When Michigan Had No AG Title IX Suit: How a Private Case Met a Vacated Rule

Federal education rules can remake school life overnight. Title IX is one of those rules.

Five Stones Legal Defense Fund lists a closed Title IX project on https://www.isuegov.com/case-1. On behalf of the Great Education Initiative (GEI), the Fund filed federal litigation challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s rewrite of Title IX for Michigan schools.

The live victory statement puts the dispute in plain terms. The lawsuit challenged regulatory overreach that, in Five Stones’ telling, threatened First Amendment rights, forced non-consensual sharing of intimate spaces, and used agency power to push gender-identity policies without Congress rewriting the statute (the major questions problem).

What the rule changed

According to the case summary on that page, the Department’s final Title IX rule expanded the law’s ban on sex discrimination so it also covered discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The rewrite drew at least nine lawsuits. At least 26 states signed onto those suits. The rule was on hold in 26 states.

GEI’s Michigan case stood apart in one respect already stated on the site: it was a private lawsuit, not an attorney-general case, brought in a state where no other lawsuit challenging that final Title IX rule had been filed.

The overview on /case-1 ties the fight to bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports, and to a rule that required schools to discipline for sexual-orientation and gender-identity discrimination. Parents and students faced privacy and safety questions when intimate spaces did not track biological sex.

How it ended (as the site states it)

The victory header says that after Five Stones’ litigation and combined multi-state legal challenges, the federal government rescinded and vacated the Title IX rules at issue. The lawsuit then resolved through a formal settlement. In that settlement, the federal government agreed to pay attorney fees.

That is the closed-win spine.

Why a private Michigan case still matters

Many Title IX challenges ran through state attorneys general. Michigan’s GEI suit, as described on isuegov.com, filled a gap: a private membership organization brought a statewide challenge where no parallel AG Title IX final-rule suit was on file.

For families, the practical stake was local. School rules on speech, discipline, and sex-separated spaces land in bathrooms and locker rooms, not only in D.C. briefs. For institutions, the stake was compliance: when an agency rewrites a major statute by regulation, districts need a clear legal answer.

For the public, the stake is process. Who decides contested sex and privacy rules—Congress, or an education department memo? The case page frames the major questions doctrine as part of that fight.

What this post is not

This is a closed-project retrospective. It is not an invest pitch, and it does not send readers to /invest-1. Five Stones Legal Defense Fund is a 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 39-2456963). It is not a law firm. Groups with a shared legal project can work through the Fund.

Primary public record: https://www.isuegov.com/case-1. To support Five Stones’ work, gifts may be designated to a specific project fund or to Five Stones as a whole. A gift is still a gift to the Fund, not a stake in a case. Give at https://isuegov.com/donate or start at https://isuegov.com.