Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register July 16 (Reuters) – A federal judge in Tennessee has temporarily blocked the Biden administration’s guidelines allowing transgender employees 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 guidelines would make it impossible for some states to enforce their own laws on transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports and bathroom access. A coalition of 20 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit last year against the federal government, noting that they stood to lose significant federal funding because the Biden directives conflicted with their state laws. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Atchley agreed, writing in his order that states “cannot continue to regulate under their own state laws while simultaneously complying with defendants’ instructions.” 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 school bathrooms and in their locker rooms.” The Department of Justice, the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are named as defendants in the lawsuit. None immediately responded to requests for comment Saturday. The three had earlier asked Atchley to dismiss the states’ lawsuit, a motion the judge rejected in his ruling Friday. The coalition of Republican states argued that the Biden administration’s directives improperly extended a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that extended anti-discrimination protections to transgender workers. The Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County said employers cannot fire workers because of their gender identity or sexuality. The justices specifically declined to rule on whether the ruling applies to gender-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms. The Supreme Court in Bostock held that the prohibition of sex discrimination in the workplace in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extended to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Department of Education in its guidance issued last year concluded that because Title IX, which prohibits sex 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. Atchley on Friday agreed with the states, writing in his ruling that the Supreme Court in Bostock “expressly declined to decide whether “sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes” violate Title VII.” Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas. Editor: Daniel Wallis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
