11 States Sue Obama Administration Over Transgender Bathroom Rules

Eleven states filed a joint lawsuit Wednesday against the Obama administration over the release of recent federal guidelines that direct schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice.

The defendants are asking the court to declare the rules "arbitrary," "capricious," and "without observance of the procedure required by law."

The lawsuit claims that the federal government has "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 commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights."

Included as plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah, Georgia and the governor of Maine, along with a few school districts.

The Department of Justice and the Department of Education sent a letter laying out these guidelines May 13, which threatened to revoke federal funding to schools that did not comply.

Central to the administration's argument is the idea that transgender individuals should be covered under the Title IX rules that bar discrimination on the basis of sex in publicly funded schools.

• Read more about the guidelines here.

This isn't the first conflict between the federal government and the states over the issue of transgender rights. North Carolina and the Department of Justice are currently suing each other over a disagreement about the state's law requiring individuals to use the bathroom that matches the gender they were assigned at birth.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized the Obama administration for its action on the issue, arguing that the decision about how to treat transgender students should be left up to the states.

However, Trump has also said that transgender people should be allowed to use whichever bathroom they choose. Even in his recent statements, he has isn't insisted we should "protect everybody."

Defenders of the administration's decision have pointed out that the federal government has long had a recognized, if it at times controversial, role in addressing school discrimination.

"The federal government passed Title IX in the 1970s after it became clear that states were failing to ensure equal opportunities for women in schools," wrote German Lopez at Vox. "Now the country is seeing the same kind of failure with trans people."

The attorney general of Utah, one of the states joining the lawsuit, issued a statement today in support of the legal action:

"The federal government's 'one size fits all' mandate, disconnected from the needs of Utah schools, disrespects individuals and ignores the law," the statement reads. Later on, it continues, "This is not really about bathrooms, but federal overreach."

Writing for Gallup, Frank Newport explained that is hard to gauge the public's feeling toward transgender rights and different rules regarding bathroom use. Since these issues haven't existed in the public consciousness for very long, answers to opinion polls are highly influenced by the way questions are worded. And since pollsters don't have a long history of asking these sorts of questions, it's impossible to decipher any longer term trends in sentiment.

Read the full lawsuit here.