At a hearing August 12, the first in the case against the federal government, a member of the Texas attorney general’s team told O’Connor that the federal government “usurped” the authority of states and schools by requiring that “sexes must be mixed” in “intimate areas” like bathrooms.
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Judge Reed O’Connor said his order, which applies nationwide, was not about the policy issues of transgender rights but his conclusion that federal officials simply did not follow the rules.
Blaine County School District voted last week for a policy that allows students to use bathrooms based on their gender identity, the Idaho Mountain Express reported.
“Many local school districts have had to contend with these, they work them out with the local professionals, the schools and the parents, and that’s the way it should be”, says Stenehjem.
Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court put a hold another court order, in Virginia, that required a rural high school to allow a student who was born a girl but now identifies as male to use the boys’ bathroom during the coming school year.
Students made their way to the first day of classes in schools across the U.S. Monday.
A United States federal judge in Texas blocked the Obama administration from enforcing new actions that were meant to expand restroom access for transgender students across the nation.
“We are pleased that the court ruled against the Obama administration’s latest illegal federal overreach”, Paxton said in a statement.
Also, the Justice Department asked Schroeder to declare that North Carolina’s House Bill 2 violates separate employment and education provisions of civil rights law, Wettach said, making the court fights distinct.
Paul Castillo of Lambda Legal said Sunday’s order should not affect other ongoing cases or attorneys from bringing new cases under Title IX, but it prevents the federal agencies from utilizing the guidance to threaten to revoke federal financial assistance from schools who do not agree that Title IX protects transgender students. A few days later, the Obama administration issued a set of guidelines to public schools across the nation, stipulating that they must allow students to access sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity.
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In March of 2015, Judge O’Connor also sought to block Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) rights for legally married same-sex couples despite the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in United States v. Windsor (2013). Republicans have argued such laws are common-sense privacy safeguards. Texas alone gets roughly $10 billion in federal education funds. O’Connor himself provided some wiggle room, writing that his order “should not unnecessarily interfere with litigation now pending before other federal courts on this subject”.
