Nearly a dozen states and state officials filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Obama administration’s directive ordering public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their chosen gender.
Officials from 11 states, led by Texas, argued that the federal guidelines have "no basis in law" and charged that the government used "administration fiat" to secure a policy change that should have been left to Congress or the states, the Washington Post reported.
"Defendants have conspired to turn workplace and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights," the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, read.
Republican governors head nine of the 11 states pursuing legal action.
The Arizona Department of Education, Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R.), and the states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin joined Texas in the lawsuit. Two small districts in Arizona were also included in the suit.
The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice issued the directive earlier this month and argued that Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination at federally-funded educational institutions, also applies to the way schools treat transgender students.
"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. These schools are facing the potential loss of school funding for simply following common sense policies that protect their students," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement Wednesday.
The lawsuit arrived weeks after legal battles in the federal government and North Carolina over the Tar Heel state’s House Bill 2, which bars students from using a bathroom that does not correspond with their biological sex.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch characterized the North Carolina law as a civil rights issue.
"There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex," Lynch said while announcing the administration’s new guidance earlier this month.
In response to the announcement, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said that his state would not give into Obama’s "blackmail."