should begin implementing any changes. Instead of implementing Congress's clear directive to prevent discrimination based on biological sex, the Biden administration maims the statute beyond recognition in an attempt to gaslight the country into believing that biological sex no longer has any meaning.”

The same day, Oklahoma's State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters also instructed Oklahoma schools not to comply, saying, “Biden's re-write of Title IX is one of the most illegal and radical moves we have ever seen from the Federal Government. Oklahoma will not sit idly by while radicals trample on the Constitution and take away women's rights. We are taking swift and aggressive action against Biden in his war on women.”

On Monday, Texas sued, arguing the rule is illegal. “Title IX does not apply to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. But even if those concepts were protected against discrimination by Title IX, the Final Rule's provisions do not faithfully implement such protections because they mark as unlawful school policies that do not discriminate based on those concepts –  instead, the Final Rule requires schools to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity by allowing single-sex programs and facilities but requiring opposite-sex access to them for only those individuals with a transgender gender identity,” Texas' 30-page brief states.

The lawsuit asks a district court in north Texas to postpone the effective date of the rule, Aug. 1, declare the rule unlawful and permanently enjoin the Department of Education from implementing it.

Gov. Greg Abbott instructed the Texas Education Agency to ignore Biden's “illegal dictate.” He also wrote a letter to President Joe Biden, saying, “Title IX was written by Congress to support the advancement of women academically and athletically. The law was based on the fundamental premise that there are only two sexes – male and female. You have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they are girls and to accept every student's self-declared gender identity. This ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX exceeds your authority as President.”

Abbott said rewriting Title IX “tramples laws” that he signed to protect women's sports in Texas. Last year, Abbott and multiple Republican governors signed bills into law to protect women's and girls' sports.

A coalition of four Republican attorneys general, led by Louisiana, also sued on Monday. Mississippi, Montana and Idaho joined Louisiana, arguing in their 43-page brief that the rule “is an affront to the dignity of families and school administrators everywhere, and is nowhere close to legal.”

The lawsuit makes similar arguments as Texas' and asks a U.S. district court in Louisiana to declare the rule is contrary to law, violates Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, is an unlawful exercise of legislative power under Article 1 of the Constitution, is arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and violates the Administrative Procedures Act.

The lawsuits were filed after a coalition of 15 attorneys general led by Montana AG Austin Knudsen, called on the DOE in 2022 to cancel its plans to rewrite Title IX, The Center Square reported.

Knudsen argues the rule “could cost Montana taxpayers money in civil lawsuits and the possible loss of federal funding in states that seek to protect equal opportunities for women and girls. It would also harm victims of sex discrimination and violence, as Title IX is used in grievance procedures to produce a fair outcome.”

(The Center Square) – The unemployment rate in Mississippi in March dropped slightly to 3%, but the state's labor force participation rate continues to be one of the nation's worst.

That's down from February's 3.1%.

The Mississippi Department of Employment Security's monthly workforce report shows a gain of 10,000 non-farm jobs for the year to date compared to the same time period last year. Compared to March 2023, the state's workforce expanded by 6,300 jobs, going from 1.17 million employed to 1.18 million.

Neighboring states Arkansas (3.5%), Tennessee (3.2%) and Louisiana (4.4%) were not much different. North Dakota had the nation's lowest unemployment rate at 2%.

Workforce participation rate for March was 53.7%, holding steady from February. The national rate is 62.7%.

Biggest gaining job sectors in March included construction (up 2.2% from last March) and leisure and hospitality (up 2%). 

Among the state's metropolitan areas, the Gulf Coast had a job gain of 1.4% or 2,300 newly employed in March compared to the same time last year. The Hattiesburg area had no job gains in March thanks to a loss of 100 manufacturing jobs, while the Jackson metro area's job gain was a negligible 0.3% while adding 900 positions.  

Initial unemployment claims were 4,242 in March, down from 5,004 in March 2023. Continuing gains increased to 27,128 in March to 23,644 in March 2023.

The state's leading employers include trade, transportation and utilities (244,900 workers or 20.6% of the state's workforce), government (241,000 or 20.3%), education and health services (155,900 or 13.1%), manufacturing (144,600 or 12.2%) and leisure and hospitality (135,500 or 11.4%).