A federal judge in Tennessee temporarily blocked the Biden Administration's directives that allow transgender workers and students to use bathrooms, locker rooms and join sports teams that correspond to their gender identity.
Judge Charles Atchley Jr. of the Eastern District of Tennessee ruled Friday that government directives would make it impossible for some states to enforce their own laws on the participation of transgender athletes in women's sports and access to bathrooms.
Last year, a coalition of 20 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the federal government, saying they stood to lose significant federal funding because Biden's directives conflicted with their own state laws.
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Atchley agreed with that, writing in his ruling that states "cannot abide by their state laws and at the same time abide by guidance" from the people.
Oklahoma Attorney General John O'Connor, one of the plaintiffs, said in a written statement Saturday that Atchley's order "is a huge victory for women's sports and for the privacy and safety of girls and women in sports." bathrooms and locker rooms at their schools.
Restrooms for all genders at the SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco on January 8, 2015.Getty Images
The Department of Justice, the Department of Education and the Commission for Equal Employment Opportunities appear as defendants in the process.
Neither of those institutions immediately responded to requests for comment Saturday.
The three had previously requested that Atchley dismiss the states' lawsuit, a motion the judge denied in his ruling on Friday.
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The coalition of Republican states argued that the Biden Administration's directives improperly expanded on a 2020 US Supreme Court ruling that extended anti-discrimination protections to transgender workers.
In
Bostock v.
Clayton County
, the court said that employers cannot fire workers because of their gender identity or sexuality.
The judges expressly refused to decide whether the ruling applied to bathrooms and locker rooms separated by sex.
The justices held that the prohibition of sex discrimination in the workplace enshrined in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
extended to prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
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The Department of Education, in its guidance issued last year, concluded that since Title IX, which prohibits sexual bias in federally funded educational programs, borrowed language from Title VII,
Bostock may also apply to schools .
.
Education officials said that, for example, preventing a transgender high school girl from using the girls' bathroom or trying out for the girls' cheerleading squad would violate Title IX.
On Friday, Atchley agreed with the states, writing in his ruling that, in the case of
Bostock v.
Clayton County,
the Supreme Court "explicitly refused to decide whether 'sex-separated restrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes' violate Title VII."