A Tennessee federal judge blocks the the Biden administration from imposing transgender directives, temporarily.
The White House directives include the permission for
workers transgender students to use locker rooms, bathrooms and play for sports teams that correspond to their gender identity.
Last August, 20 Republican state attorney generals sued the federal directives, arguing that it would be “impossible for states to enforce their own rules about transgender athletes participating in girls’ sports or accessing bathrooms,” the New York Post reported.
According to the GOP’s lawsuit, the Biden administration’s directives expanded a 2020 Supreme Court ruling, extending anti-discrimination protections to transgender workers, improperly.
However, Judge Charles Atchley Jr., of the Eastern District of Tennessee, ruled in favor of the Republicans almost a year after the lawsuit was filed.
He also argued that the Republican state attorneys are being pressured by the White House to “change their state laws” to follow the Biden administration’s directive.
According to the reports, until the matter is resolved in the courts, the temporary injunction will be applied.
“As demonstrated above, the harm alleged by Plaintiff States is already occurring — their sovereign power to enforce their own legal code is hampered by the issuance of Defendants’ guidance and they face substantial pressure to change their state laws as a result,” Atchley wrote in the decision released Friday.
Following Atchley’s decision, him, being an appointee of former President Donald Trump resurfaced.
However, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor acknowledged Atchley’s ruling and called it a “major victory for women’s sports and for the privacy and safety of girls and women in their school bathrooms and locker rooms.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Education blasted Atchley’s decision and interpreted the ruling as discrimination based on the Title IX, the 1972 federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.
“The Department’s interpretation stems from the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, issued one year ago this week, in which the Supreme Court recognized that it is impossible to discriminate against a person based on their sexual orientation or gender identity without discriminating against that person based on sex,” the department argued.
