Biden officials circumvented court order in Title IX cases, including males in girls’ sports, docs show
Documents released by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) show that officials in former President Joe Biden’s Department of Education (ED) circumvented a federal court injunction restricting the department’s sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) enforcement efforts under Title IX, including in cases involving transgender students’ access to restrooms and female athletic teams.
OSC's June 9 letter to the White House said the Department of Education ultimately "fully substantiated" a whistleblower’s allegations that the department’s Office for Civil Rights failed to comply with a federal injunction barring implementation of Biden-era guidance that interpreted Title IX to cover sexual orientation and gender identity.
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The whistleblower, a chief attorney in OCR’s Kansas City office, alleged that the department continued pursuing gender identity, transgender status and sexual orientation claims under Title IX in states covered by the injunction.
The OSC report said that by Sept. 26, 2022, former ED Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon laid out a way for OCR to keep handling SOGI cases in the states covered by the court order.
In that email, Lhamon told staff that the court had blocked the department from "implementing" documents addressing sexual orientation and gender identity in the 20 plaintiff states. But she also told them that "OCR will continue to carry out its statutorily required responsibilities," and said staff should not rely on the three blocked documents when deciding what Title IX means.
Investigators later concluded that this approach was not real compliance with the injunction. The report said OCR leadership had created "a path for carrying out its preferred SOGI policies" in the plaintiff states despite the court order. The report also said OCR regional offices were then directed to act "in defiance" of the injunction.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Lhamon for comment.
The court order stemmed from a lawsuit brought by a coalition of states challenging three June 2021 guidance documents issued after Biden signed Executive Order 13988, "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation."
In July 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee issued a preliminary injunction blocking the department from implementing those documents against the plaintiff states. The Sixth Circuit later affirmed the injunction in June 2024.
The dispute was broader than girls’ sports, but girls’ sports were a major part of the concern.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which joined the Tennessee case on behalf of Arkansas female athlete Amelia Ford and the Association of Christian Schools International, argued that the guidance would force schools to allow males who identify as female to compete on female athletic teams and use female-designated showers and locker rooms.
The Education Department initially denied wrongdoing. In a December 2024 report, the department said OCR had not violated the injunction because it was not citing or relying on the challenged guidance documents. The department argued it could still investigate complaints involving sexual orientation or gender identity so long as it grounded its actions in Title IX, its regulations, case law and the facts of each case.
But according to the Office of Special Counsel, the department reversed course after a supplemental investigation. The later report found "significant shortcomings" in the department’s initial response, including a failure to assess available evidence, conduct relevant interviews and directly address whether OCR leadership had failed to follow the injunction.
The department’s own first report said the cases cited by the whistleblower included allegations involving a transgender student’s access to a restroom consistent with gender identity and a transgender student’s participation on a female athletics team consistent with gender identity.
The matter is now closed at OSC, but the watchdog’s letter calls for further accountability inside the Department of Education and before Congress.
ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Litigation Strategy Jonathan Scruggs said the documents show Biden education officials tried to keep enforcing their gender-identity policies after the court stepped in.
"What apparently Biden administration officials and the Department of Education did is say, ‘Hey, we can’t enforce these policies, but the injunction doesn’t reference the content of the policies,’" Scruggs told Fox News Digital.
Scruggs said the blocked guidance would have had major consequences for schools, including disputes over girls’ sports and private spaces. The policy, he said, would have pushed schools to allow "men in women’s sports" and "men in private spaces."
"The Department of Education was continuing to pressure and enforce these illegal policies," Scruggs said. "So that means, again, more men in women’s restrooms, redefinition of the meaning of sex in federal law as applied to these school districts."
Scruggs said the public release of the records should help expose what happened and prevent similar conduct in the future. "All you can do is shine a light on it," he said, adding that congressional or agency oversight may be needed "to ensure that this doesn’t happen again."