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Supreme Court, for Now, Blocks Expanded Protections for Transgender Students in Some States

The order maintained halts by lower courts on federal rules prohibiting discrimination against transgender people in schools.

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The Supreme Court framed by trees.
The decision provided a glimpse into how the current Supreme Court might address transgender rights. Credit…Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times

Abbie VanSickle and

Reporting from Washington

The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily continued to block Education Department rules intended to protect transgender students from discrimination based on their gender identity in several Republican states that had mounted challenges.

The emergency order allowed rulings by lower courts in Louisiana and Kentucky to remain in effect in about 10 states as litigation moves forward, maintaining a pause on new federal guidelines expanding protections for transgender students that had been enacted in nearly half the country on Aug. 1.

The order came in response to a challenge by the Biden administration, which asked the Supreme Court to intervene after a number of Republican-led states sought to overturn the new rules.

The decision was unsigned, as is typical in such emergency petitions. But all nine members of the court said that parts of the new rules — including the protections for transgender students — should not go into effect until the legal challenges are resolved.

“Importantly,” the unsigned order said, “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 decision handed a victory to the Republican-led states that had challenged the rules. A patchwork of lower court decisions means that the rules are temporarily paused in about 26 states.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the liberal wing and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, issued a partial dissent arguing that the court should have allowed other, undisputed parts of the new regulation to go into effect immediately.

“A majority of this court 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,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “Those injunctions are overbroad.”

The attorney general of Tennessee, one of the states challenging the regulation, welcomed the outcome. “This is a win for student privacy, free speech and the rule of law,” the attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, said in a statement.

Critics said the order erased crucial safeguards for young people.

“It is disappointing that the Supreme Court has allowed far-right forces to stop the implementation of critical civil rights protections for youth,” said Cathryn Oakley, the senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign.

The issue of transgender rights has become hotly debated as conservative state legislatures have passed a record number of stringent laws, including denying certain medical care and regulating bathroom use and pronouns.

The court is expected to directly confront the issue in its next term, which begins in October, in a case involving the constitutionality of a Tennessee law that bans certain medical treatments for transgender minors. Any outcome could have broad ramifications for about 25 states that have enacted similar measures.

The sex discrimination case arose after the Education Department in April broadened the reach of Title IX, the 1972 law barring sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money, including by detailing how the measure applies to gender identity. The Biden administration also reversed several Trump-era policies that outlined the responsibilities of schools to respond to claims of sexual misconduct on campuses.

A number of states immediately sued, challenging the Education Department over three regulations that they said exceeded its authority by expanding sex discrimination to include gender identity.

The first provision states that the federal law’s ban on sex discrimination extends to gender identity. The second explains that schools that block transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity are violating Title IX. The third finds that “hostile-environment harassment” applies to harassment based on gender identity.

In a pair of emergency petitions, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar urged the justices to overturn the lower court rulings and allow the federal rules to go into effect.

Those rulings were overbroad, Ms. Prelogar said, freezing in place regulations that have nothing to do with transgender rights, including the broadened scope schools are responsible for investigating under the new guidelines.

Addressing concerns from Republican-led states that havoc would ensue should the new regulation take effect, she asserted that the only consequence “would be to eliminate the rule’s protection against discrimination aimed at transgender students simply for being transgender.”

Supreme Court precedent required the federal government to protect against discrimination based on gender identity, she added.

She cited a 2020 case, Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga., in which the justices found that a landmark civil rights law protects gay and transgender workers from discrimination in the workplace. That decision, a surprise given the court’s conservative majority, extended workplace protections to millions of people.

In their responses, Louisiana and Tennessee denounced the revised federal guidelines, which span 423 pages. The attorney general of Louisiana, Elizabeth B. Murrill, criticized them as a mandate that would “allow boys in girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms and hotel rooms” and “require teachers and students to use a person’s preferred pronouns.”

The justices should soundly reject “a Frankensteined Title IX rule,” Ms. Murrill said.

She added that Louisiana’s problems with the rules extended beyond the three provisions, arguing that the Biden administration’s “redefinition of sex discrimination pervades all 423 pages” and that the Bostock case did not expressly involve Title IX.

If the new rules were to temporarily go into effect, Ms. Murrill argued, it would throw states into chaos and impose immediate costs on schools, which would have to quickly train employees and revise their policies just as a new academic year begins.

School boards would also have to act fast, she wrote, “to begin the expensive process of designing, modifying and constructing bathrooms and locker rooms to comply with the rule.”

Families, too, would be harmed, she asserted, forced to scramble to decide whether to “find a last-minute alternative schooling option to protect their children.”

Mr. Skrmetti, representing Tennessee, argued in his brief that the Biden administration had overstepped. The rule, he said, “adopts a controversial worldview about ‘gender identity,’ orders schools in every state to conform their policies to it and threatens dissenters with the loss of billions in federal funding.”

Adam Liptak contributed reporting.

Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting. More about Abbie VanSickle

Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Biden and his administration. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years. More about Michael D. Shear

A version of this article appears in print on   , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Protections for Transgender Students in Some States. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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