Texas Gov. Greg Abbott confirmed via Twitter that Attorney General Ken Paxton will sue the Obama administration to challenge the president’s directive that local schools grant bathroom access for transgender students.
Ten other states will join Texas in the lawsuit: Oklahoma, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Maine, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah and Georgia, according to The Associated Press.
Paxton had scheduled a news conference for 2 p.m. Wednesday for a major announcement, but Abbott appeared to have pre-empted it with a tweet shortly after 11 a.m.
Obama administration officials earlier this month directed local school systems to create policies that would grant bathroom access to transgender students based on their gender identity or risk losing federal grants.
Abbott said he did not advise the attorney general on the transgender bathroom lawsuit.
The Obama administration is "trampling the United States Constitution" and consistently ignores it, Abbott said at a Wednesday signing for his book,
Steve Rudner, a Dallas attorney who chairs an organization that advocates on behalf of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Texans, said any lawsuit by Paxton on the issue would only backfire and end up strengthening the rights of transgender individuals in Texas and beyond, and at great expense to the state.
"This is brought to you by the same people who just a year ago said the world would stop spinning if gay people got married,” Rudner said. “Gay people are getting married and the world has not stopped spinning."
When all is said and done in the latest controversy, Rudner said, Transgender people are going to pee where they have been peeing, and the world will continue to spin."
Rudner said Abbott’s suggestion that President Obama was making law or trampling the Constitution makes no sense. His administration’s guidance to schools on transgender bathrooms was in accordance a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Rudner said.
Of Paxton, Rudner said: "This is just an election year stunt to divert attention from Attorney General Paxton’s personal legal problems."
Paxton is under indictment, accused of violating state securities laws.
Ruder said of Patrick "The lieutenant governor has presided over steep cuts for public education. He is now putting federal school funding at risk."
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