Late yesterday, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor rejected the Obama administration’s request to stay a portion of the nationwide injunction that Texas obtained prohibiting the Obama administration from enforcing its bathroom directives against public schools across the country. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton leads a 13-state coalition in the lawsuit. The Obama administration asked the Court to rule that the injunction would protect only the 13 plaintiff states, not other states or entities.
“No amount of legal gamesmanship can alter the fact that Title VII’s plain language does not grant the Department of Education the power to foist novel theories of gender identity onto Texas schools,” Attorney General Paxton said. “President Obama has made it his administration’s policy to bypass Congress whenever the democratic process resists his call for radical social change. My office will continue to push back against executive overreach until the president learns to respect the Constitution.”
As the court explained in its order, the “nationwide injunction is appropriate in this case because Plaintiffs have presented a strong facial challenge to the Guidelines, arguing they violate the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”) by skirting the notice and comment process and contradicting existing law.”