Suit challenges legality of U.S. restroom directive

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (right) on Wednesday announces a lawsuit that claims a federal directive on transgender students’ restroom use is “running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (right) on Wednesday announces a lawsuit that claims a federal directive on transgender students’ restroom use is “running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas and eight other states are suing President Barack Obama's administration over its directive to U.S. public schools to let transgender students use restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities.

The lawsuit announced Wednesday includes Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin, as well as the Arizona Department of Education and Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican. It asks U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to declare the directive unlawful.

The Obama administration has "conspired to turn workplace 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," the lawsuit reads.

The legal challenge comes after the Obama administration released a letter earlier this month from two federal agencies -- the Justice Department and the Education Department -- outlining the guidance on restroom use.

In that letter, the two agencies cited Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination at educational facilities that receive federal funding, and said that this extended to how schools treat transgender students.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday argues that with this letter, the Obama administration was "officially foisting its new version of federal law" on schools and accused federal officials of seeking "to rewrite Title IX by executive fiat."

Many of the conservative states involved had previously vowed defiance, calling the guidance a threat to safety while being accused of discrimination by supporters of transgender rights. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch previously has said "there is no room in our schools for discrimination."

The White House had no comment on the lawsuit. The Justice Department said it would review the complaint and did not comment further.

Texas' lieutenant governor previously has said the state is willing to forfeit $10 billion in federal education dollars rather than comply.

Pressed about whether he knew of any instances in which a child's safety had been threatened because of transgender restroom rights, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said "there's not a lot of research" during a news conference about the lawsuit. He said his office has heard from concerned parents, but didn't say how many, and said he did not meet with any parents of transgender students before drafting the lawsuit.

Jeff Landry, the attorney general for Louisiana, who also signed on to the lawsuit Wednesday, said he would "not allow Washington to wreak further havoc on our schools."

The states claim that the directive demands "seismic changes" in schools across the U.S. and forces them to let students choose a restroom that matches "their chosen 'gender identity' on any given day."

Two school districts joined the states in the lawsuit: one is the Harrold Independent School District in North Texas, which has roughly 100 students and passed a policy this week requiring students to use the restroom based on the gender on their birth certificates. Superintendent David Thweatt said his schools have no transgender students to his knowledge but defended the district taking on the federal government.

"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."

In a news conference Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said the state joined the suit to protect the Harrold school district.

The policy "means that the district is in the cross hairs of the Obama administration, which claims it will punish anyone that doesn't comply with their orders," Abbott said.

The question of whether federal civil-rights law protects transgender people has not been given a definitive answer by the courts. But schools that refuse to comply could be hit with civil-rights lawsuits from the government and could face a cutoff of federal aid to education.

The guidance was issued after the Justice Department and North Carolina sued each other over a state law that requires transgender people to use the public restroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificates. The law applies to schools and many other places.

Supporters say such measures are needed to protect women and children from sexual predators, while the Justice Department and others argue the threat is practically nonexistent and the law discriminatory.

Education officials in Arizona said campuses already had policies to protect students from bullying and discrimination "regardless of their gender identity." A small Arizona school district also joined in the lawsuit.

"The fact that the federal government has yet again decided that it knows what is best for every one of our local communities is insulting and, quite frankly, intolerable," Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas said.

Information for this article was contributed by Paul J. Weber of The Associated Press and by Mark Berman, Moriah Balingit and Emma Brown of The Washington Post.

A Section on 05/26/2016

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