A U.S. appeals court on Friday rejected a demand by President Joe Biden’s administration to revive its directive that schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms and join sports teams that correspond to their gender, which had been blocked in 20 Republican-led states.

A panel of the Cincinnati, Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the states in a 2-1 decision that the 2021 U.S. Department of Education guidance improperly imposed new legal duties on public schools that do not exist in federal law.

The 6th Circuit said the department did not follow proper procedures in creating the new rules and did not address whether federal law banning sex discrimination in education protects LGBTQ students.

The court upheld a 2022 decision by a Tennessee federal judge that blocked enforcement of the guidance against 20 states, including many of the public universities they run, pending the outcome of their lawsuit.

An Education Department spokesperson said in a statement that the agency follows the guidelines.

“Every student has a right to feel safe at school,” the spokesperson said.

The office of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, did not respond to a request for comment.

A consortium of Christian schools and a female student-athlete from Arkansas joined the states’ challenge. The conservative group representing them, Alliance Defending Freedom, praised the decision in a statement.

“The Biden administration’s radical effort to redefine gender threatens the equal opportunities women and girls have enjoyed for 50 years,” said Matt Bowman, an attorney for the group.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Texas blocked the guideline from being implemented in that state, saying it unfairly rewrote anti-discrimination law. The judge said the guideline “shockingly alters American education.”

The guidance was a response to a landmark 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said federal law banning gender bias in the workplace protected LGBTQ workers. The same reasoning applies under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the education law, because both laws use similar language, the Education Department said.

The department adopted formal, binding regulations in April that also extend Title IX protections to LGBTQ students, who will not be affected by Friday’s decision.

A federal judge in Louisiana on Thursday blocked the new rule from taking effect in four Republican-led states, saying it destroys Title IX’s purpose of “protecting biological women from discrimination.”

In their lawsuit over the guidance, Tennessee and other states claimed the department had no authority to extend the Supreme Court’s ruling to Title IX.

The 6th Circuit on Friday rejected various procedural claims by the Biden administration, including that states led by Tennessee could not show they would be harmed by the nonbinding guidance documents.

The guidelines could expose states to lawsuits and the loss of federal funding, enough to deter them from pursuing the case, Circuit Judge John Nalbandian wrote alongside Circuit Judge Joan Larson, both Republican appointees of former President Donald Trump.

Circuit Judge Danny Boggs dissented, saying the states did not have the standing to sue because the guidance documents were informal “policy statements” that could not be reviewed by the court. Boggs was appointed by Republican former President Ronald Reagan.