Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has initiated legal action against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, and other officials within the Biden Administration. The lawsuit aims to halt what Paxton describes as an unlawful attempt to redefine federal law through agency guidance.
This marks Attorney General Paxton’s 75th legal action against the Biden Administration. The lawsuit challenges EEOC guidance issued on April 29, which redefines "sex" in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to require employer accommodations for bathroom usage, dress code compliance, and pronoun usage based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex.
Paxton contends that this new guidance directly contradicts a prior ruling Texas won in 2022, which stopped a similar EEOC directive. According to that ruling, the court determined that the EEOC lacked authority to mandate such reinterpretations of the law and vacated the guidance entirely. The court also issued a binding declaratory judgment between Texas and EEOC stating that Title VII did not require accommodations for bathroom usage, dress code compliance, and pronoun usage according to “gender identity.” Notably, this decision was not appealed by the Biden Administration.
Attorney General Paxton has requested that the court enforce its previous declaratory judgment, vacate the April 29 guidance, and grant injunctive relief preventing further issuance of similar directives by the Biden Administration.
“Yet again the Biden Administration is trying to circumvent the democratic process by issuing sweeping mandates from the desks of bureaucrats that would fundamentally reshape American law,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Texas will not stand by while Biden ignores court orders forbidding such actions and will we hold the federal government accountable at every turn.”
To read the filing, click here.