In parallel with the fight to save the right to abortion in the United States, that, more minority, of certain rights of transgender people, experienced a new brake on Friday. In the aftermath of what’s been called the ‘bathroom war,’ a federal judge in Tennessee has temporarily blocked Biden administration guidelines allowing transgender workers and students to use showers, restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity.
Judge Charles Atchley Jr. of the Eastern District of Tennessee ruled that the federal administration’s guidelines would make it impossible for some states to enforce their own laws on transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports and bathroom access. . Pending a decision on the merits, he therefore suspended them. In August of last year, a coalition of 20 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that they risked losing significant federal funding because Biden’s directives conflicted with the laws of their own states.
“A major win for women’s sport and girls’ privacy and safety”
The Department of Justice, the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, named as defendants in the twenty prosecutors’ lawsuit, had asked Judge Atchley to dismiss the suit in state justice. In vain. The magistrate, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2020, found instead that states “cannot continue to regulate under their state laws while complying with the defendants’ guidelines.” The order “is a major victory for women’s sports and for the privacy and safety of girls and women in their school washrooms and locker rooms,” said Oklahoma Attorney General John O’ Connor, the plaintiffs’ beachhead.
The Sexual Orientation Discrimination Guidelines were issued by the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in June following a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of United States on Civil Rights in 2020. In Bostock v. Clayton County Supreme Court said employers cannot fire workers because of their gender identity or sexuality. The judges specifically declined to decide whether the ruling applied to men’s and women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.
In its guidance issued last year, the Department of Education concluded that the ban on gender bias in federally funded educational programs also applied to schools, setting off a firestorm of recrimination in the conservative and religious, who fear that children will be encouraged from an early age on the slopes of transidentity.
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