Thirteen states are seeking to ask a judge in Fort Worth on Friday to put a stop to the Obama administration’s recommendations on bathroom access in schools for transgender students, claiming that these are illegal “radical changes” that are being forced on the country, Reuters reports.
The US Justice Department said that these policies are recommendations that don’t carry the weight of law, and that the plaintiffs, led by Texas, have no grounds to ask for an injunction to suspend them.
The government directive, issued in May, stated that public schools are mandated to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that suit their gender identity, and not their birth gender, or risk federal funding loss.
The recommendation added more fuel to an already raging debate on transgender rights, incurring the wrath of conservatives who argue that civil rights protection should be limited to biological sex, not gender identity.
The complaint said that the US administration has “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 commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”
Additionally, they say that the government has been using systematic inspections and veiled threats to enforce the recommendations on smaller levels, in order to pave the way for bigger issues.
The other states filing the complaint are Alabama, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Maine, Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Georgia, Kentucky and Mississippi.
The states say that they could lose billions in funds for education if they don’t comply. Ten other states had previously sued over the recommendations, totaling 23 states.
The US Education and Justice Departments said that the notices they sent to school districts across the country that while the guidelines had no legal weight, schools must not discriminate against any student, including based on gender identity.
For its part, the US Justice Department said in its filing that the states “have identified no enforcement action threatened or taken against them” and emphasize that the guidelines had no legal effect.
