AUSTIN, Tex. — The Obama administration on Wednesday faced its first major challenge to its directive this month about the civil rights of transgender students in public schools, as officials in 11 states filed a lawsuit that tested the federal government’s interpretation of the statute forbidding sexual discrimination.
The states, including Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin, brought the case in a Federal District Court in North Texas and said that the Obama administration had “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process and running roughshod over common sense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”
[…]
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, repeating a pledge from the days of Texas independence, called the issue a “come-and-take-it moment.” He said that the state was prepared to vigorously defy the directive and that it would not be cowed by the administration’s pledge to withhold federal funding for non-compliance.
“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy,” Mr. Patrick told reporters. “Well, in Texas, he can keep his 30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the President of the United States.”
Full Story Here. UPDATE: The ACLU has weighed in on this bit of mass hysteria.
However, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that is impossible because they will lack standing in court.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that one cannot sue an agency just because they disagree with the agency’s guidance,” the ACLU said in a press release Wednesday. “If these attorneys general disagree with the agency’s interpretation of what the federal ban on sex discrimination means, they can make that argument to the court when it arises in a real case.”
Instead, the ACLU said that this is nothing more than a “political stunt” from conservative states.
James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT Project said the Texas-based lawsuit is “an attack… on transgender Americans, plain and simple.” He also believes “the real targets here are vulnerable young people and adults who simply seek to live their lives free from discrimination when they go to school, work or the restroom.”
It’s so weird. Whenever people talk about the horrors of US racism in the south, it seems that eventually someone brings up George Wallace’s “Segregation now and forever” 1963 inaugural address. They bring it up because, well, reasonable people appear to agree that Wallace was being an asshole and a horrible human being. Why are these people going out of their way to go down in history alongside people like Wallace? Don’t they think at all?
“Hey, what happened to your grandparents?”
“Uh, we don’t talk about them.”
“Why not?”
“They were horrible regressive people and we prefer to not have anyone know they were part of our family.”
Quite a legacy for your kids. Wallace left a bunch of kids (including one named after Robert E. Lee, according to a quick look at the scroll of knowledge!) -- It must be a great feeling for them to think that every time their dad or grandpa is mentioned, people sneer, or laugh. You know, like how you can just say “Dick Cheney” and nothing more and dissolve a room into headshakes and nervous laughter.
I’ve got a gig in Texas next month. I’m not going to cancel because there aren’t any presold tickets or anything so it won’t hurt or piss anyone off except me. Offhand I can’t think of a particularly good protest.
“… conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process and running roughshod over common sense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”
This is very close to what people were saying in the 50s and 60s about desegregation.
For shame.
Jesus Christ, so many Kim Davises in America.