The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday denied the Biden administration’s emergency request to reinstate parts of its updated Department of Education Title IX rule expanding the definition of “discrimination on the basis of sex” to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy status.

The nation’s highest court ruled 5-4 — with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joining liberal colleagues Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent — that the Biden administration “has not provided this court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim conclusions that the three provisions found likely to be unlawful are intertwined with and affect other provisions of the rule.”

Republican attorneys general in more than two dozen states pushed courts to block the Biden administration’s updated Title IX rule, which was set to take effect on August 1. The new rule has been on hold pending the outcome of litigation.

In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote: “A majority of this court leaves in place preliminary........

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