Texas Governor Announces His Response to President Obama’s Transgender Mandate

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was expected Wednesday to announce he has filed a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s transgender mandate to public schools.

The attorney general announced a news conference in Austin. Several Texas news outlets reported the lawsuit would be announced at that time. Gov. Greg Abbott also confirmed the news on his official Twitter account:

Texas will sue to stop Obama’s transgender directive to schools. Thanks @KenPaxtonTX #tcot #txlege #PJNET

Earlier this month, Texas joined seven other states—West Virginia, Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah and the governors of North Carolina and Maine—in filing an amicus brief in a lawsuit over a Virginia school district bathroom policy. The brief asks for a rehearing of the case before a full appeals court, and emphasizes the states’ primary argument: “sex means biological sex, not gender identity.”

“One’s sex is a biological fact, not a state of mind,” Paxton said in a statement at the time of the filing. “If this radical new interpretation by the Department of Education is permitted to go unchallenged, schools may no longer be able to maintain separate restrooms, showers and locker rooms on the basis of students’ actual sex. Title IX permits all schools to maintain separate facilities, including bathrooms and locker rooms, and I will defend that principle.”

At his press conference, Paxton announced several other states were joining in the lawsuit. They are:

• Maine
• Alabama
• Wisconsin
• West Virginia
• Tennessee
• Arizona
• Oklahoma
• Louisiana
• Utah
• Georgia

The additional states increases the likelihood the U.S. Supreme Court would pick up the case to issue a definitive legal opinion. At the press conference, Paxton issued a brief statement before taking questions.

“Our local schools are now in the crosshairs of the Obama administration, which maintains it will punish those schools who do not comply with its orders,” he said. “These schools are facing the potential loss of school funding for simply following common sense policies that protect their students.

“This represents just the latest example of the current administration’s attempts to accomplish by executive fiat what they couldn’t accomplish through the democratic process in Congress. By forcing through his policies by executive action, President Obama excluded the voice of the people. We stand today to ensure those voices are heard.”