A gender neutral bathroom is seen at the University of California, Irvine in Irvine, California September 30, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
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July 16 (Reuters) – A federal judge in Tennessee has temporarily blocked directives by the Biden administration allowing transgender workers and students to use bathrooms and locker rooms and join sports teams that match their gender identity.
Judge Charles Atchley Jr. of the Eastern District of Tennessee ruled Friday that the administration’s directives would make it impossible for some states to enforce their own laws regarding transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports and access to restrooms.
A coalition of 20 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit last year against the federal government, noting that they would lose significant federal funding because Biden’s directives conflicted with their own state laws.
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Atchley agreed, writing in his order that states “cannot continue to regulate in accordance with their state laws while complying with defendants’ directions.”
Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor, one of the plaintiffs, said in a written statement Saturday that Atchley’s order “is a major victory for women’s sports and for the privacy and safety of girls and women in their school bathrooms and locker rooms.” .
The Department of Justice, the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are named as defendants in the lawsuit. No one immediately responded to requests for comment Saturday. The three had previously asked Atchley to dismiss the states’ case, a motion the judge rejected in his ruling Friday.
The coalition of Republican states has argued that the Biden administration’s directives unduly expand a 2020 US Supreme Court decision that expanded anti-discrimination protections for transgender workers.
The Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County said that employers cannot fire workers because of their gender identity or sexuality. The judges specifically declined to rule on whether the ruling applied to gender-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms.
The Supreme Court in Bostock held that the ban on sex discrimination in the workplace in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extended to bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Department of Education, in its guidance issued last year, concluded that because Title IX, which prohibits gender bias in federally funded educational programs, borrowed language from Title VII, Bostock also applied to schools.
The department said, for example, that preventing a transgender high school girl from using the girls’ restroom or trying out for the girls’ cheerleading squad would violate Title IX.
On Friday, Atchley agreed with the states, writing in his decision that the Supreme Court in Bostock “expressly declined to decide whether “bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms separated by sex” violate Title VII.”
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Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Daniel Wallis
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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