Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryan (R). (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
A day after 11 states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over bathroom guidance for transgender students, a 12th state says it wants to get involved.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said in a statement Thursday that his office had already spoken with Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, who is leading the suit.
“I intend, as soon as possible, to join the lawsuit against this latest example of federal overreach,” Bryant said in a statement.
The lawsuit focuses on a letter released this month by the Justice Department and the Education Department telling schools that Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination at educational facilities that receive federal funding, covers how these schools treat transgender students.
Although this guidance was embraced by some and described by federal officials as a needed action to protect civil rights, others — including numerous high-profile conservative officials — pushed back against the directive. Paxton and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) quickly vowed to fight, assailing it as overreach.
Bryant has previously criticized the bathroom guidance, which he called “outrageous” and a “social experiment.” Mississippi’s governor said this week that going along with this guidance would be “harmful to school children and damaging to the process of educating them.”
[Eleven states sue Obama administration over bathroom guidance for transgender students]
The federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in a U.S. District Court states that the guidance in this letter “has no basis in law” and argues that authorities are “flouting the democratic process.”
Mississippi’s push comes as the state approaches the date when a controversial law of its own will take effect.
Last month, Bryant signed a law allowing businesses to refuse service to gay couples based on religious objections. This law stated that it protected “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions,” included among them the belief that marriage is limited to unions between a man and a woman.
The law Bryant signed also says that it protects the belief that a person’s gender is “determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth” and goes on to say that businesses can determine who is allowed to access bathrooms, dressing rooms and locker rooms.
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[North Carolina, Justice Dept. file dueling lawsuits over transgender rights]
Under this law, set to take effect July 1, the state would be barred from taking action against certain businesses that set up policies governing access to bathrooms or locker rooms “in a manner consistent with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.” The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit this month challenging the law.
Texas has already been joined in its lawsuit fighting the transgender bathroom guidance by Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin, as well as the Arizona Department of Education, Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), and school districts in Texas and Arizona.