Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery is leading an effort by 20 U.S. state attorneys general against new anti-discrimination guidelines created by the Biden administration. The group claim the new regulations were created unfairly and go too far in giving leeway to the LGBTQ+ community.
In a letter to President Joe Biden, the attorneys general criticize an executive order that implements a U.S. Supreme Court anti-discrimination ruling that went unheeded by the Trump administration.
Biden’s order states “all persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.” The Human Rights Council (HRC) called it the “most substantive, wide-ranging LGBTQ executive order in U.S. history.”
The order prohibits discrimination in the workplace, including hiring, termination, promotion, conditions of employment, benefits, and harassment. The HRC explained “for example: a bisexual woman cannot be fired from her job just because her employer learned of her sexual orientation, and a transgender man cannot be forced to wear a women’s uniform at his place of employment.”
The ruling prohibits discrimination at all federally funded educational programs, including K-12, vocational programs, and higher education programs. The HRC explained, “for example: a gay student can’t be prohibited from going to his public high school’s prom just because his date is also a boy, and a transgender girl cannot be harassed by a teacher who refuses to use her correct name because it is a feminine name.”
The order also prohibits discrimination in housing, federally funded healthcare programs (like the Affordable Care Act), and in the issuance of credit, including loans and credit cards.
Guidance on how to enforce the order came from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Education in mid-June. Slattery and the other AGs say the new guidelines “attempt to force radical changes on nearly every employer and school across the nation.”
The AGs criticize Biden for ”unilaterally plunging ahead with these sweeping dictates.” No public hearings were held and the guidance document “simply appeared.” This subverted democracy as ”the states and other affected institutions and individuals have been excluded from any discussion.”
No longer, according to the Department of Education, will schools be allowed to preserve the privacy of middle school and high school students by ensuring they can use sex-specific showers, locker rooms, and restrooms.
Statement from Slatery’s office
Further, they claim the guidance goes further than the Supreme Court’s ruling, which, according to the AGs, “explicitly refrained from addressing ‘sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes” at school or work.
The administration’s order says “children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.” (Slatery once sued the Obama Administration after it issued guidance on transgender students and bathrooms.)
”No longer, according to the Department of Education, will schools be allowed to preserve the privacy of middle school and high school students by ensuring they can use sex-specific showers, locker rooms, and restrooms,” reads the statement form Slatery’s office.
The new guidelines also warn that using incorrect pronouns for a person may be discriminatory and have legal implications.
“If an employer fires an employee because that person was identified as male at birth, but uses feminine pronouns and identifies as a female, the employer is taking action against the individual because of sex since the action would not have been taken but for the fact the employee was originally identified as male,” reads the guidelines.
The AGs took aim at this, too, claiming the ”First Amendment protects the right to ascribe pronouns to others based on their sex.”
They claim the “First Amendment protects the right to ascribe pronouns to others based on their sex.”
“With respect to pronouns, the EEOC’s guidance comes across as an effort to leverage the authority of the federal government to chill protected speech disfavored by [the Biden] administration,” they wrote.
Alphonso David, president of the HRC, said the ruling has been “transformative.”
“The Bostock ruling was a landmark moment in the on-going fight for LGBTQ equality — no one should be denied a job, excluded from benefits, harassed or fired simply because of who they are or whom they love,” he said in statement in June. “It has been transformative for the LGBTQ community to know we have the right to be ourselves in the workplace.”
The letter was led by Slatery and signed by the AGs of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia.
