AUSTIN - More than a dozen states, including Texas, have requested a preliminary injunction against several U.S. agencies including the Department of Education, Department of Justice and Department of Labor regarding transgender students in school.
The coalition, which also includes the Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah and Mississippi as well as the Arizona Department of Education, requests the court to issue a nationwide injunction against the defendants, “preventing the enforcement of their revisions of Titles VII and IX, which are articulated in the numerous pieces of ‘regulatory dark matter’ identified herein.”
The documents filed indicate the plaintiffs have been concerned with how the defendants were trying to “enforce their new rules as the law of the land” by disregarding the “checks and balances provided by the other branches of government."
In their argument the states allege the defendants have been working toward reform in schools for years.
“We now see that for years the defendants have quietly been in enforcement mode at a micro level, sowing the seeds for macro results," the argument states. "They have inspected schools literally down to the locker room curtains, interviewed school officials, and coerced settlements by threatening to withdraw federal funding.”
The states also argue that it is the physical attributes that determine a person’s sex when it comes to sex-segregated facilities.
“For no matter how any person may identify themselves, they nonetheless possess the physical attributes covered by both the language of Congress and the implementing regulations,” the states said.
They also argue that Title IX, which was cited by the defendants as not being sufficient enough to protect transgender students, was put into place by Congress to ensure both men and women had the same opportunities.
The states referenced United States v. Virginia 518 U.S. 515 550 n.19 (1996) when the Supreme Court ordered educational facilities must “afford members of each sex privacy from the other sex.”
They also accuse the government of overriding individuals’ need for physical privacy.