On May 8, 2024, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, along with Parents Defending Education, the Independent Women’s Forum, and Speech First, filed a brief asking a federal district court for a preliminary injunction in Alabama v. Cardona. A preliminary injunction is a court order that blocks a rule while the case goes on.
The brief argued:
- The rule changes Title IX in ways Congress never approved. When Congress passed Title IX in 1972 to ban sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money, “no one was voting to let boys use the girls’ bathroom or to let men play women’s sports.”
- The rule redefines “sex.” It adds “gender identity” to the meaning of sex, requiring schools to let males into female bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers, and paving the way for them to compete in women’s sports.
- Schools that don’t comply risk losing federal funding. The rule threatens schools with the loss of billions of federal dollars.
- Time is short. The rule takes effect August 1, 2024. Because the court will likely strike the rule down, it should delay the rule’s effective date or, at a minimum, block enforcement in the plaintiff states. Anything less would cause immediate harm to students, states, and schools that could not be undone.
Read the preliminary injunction brief and the declaration of President Nicole Neily below:
