Arkansas and 19 other states have filed a friend of the court brief in Tennessee's lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education challenging its new rule on Title IX.
Tennessee and five other states argue in the lawsuit that the new federal rule on sex discrimination in schools is unconstitutional and an attempt to allow transgender girls to play female sports, according to The Associated Press. The Biden administration said the new Title IX regulation does not apply to sports.
"The Biden-Harris Title IX rule breaks the law Congress has written and violates the Constitution," Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a news release on Tuesday.
Title IX is a 1972 law meant to protect students from discrimination based on their sex. The new regulation expands protections for LGBTQ students and is based on the U.S. Supreme Court's 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the majority held that federal civil-rights protections dealing with sex and gender apply to gender identity.
The amicus brief filed by Griffin on Tuesday is asking the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals to uphold a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in June that blocked the Title IX rule from taking effect in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia.
Arkansas, along with five other states, filed its own lawsuit over the Title IX rule in May. In July, a federal judge in Missouri issued a preliminary injunction barring the Biden administration from enforcing the rule in Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. Orders issued in other cases have blocked the rule from being implemented in several other states, as well.