On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled major precedent on when courts should defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of laws in crafting their regulations. The ruling, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturned the 1984 case Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, which had said that courts should defer to an agency’s interpretation of legislation where the legislation is silent or ambiguous. In Loper Bright, the Supreme Court ruled that courts may exercise their independent judgment to interpret ambiguous laws rather than defer to expert agency interpretations.
Several court cases are currently pending against the Department of Education’s new Title IX regulations. The Department of Education has interpreted Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, to protect transgender students from discrimination related to gender identity. Courts have already blocked the new regulations from taking effect in 26 states. Additionally, as noted in Liebert Cassidy Whitmore’s July 18, 2024, Special Bulletin, a Federal court in Kansas issued an injunction in July that prevents the Department from enforcing the 2024 Title IX regulations at hundreds of K-12 schools (including schools in California) and 687 colleges and universities including many California community colleges.
It is unclear how large of an impact the Loper Bright Enterprises decision will have on these court challenges. Cases that blocked implementation of the Title IX regulations before the Loper Bright decision managed to avoid the issue of Chevron deference by finding that Title IX was not ambiguous. For example, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves blocked the Title IX regulations in a challenge by Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. In his decision, he noted that “Chevron requires a federal court to accept the agency’s construction of the statute, even if the agency’s reading differs from what the court believes is the best statutory interpretation.” However, he ruled that in this case, the Department of Education had promulgated a regulation that contradicted the unambiguous language of the statute.