Eleven states have filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its policies regarding transgender people. The plaintiffs include: Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah, Georgia, the governor of Maine and the Arizona Department of Education.
The lawsuit says the government has “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”
A directive issued earlier this month by the Obama administration says gender identity is included in federal law that bans sex discrimination in public schools. Schools risk losing federal funding if they do not comply with that law, called Title IX.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Wichita Falls, Texas, argues that Congress’ understanding of ” ‘sex,’ as a protected class, refers only to one’s biological sex, as male or female, and not the radical re-authoring of the term now being foisted upon Americans.
Beyond the debate about schools, the Justice Department is also in an ongoing legal battle with North Carolina, which passed a law that limits civil rights protections for LGBT people. The issue here is the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, rather than Title IX.
The lawsuit filed by the 11 states brings up both of these laws and argues that the federal government is trying to “rewrite” them.
You can read the lawsuit here: