A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from requiring state sexual education programs to remove references to gender identity to continue receiving federal grants.
Judge Ann Aiken of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon granted a request on Monday from Democrat-led states, including Oregon, Washington, New York, and Maryland, along with the District of Columbia, to halt conditions placed on the grants by the Department of Health and Human Services in August, finding that the administration’s conditions amount to unlawful “sex discrimination.”
“The Court finds Defendants’ explanation absurd and concludes that the Gender Conditions violate the government’s sex discrimination laws and policies,” Aiken said in her lengthy opinion.
The Trump administration issued new terms for grants under the State Personal Responsibility Education Program, which said that it is “prohibited from including gender ideology in any program or service that is funded with this award.” The terms added that federal statute “does not authorize teaching students that gender identity is distinct from biological sex or boys can identify as girls and vice versa, or that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex.”
The federal judge disagreed with the administration’s finding, arguing in her opinion that “the concept
of gender identity is firmly established in the medical literature.”
“The Court also does not agree that the concept of gender identity ‘fall[s] outside the core medical and biological content that is central to sexual-risk education,'” Aiken said. “A curricula that denies the existence of transgender and gender diverse people is not medically accurate and complete.”
“The Court concludes that removing evidence-based gender identity references from [personal responsibility education program] and [sexual risk avoidance education] curricula conflicts with the statutory requirement that curricula be ‘medically accurate and complete,'” Aiken added.
COURTS BATTLE ONE ANOTHER OVER NATIONAL GUARD AS TRUMP’S PORTLAND DEPLOYMENT FACES TRIAL
The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon has served President Donald Trump legal losses in recent weeks, with a different judge on the court blocking his deployment of the National Guard to Portland to protect federal assets and personnel amid unruly protests over federal immigration operations in the city.
The most popular courts in which opponents of the administration have brought their lawsuits against Trump’s agenda have been the Northern District of California, Massachusetts, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year limiting universal injunctions, a tool that judges used widely against Trump during his early months back in the White House, judges in these districts have continued ruling against the Trump administration.
