A federal judge on Friday rejected a request by the far-right extremist group Moms for Freedom to block federal protections for LGBTQ students in more than 800 counties across the country.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge John Broome, a Trump appointee to Kansas, issued a broad injunction blocking enforcement of new Title IX rules designed to protect LGBTQ students in Kansas and three other states. The order applies to schools attended by children of members of Moms for Liberty, the Young America’s Foundation and the Coalition of Women Athletes, which filed lawsuits challenging the rules.
The new rule, finalized in April, extends the protections of Title IX, a sex discrimination law aimed at protecting women’s rights in education, to transgender students, who have come under increasing attack from Republican lawmakers. The rule, which is set to take effect Aug. 1, has prompted numerous lawsuits from Republican-led states. At least 15 states have temporarily blocked the rule from going into effect following legal challenges.
Blooms asked the three plaintiffs to submit a list of the schools their members’ children attend and exempt those schools from the rule. But Moms for Liberty said it would be “impossible” to compile such a list and that it would not ask its members about the schools their children attend. Instead, it asked Blooms to block Title IX rules in all counties where its members live, not just the schools their children attend.
In his ruling on Friday, Judge Blooms said he did not have the authority to do so. If he had granted the request, the rule could have been blocked in hundreds of counties, including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco and most of New York City.
Blooms ordered Moms for Liberty to submit a list of schools attended by its members’ children by July 26.
But the judge also ruled that the injunction applies to current and future members of the three plaintiff groups, “creating the potential for the injunction to continue to expand,” legal blog Law Dork noted.
This article originally appeared on MSNBC.com.
