Texas, 10 other states sue to block federal transgender restroom rule

Texas, joined by 10 other states, filed suit in federal court in Wichita Falls on Wednesday to block a federal directive that instructs school districts to let transgender students use restrooms that correspond with their gender identity, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday.

Calling the Obama administration guidelines “outside the bounds of the Constitution,” Paxton said that the state was leading the action to protect the tiny school district of Harrold, between Vernon and Wichita Falls.

The Harrold school board on Monday approved a policy requiring students to use restrooms according to the gender cited on their birth certificates.

“Harrold Independent School District fulfilled a responsibility to their community and adopted a bathroom policy puts the safety of their students first,” said Paxton. “Unfortunately the policy placed them at odds with federal directives handed down earlier this month. That means the district is in the crosshairs of Obama administration which has maintained it will punish anyone who doesn’t comply with their orders.”

The other states in the suit are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Paxton said they joined because restroom choice is of national importance.

“It represents just the latest example of the current administration’s attempt to accomplish by executive fiat what they couldn’t accomplish democratically in Congress,” he said.

Based on Title IX

The Obama administration guidelines state that transgender students have the right to use their preferred bathrooms in public schools because of Title IX, a federal statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender at educational institutions that receive federal funding. It does not have the force of law, although school districts could risk losing federal money if they do not comply.

Harrold school Superintendent David Thweatt, who joined Paxton at the Austin news conference, said his school board had passed the policy out of concern for the “safety, security, and dignity of the children.”

None of the 100 students enrolled there has asked to be identified as transgender, he said.

With virtually no evidence of students being attacked in restrooms by their transgender classmates, they say, efforts like those ramping up in Texas further stigmatize transgender people and perpetuate violence against them.

When asked Wednesday, neither Paxton nor Thweatt could point to instances where allowing transgender students had threatened anyone’s safety in a restroom.

GOP officials join in

Since the Obama administration issued the new guidelines this month, they have generated widespread outrage among Texas Republicans, fueling full-throated attacks from many party leaders including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

Even before the administration released the rules on May 13, Patrick, who has declared restroom regulation to be a priority for the next legislative session, called for the resignation of Fort Worth school Superintendent Kent Scribner because of the district’s policy on accommodating transgender students. Scribner told trustees in April that he had signed guidelines instructing district employees to “acknowledge the gender identity that each student consistently and uniformly asserts.”

Earlier this month Paxton joined with lawyers from Oklahoma and West Virginia to write a letter to the U.S. Justice and Education departments asking whether states would lose federal funding if their school districts did not comply with the directive, which does not have the force of law.

With the suit, Paxton prepares for Texas to become the next battleground in the national debate about which restrooms transgender people may use. It also shifts the spotlight from Patrick, who has so far been the state’s most vocal elected official on the issue.

At a Round Rock stop on his book tour Wednesday morning, Gov. Greg Abbott said Paxton was “challenging the way that the Obama administration is trampling the United States Constitution.”

“The president has no authority to enact laws whatsoever. Several times Congress has taken up the issue of whether to expand the Civil Rights Act and Title IX and whether or not to include transgender. Both times or multiple times, Congress has decided against that,” said Abbott, who first announced the lawsuit in a tweet Wednesday.

When asked whether he had any input on the attorney general’s decision to challenge the directive, Abbott said the lawsuit was Paxton’s “determination.”

He also defended the cost of suing the federal government over the issue.

“There is no price that can be put on a president violating the Constitution,” he said. “This country abandons its fundamental principle when we have a president who says he is above the law. Barack Obama has repeatedly said he is above the law. Texas is going to put a stop to that.”

The issue erupted nationally in March after the North Carolina General Assembly passed House Bill 2, which prohibited transgender people from using bathrooms that do not match the gender on their birth certificate. That has led to boycotts and has led businesses to reconsider their investments in the state, and is now the subject of a federal civil rights lawsuit.

This story was originally published May 25, 2016 at 8:23 PM with the headline "Texas, 10 other states sue to block federal transgender restroom rule."