A federal judge has announced that she plans to file an injunction for 16 states and D.C. to block the administration’s efforts to force the states to remove all references to trans and gender diverse identities from their sexual health education plans.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken invoked the language of segregation and the Brown v. Board of Education decision to highlight the true nature of the administration’s efforts, saying that their demand for sex education “appears to be sort of a separate-but-equal” policy.

Related

New York schools are suing to stop the presidential administration from cutting funds

The president has been threatening to withhold federal funding from public schools across the country if they don’t change programs and curricula to align with his day 1 executive order, which sought to define trans people out of existence. That effort was empowered by his later order that claimed to target “radical” ideas in K-12 education, and called for schools to abide by the original order and, among other things, not to support social transition for trans kids.

Many school districts across the country have previously ignored the requests from the administration to comply with the executive order.

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In an attempt to enforce their demands, in August, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent letters to 40 states and 6 territories, including D.C., demanding that they remove what they call “gender ideology” from PREP and Title V courses, claiming it violated the programs if they taught that “gender identity is distinct from biological sex or boys can identify as girls and vice versa.”

In response, a coalition of 16 states, led by representatives from Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota, filed a lawsuit against HHS over what they called a “cruel, arbitrary, and illegal effort to deny support to young people for purely political reasons.”

The federal funding in question this time amounts to $35 million across the 16 states in grants related to the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) and Title V’s Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Program. PREP was introduced in 2010 as part of the Affordable Care Act with the goal of reducing teen pregnancy and STIs through lessons on abstinence and contraception, as well as supporting young mothers.

Representatives for the administration defended the orders, claiming, “We’re not excluding anybody from these programs. We’re just simply saying you cannot teach that boys can be girls and girls can be boys.”

According to Reuters, the judge’s decision came after a lawyer speaking on behalf of Washington state explained the requirements put forward by HHS were to “edit transgender kids out of their curricula.”

Lawyers for the plaintiff states claimed that the administration’s demands went against Congress’ requirements for PREP and Title V’s SRAE program. As setting education standards and curricula is one of a state’s rights, and Congress is intended to be in charge of distributing funds, not the executive branch, their argument is that the president doesn’t have the right to withhold this funding or require adjustments to school lesson plans.

This planned injunction comes alongside another similar loss for the administration. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles has recently ordered the Pentagon to restore previously removed lessons on race, gender, and identity in schools for military families, in a ruling that suggested their removal had likely violated First Amendment protections.

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