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11 states sue Obama administration over transgender bathroom policy

Texas is leading the lawsuit, and governors from Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Utah are also on board.

Mississippi plans to back the 11 other states that filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the Obama administration's transgender bathroom policy at public schools, Gov. Phil Bryant said.

The Department of Education two weeks ago ordered all of the nation's public schools to honor transgender students' bathroom of choice. But in their suit, the states say the Obama administration is turning schools and workplaces "into laboratories for a massive social experiment."

They are also challenging a memo from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that tells employers that denying workers from using a bathroom based on their gender identity amounts to sex discrimination.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mississippi-join-states-suit-against-obama-s-transgender-bathroom-policy-n580956

The government also said that a school had an obligation “to provide transgender students equal access to educational programs and activities even in circumstances in which other students, parents or community members raise objections or concerns.” The officials added that “the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students.”

The guidance, signed by two of the government’s most senior civil rights officials, did not carry the force of law, but many conservatives responded with outrage at one of its implications: that federal officials, effectively prodded by President Obama, might deny money to schools that defy the recommendations.

“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas said this month. “Well in Texas, he can keep his 30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the president of the United States.”

In their lawsuit, which was assigned to Judge Reed C. O’Connor, an appointee of President George W. Bush, the officials said that the federal government had gone “so far beyond any reasonable reading of the relevant congressional text such that the new rules, regulations, guidance and interpretations functionally exercise lawmaking power reserved only to Congress.”

That argument has become a familiar one, especially after the Justice Department and North Carolina officials traded lawsuits about a statute there that limits public restroom access for transgender people. But the Justice Department has been unbowed, and the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, has made clear her commitment to transgender rights.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/us/states-texas-sue-obama-administration-over-transgender-bathroom-policy.html?_r=0