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Summary: A U.S. Judge issued a nationwide injunction to halt enforcement of Obama’s transgender public school bathroom guidelines.
A Texas judge blocked the recent federal guidelines regarding transgender public school students and their bathroom choice. In May, President Barack Obama and his office issued a letter to all school districts that contained detailed instructions on how schools can ensure students are not discriminated against, and his guidelines were met with praise and criticism.
Obama’s order met resistance from 13 states, and according to Reuters, the nationwide injunction was led by Texas.
Judge Reed O’Connor from the Northern District of Texas said on Sunday in his ruling that the Obama administration did not follow proper notification procedures in issuing the guidelines. He added that the guidelines were similar to laws and that they contradicted with existing legislation.
O’Connor was an appointee of President George W. Bush.
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Reuters said that O’Connor’s ruling gives a victory to the 13 conservative states that sought to enact strict bathroom laws, prohibiting men from entering women’s restrooms, which some viewed as discriminatory towards transgender individuals.
Conservatives argued that this law was important to protect women and children from predators.
“It is simply crazy and the idea that grown men would be allowed alone in a bathroom with little girls — you don’t need to be a behavioral psychologist to realize bad things can happen, and any prudent person wouldn’t allow that,” Senator Cruz told Glenn Beck. “And it is only the lunacy of political correctness, ESPN fired Curt Schilling for making the rather obvious point that we shouldn’t allow grown adult men strangers alone in a bathroom with little girls, that’s a point anyone who is rational should understand.”
The Department of Justice said they were disappointed in O’Connor’s ruling, and legal experts expect the DOJ to appeal. This recent injunction does not stop families of transgender students from filing their own discrimination lawsuits against their school districts and it does not stop schools from following Obama’s guidelines if they wish to.
Joshua Block, an ACLU attorney, said that the injunction’s main impact is that it prevents the government from carrying out enforcement against schools on transgender issues. In the May letter, the Obama administrative said that schools that discriminated against transgender students could lose federal funding.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he was happy with the injunction because he was against “illegal federal overreach.”
Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin were the other states contesting Obama’s bathroom guidelines.
What do you think of the bathroom issue? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Reuters
Photo courtesy of Mashable
