AUSTIN, Texas, May 25 (UPI) — Eleven states, including Utah, are involved in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday to challenge the Obama administration’s recent directive asking states to allow transgender students at public schools to use whichever bathroom they identify with.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
The lawsuit claims the directive “has no basis in law” and could cause “seismic changes in the operations of the nation’s school districts.”
This lawsuit — which includes nine states as well as another governor and one state’s education department — is the first to respond to the administration’s letter, which directed states nationwide to allow transgender students to use whichever bathroom they feel most comfortable with.
Many states have accepted the directive.
As well as Utah, the lawsuit was filed by Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Louisiana, as well as the Arizona Department of Education and Maine Gov. Paul LePage. A school district in Texas and another in Arizona also joined the suit.
Gov. Gary R. Herbert issued the following statement regarding the lawsuit.
“This is another example of President Obama issuing a one-size-fits-all mandate when states and individual schools could best address the issue,” said Herbert. Every Utah student should feel safe and be treated with dignity and respect. Local schools can and should work directly with parents and students to find appropriate, individualized solutions. It is unfortunate that the president has chosen to politicize our schools with such an extreme example of federal overreach. I look forward to working with other states to resolve this conflict in a way that respects the privacy of all Utah children.”
Earlier this month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined seven other states filing an amicus brief in a lawsuit over a Virginia school district bathroom policy.
“One’s sex is a biological fact, not a state of mind,” Paxton said in a written statement about the brief. “If this radical new interpretation by the Department of Education is permitted to go unchallenged, schools may no longer be able to maintain separate restrooms, showers and locker rooms on the basis of students’ actual sex. Title IX permits all schools to maintain separate facilities, including bathrooms and locker rooms, and I will defend that principle.”
