The Education Department clarified on Thursday that it will continue enforcing the 2020 rule in states where a new Title IX rule to protect LGBTQ+ students is paused.

Prior to the 11th Circuit’s decision, Judge Annemarie Carney Axon, appointed under the Trump administration to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, ruled on Tuesday that the four Southern states seeking to block the new Title IX rule to protect LGBTQ+ students failed to show “they will suffer immediate irreparable injury” from being unable to enforce their state laws related to parental rights and sex-separation in sports and bathrooms.

Axon’s decision broke from a handful of other federal district judges’ decisions in recent weeks that paused the rule in at least 21 other states at the time. However, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement that he and the coalition of three other states filed an appeal of Axon’s decision with the 11th Circuit later that same day.

The 11th Circuit’s decision left unclear whether it was blocking the rule nationwide or just in the four states that appealed to the court. In response, the department filed a document Wednesday saying it interpreted the order to only block Title IX’s implementation in the four states that appealed.

The 11th Circuit’s decision has sowed some confusion in the education community. “I want to make sure people are aware that there is some concern in the field that the 11th Circuit issued a nationwide injunction,” said Jackie Gharapour Wernz, a consultant for Education Civil Rights Solutions and a board member for the National School Attorneys Association.

Wernz said the association is currently discussing the issue. “Their order did not say it was doing so, but also did not explicitly limit the injunction to the four states at issue.”

“It’s a very fluid legal environment still,” said Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary of education for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, in a webinar Thursday. ”We received yet another injunction last night, and that latest injunction, I understand some people may have some confusion about it.”

Read the full article about the blocked Title IX rule by Naaz Modan at Higher Ed Dive.