Texas sues Biden administration over LGBTQ+ workplace protections

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued on Wednesday the Biden administration over a series of LBGTQ+ workers protection.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has also been targeted by the suit, which contests a guidance seeking to provide workplace accommodations to workers from this group.

Concretely, they make it unlawful workplace harassment to prevent actions such as allowing employees to use the bathroom of their gender identity. According to The Texas Tribune, the guidance isn't legally enforced and serves to distinguish what constitutes harassment under the EEOC.

Texas' lawsuit, however, argues that the guidance specifically targets the state because some employers don't have to comply with such federal policies. Paxton said that enforcing the guidance would lead Texas to reevaluate is agencies, causing "irreparable harm" to its finances and redefine "sex."

"Yet again the Biden Administration is trying to circumvent the democratic process by issuing sweeping mandates from the desks of bureaucrats that would fundamentally reshape American law," Paxton said in a statement.

"Texas will not stand by while Biden ignores court orders forbidding such actions and we will hold the federal government accountable at every turn."

The lawsuit comes a little less than a month after a similar guidance by state Governor Greg Abbott, who directed the Texas Education Agency to disregard a rule from the Biden administration extending federal protections against sex discrimination to encompass LGBTQ+ students.

The federal government's directives, slated to take effect in August, bring changes to Title IX, the comprehensive civil rights legislation that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded colleges and K-12 schools.

These new regulations redefine sex discrimination and sex-based harassment to address misconduct stemming from sex stereotypes, pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

In a public letter addressed to the White House, Abbott characterized the new regulations as an "abuse of authority" and vowed to "defend" the original law.

"Title IX was written by Congress to support the advancement of women academically and athletically. The law was based on the fundamental premise that there are only two sexes -male and female," he wrote.