Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has attained a victory for children’s safety, after the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas halted the implementation of two “woke” Biden administration rules.
Earlier this year, Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for a rule issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) following the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which prohibits employment discrimination by sexual orientation.
The guidance aimed to force schools and employers to allow confused children and adults to use whatever gender-specific bathroom or locker room they desire based on what gender they feel like they are that day.
Paxton immediately recognized this as an attack against children by the Biden administration.
“It is time for the Biden administration to quit forcing their political agenda,” said Paxton. “This is about the safety of children. It is time to put their well-being first.”
The lawsuit began with the EEOC’s June 15 guidance. This guidance forces employers to “allow exceptions from their generally applicable workplace policies on usage of bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers (collectively, ‘bathrooms’), dress codes, and pronoun usage, based on the subjective gender identities of their employees.”
Additional guidance states that “doctors, medical providers, and other related medical staff who report ‘sex change’ procedures and the administration of puberty blockers to minors as ‘child abuse’ may violate federal law.”
Both rules, Paxton argued, are based on a faulty misinterpretation of the court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, with the last guidance failing to mention that “state law says that such procedures can, in fact, constitute ‘child abuse.’”
The guidance was issued by EEOC Chairman Charlotte Burrows. In the lawsuit, Paxton explains, “that guidance misstates the law, increasing the scope of liability for the State in its capacity as an employer—and Burrows did not even have authority to issue it.”
The term Burrows herself used for this guidance was a “technical assistance document.” This document “explained” what the Bostock decision means for LGBTQ+ workers and employers throughout the country.
Burrows said that it explained the EEOC’s established legal positions on LGBTQ+ related matters, “as voted by the commission.”
However, this guidance was never approved by vote of the commission and was never published in the federal register.
After Paxton’s lawsuit began gaining more traction, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) then released a new rule that “threatened to cut federal funding to states that prohibit ‘sex-change’ procedures and classify it as child abuse.”
Following this rule, Paxton amended his lawsuit to include the Department of HHS, the Secretary of the Department of HHS, and the director of the Department of HHS’s Office for Civil Rights as defendants.
“I will continue to push back against these unlawful attempts to use federal agencies to normalize extremist positions that put millions of Texans at risk,” Paxton announced.
Paxton also argued that the June 15 Guidance wrongfully interprets Title VII and confuses the term “sex” with “gender identity.”
“Simply put,” Paxton said in his amendment to the lawsuit, “gender identity is not more protected than race or national origin, and EEOC was wrong to do so in the June 15 Guidance. Practices or conduct associated with transgender status—as opposed to the status of feeling one is ‘really’ the opposite sex—are not protected at all.”
Leading up to Paxton’s lawsuit, the federal government protected and affirmed child abuse through gender mutilation, threatening to withdraw federal funding from states that disagree with this.
Earlier this month, Paxton attained victory in this amended lawsuit against the Biden administration in the U.S. District Court. This curbs the enforcement of these guidances and rules that threaten the safety of children.
“The court decision is not only a win for the rule of law, but for the safety and protection of Texas children,” said Paxton.
