The release of detailed guidance by the Departments of Education and Justice came earlier this month as the federal government sued the state of North Carolina for its law forcing trans students to use bathrooms matching the gender on their birth certificate. Although non-binding, schools that fail to comply with the directive could potentially face lawsuits or reduced federal aid.
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The administration’s school guidance covers how to handle harassment and what terminology to use, but the bathroom and locker-room policy has drawn the most attention, especially as other states set restrictions on bathroom access.
The other states that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs are Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Utah, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, Maine, Arizona and Maine.
Eleven states are suing the Obama administration over the directive, which calls on US public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.
The Justice Department has filed a civil rights suit against North Carolina over the law, claiming that it discriminates against transgender people.
Abbott, a former state attorney general himself, has made his lawsuits against the Obama administration a touchstone of his political profile.
In the jointly filed lawsuit United States district court in Wichita Falls, Texas, accused the federal government of rewriting laws by ‘executive fiat’.
Schimel calls the administration’s guidance another example of “unlawful executive overreach” by re-interpreting the word “sex” to include “gender identity”. Abbott sued the Obama administration more than two dozen times when he was attorney general, a pace that his successor, Republican Ken Paxton, has kept up since taking office past year.
“It’s not moot because it was thrusted upon us by the federal government”, Thweatt said, “or we were going to risk losing our federal funding”.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the multistate legal action during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
The lawsuit also alleged the administration for hindering the private space for every student and their basic rights in the school area.
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“This lawsuit is really an attack from Arizona and 10 other states on transgender Americans”, he said. “School policies should be determined by individual states, educators and parents-not dictated by a presidential decree”.
