Today, officials in 11 states, led by indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed yet another political lawsuit attacking basic protections for transgender students and workers. The federal lawsuit claims that despite recent court rulings, the practical and proven guidelines recently provided to schools by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education are illegal.
The guidelines, issued on May 13, were both requested by and praised by educators, including the National Association of Secondary School Principals. The lawsuit does not point to any specific person who has been harmed by the guidelines or by similar policies around the country. It also challenges 2012 and 2015 rulings from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding federal workers, and an informational brochure from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that advises on health hazards of excluding transgender workers from restrooms.
In response to this lawsuit, NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling said:
This is a direct attack on hundreds of thousands of transgender students, who are already vulnerable to bullying and harassment, and their loved ones. It’s an attempt to say that transgender people are strangers to our nation’s laws, it’s an attack on Supreme Court precedent, and it dismisses practical guidelines that were requested by educators all over the nation and that have already been successful in thousands of school districts. This politically driven lawsuit is a sad waste of taxpayer money meant to stoke needless fears.
Nearly twenty years ago, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court decision that sex discrimination laws cover not only the “principal evils” that lawmakers imagined, but also “reasonably comparable evils” that are also based on gender. Five federal appeals courts, including one just this month, have recognized protections for transgender people based on that holding.
