11 States Sue Obama Administration Over Transgender Bathroom Policy

“By forcing through his policies by executive action, President Obama excluded the voice of the people. We stand today to ensure those voices are heard.”

From: NewNowNext

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned that he’d be filing a lawsuit against the federal government on Wednesday over the Obama administration’s recent directive on transgender students, and now 10 other states have joined him in the challenge.

The lawsuit stems from a federal directive sent to schools earlier this month to allow trans students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity, and includes Oklahoma, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Utah and Georgia, plus the Arizona Department of Education and the governor of Maine.

The states accuse the Obama administration of having “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process and running roughshod over common sense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

Conservatives have been in an uproar ever since the government said that schools have 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,” and that “the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students.”

The lawsuit is just part of the country’s escalating war over transgender rights, with the Justice Department and North Carolina having just sued each other over the state law that restrains public restroom access for transgender people.

In a statement explaining their disdain over the federal government’s interference, Attorney General Paxton said, “This represents just the latest example of the current administration’s attempts to accomplish by executive fiat what they couldn’t accomplish through the democratic process in Congress.”

“By forcing through his policies by executive action, President Obama excluded the voice of the people,” he added. “We stand today to ensure those voices are heard.”