(NewsNation) — The state of Texas is suing the Biden administration, claiming workplace protections for transgender employees are unlawful and seeking to have the provisions permanently blocked.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit naming the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice as defendants. The federal lawsuit alleges that protections that are allowed under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should not extend to employees who are transgender.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is also named a defendant in the suit.
Paxson alleges that in April, the EEOC issued an unlawful enforcement guidance that sought to rewrite workplace protections against sexual harassment that broadens the definition of discrimination.
The new guidance, Paxton said, opens up private and state employees to federal lawsuits if they do not accommodate employees’ gender identity rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.
The protections, which are legally nonbinding, would force employees to refer to employees by their preferred pronouns, abolish gender-specific dress codes and allow female restrooms to be used by transgender women, according to the complaint.
The Texas attorney general claims that the EEOC has exceeded its statutory authority, which contradicts the law and violates the Administrative Procedure Act.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is attempting yet again to rewrite federal law through undemocratic and illegal agency action,” Paxton said in a statement. “This time, they are unlawfully weaponizing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in an attempt to force private businesses and States to implement ‘transgender’ mandates—and Texas is suing to stop them.”
The conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation is named as a co-plaintiff in the suit. In a statement, an attorney for the think tank says it is joining the fight against “another blatant abuse of federal power” by the Biden-Harris administration.
The statement also says that the EEOC guidance places women at risk and violates the First Amendment. It claims it is defending small businesses and American families from the EEOC’s “illegal overreach.”
The lawsuit claims that the EEOC’s claims about pronoun, bathroom and dress code accommodations are not accommodations but rather a result of the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition of workplace sexual harassment.
“This is completely wrong,” the lawsuit states. “An employee’s statutory right to be free from sexual harassment is not an ‘accommodation’ to certain employees, such that some employees may be harassed, and others may not,” the lawsuit says.
The suit claims that the EEOC is forcing all male employees and all female employees to comply with the same rules and not allowing some male and female employees to violate those rules as unlawful discrimination based on sex.
The opposite is true, the suit states.
The EEOC referred NewsNation’s request for comment on the lawsuit to the U.S. Department of Justice. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not immediately return an email seeking comment Friday.