Texas Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton sent a letter to administrators in Texas schools informing them that the State was successful in getting President Obama’s public school transgender bathroom policy temporarily blocked. The Court ruling came down just as schools were opening for the fall.
The AG sent the letter to clear up any confusion created by President Obama’s directive that public schools comply with his transgender bathroom policies or risk federal funds by violating existing nondiscrimination laws as interpreted by the Obama Administration.
A statement from the AG’s Office notes that the Court’s injunction against the Obama Administration explains, “The guidance letter issued in May is contrary to the actual law. Congress has prohibited ‘sex’ discrimination in Title IX since 1972, but has repeatedly rejected attempts to add ‘gender identity’ discrimination to Title IX, including as recently as 2015.”
Attorney General Paxton told educators “in light of the injunction, no educational institution in Texas needs to change its policies regarding intimate facilities to comply with the unenforceable federal guidelines.”
Breitbart Texas reported that after the Texas AG filed a lawsuit against the federal government and asked the Court to issue a preliminary injunction, the judge issued an order on August 22nd blocking the federal mandate. The Texas lawsuit had been joined by 12 other states.
On May 13th, the Department of Education (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights and the Department of Justice (DOJ) Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, sent a “Dear Colleague Letter on Transgender Students” to state and local agencies that receive federal financial assistance from the DOE. The policy allows students to use bathroom and other facilities that they “gender identify” with at the moment. A head of the Office of Civil Rights in the DOE thus joined with the White House legal arm, the DOJ, and sent a letter which they represented should serve as “significant guidance” with regard to the gender fluidity issue.
After the federal judge issued the order blocking the implementation of the federally-mandated policy, Texas AG Ken Paxton sent the schools his own guidance letter. He explained that they do not need to change their policies on “intimate facilities to comply with the unenforceable federal guidelines.”
“My office brought this lawsuit to stop the Obama Administration from rewriting the laws that have been enacted by the elected representatives of the people—and to stop his administrative agencies from threatening to take away federal funding from schools to force them to conform,” AG Paxton wrote in the letter to schools obtained by Breitbart Texas. “The injunction granted does precisely that.”
As reported by Breitbart Texas in mid-August, Texas AG Paxton led the 12-state coalition and went to court to fight the Obama Administration’s executive dictate that Texas schools must let transgender students, or those who identify with the other sex on a given day, to use the bathroom and other intimate facilities of the opposite sex. Paxton went to court on August 12th and argued for a preliminary injunction to stop the federal government overreach.
Lana Shadwick is a contributing writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and an associate judge. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.
Texas AG to Schools – Significant Guidance Letter