The injunction was issued Sunday in response to Obama’s directive sent last May that states transgender students must be allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender identity they identify with.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the ruling in a statement Monday that said he was “pleased that the court ruled against the Obama Administration’s latest illegal federal overreach”.
A federal judge in Texas is perpetuating transphobia by temporarily blocking Obama’s directive on transgender bathrooms, siding with all the school districts that oppose the order.
Earlier this year, Weinberg’s organization filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education against Sumner County Schools over a transgender student’s access to restrooms.
Although the court failed to consider the interests of the very students the federal laws were meant to protect, the five civil rights organizations who advocated on their behalf avowed, “We will continue to file lawsuits representing transgender students and litigate them to the fullest extent of the law-regardless of what happens with this particular federal guidance”.
The administration issued the rule just days after the U.S. Justice Department sued North Carolina over a state law that requires people to use public bathrooms that correspond with the gender on their birth certificates.
Under the injunction, the Obama administration is prohibited from enforcing the guidelines on “against plaintiffs and their respective schools, school boards, and other public, educationally based institutions”, O’Connor wrote.
Judge O’Connor found that the administration bypassed the Administrative Procedures Act by failing to open its new “guidelines” up for notice and comment, and ruled that the existing law and regulation are “not ambiguous” in defining “sex” as a reference to one’s biological sex at birth, rather than self-professed “gender identity”.
Mr. Strange had previously recommended Alabama schools ignore the president’s order until the issue worked its way through the court system, but the University of South Alabama went ahead with implementing it anyway.
The order placed a nationwide injunction on the policy, and said that the administration can not force the states challenging the directive to implement the policy. “Tennessee school districts are not only permitted, but required, to treat transgender students fairly”.
She will not be allowed to use the same bathroom as female classmates, leaving Nurkin even more anxious about how her daughter will be received as the first transgender student at her public school.
The Justice Department said it is disappointed with the decision and is reviewing its options.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor deals a second setback to the government’s argument that Title IX anti-discrimination protections apply to transgender students.
It’s not clear what trans students are supposed to do while this case is in litigation.
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We know the 4th Circuit reached the opposite conclusion in the [Virginia] case, so this sets it up well for the Supreme Court to look at this-we’re now seeing the circuit courts split, with some courts saying there is ambiguity, and other courts saying there is none and Title IX is clear that schools have the authority to set their own rules. Opponents of the policy have argued that it abridges student privacy rights and potentially puts them at risk in the assumed safe-spaces of single-sex bathrooms.
