The federal government told US public schools in May that transgender students must be allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity.
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“This case presents the hard issue of balancing the protection of students’ rights and that of personal privacy when using school bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and other intimate facilities, while ensuring that no student is unnecessarily marginalized while attending school.”, O’Connor wrote.
Texas and a number of other states sued, claiming that allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice would turn schools “into laboratories for a massive social movement”.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said the state supports O’Connor’s decision and understands it is temporary while the case is heard fully.
But a group of five civil rights organizations supporting the Obama policy said legal precedent protects transgender students from discrimination, which a single judge can not overturn. “It can not be disputed that the plain meaning of the term sex as used in.when it was enacted by DOE following passage of Title IX meant the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth”, he wrote. In May, the departments of Education and Justice distributed a letter with “guidelines”, saying discrimination against such transgender students violates federal laws and that schools failing to comply with the laws could lose their federal funding.
His decision dated Sunday comes after Texas and 12 other states challenged the Obama directive as unconstitutional.
A Texas judge’s ruling yesterday is making for an uncertain “back to school” for the nation’s transgender students.
The Obama administration had tried to persuade Judge O’Connor that its view on what Title IX covers was only advisory and imposed no binding legal duties on schools in the 13 states and two local districts that had sued.
He said he granted the preliminary injunction in part because Title IX’s text “is not ambiguous”. Essentially the “status quo” would be maintained and students would be dependent on their schools’ individual policies regarding bathroom usage.
A brief filed by five pro-LGBT legal groups argued that federal appeals courts governing numerous states opposing the Obama guidelines have already ruled that sex discrimination includes discrimination against transgender people.
In a joint statement, five civil rights groups-including Lambda Legal and the ACLU-vowed to continue the fight.
The judge said the order would apply nationwide.
“Boys are going to go to boys’ bathrooms and girls are going to go to girls’ bathrooms”, he said.
Because other federal courts are considering other cases on the legality of the policy, Judge O’Connor said he would later consider narrowing down his order, so as not to intrude on the review other courts are making.
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The nondiscrimination rule was proposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in May. They are just expressing their disagreement with the Department’s view of the law, but that abstract disagreement is not a valid basis for a federal lawsuit.
