Texas' top legal eagle is flying into battle against the Biden administration's latest move on gender identity in schools. Attorney General Ken Paxton has slapped a lawsuit on the feds, accusing them of unlawfully playing fast and loose with Title IX - the federal law that's long protected gals from discrimination in educational programs soaking up federal dollars. Paxton says the Education Department's fresh take on the law would force schools to let blokes who identify as ladies into women-only spaces - think changing rooms and lockers - with the threat of yanking federal funding if they don't play ball, as per the Texas Attorney General's Office.
The lawsuit argues that the administration tried to push this agenda through the back door with informal guidance before getting bold and rewriting the rulebook, stretching Title IX's definition of "sex" beyond biology into the realm of self-declared gender identity, a move Paxton says trashes the Constitution and rips up the protections women were meant to have, Biden's crew is making schools kowtow to what Paxton calls an "unscientific gender ideology," putting girls and women in harm's way, both in grade schools and on college campuses, according to the Texas Attorney General's Office.
The AG isn't new to this rodeo, having sued over similar guidance from the Biden HQ before, even penned a spicy comment letter when whispers of redefining sex started surfacing, but the administration kept on their path and now, Texas says, they've overstepped big time: rewriting Title IX on a whim, undoing safeguards put in place by the Trump administration to ensure accused students get their day in a fair court, the Biden admin is now branding as "harassment" what Texas argues is just plain biology-talk.
Paxton summed up his beef, pulling no punches: "Texas will not allow Joe Biden to rewrite Title IX at whim, destroying legal protections for women in furtherance of his radical obsession with gender ideology," the Texas AG declared - "This attempt to subvert federal law is illegal, undemocratic, and divorced from reality," he vowed Texas will keep up the good fight against what he calls "Biden’s extremist, destructive policies that put women at risk," as detailed by the Texas Attorney General's Office.
