Texas sues Biden admin over workplace rules mandating preferred pronouns, trans employees access to cross-sex spaces

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched a lawsuit against the Biden administration for mandating that employers make specific accommodations for transgender persons such as requiring preferred pronoun usage, uniforms or dress code, and allowing males who say they are females access to women's only spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and lactation facilities. These new requirements come as part of the administration's update to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, conflating gender identity with biological sex.

"Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, and other officials in the Biden Administration to stop an unlawful attempt to redefine federal law through agency guidance," Paxton's office said.

"In April 29, the EEOC issued guidance that would redefine the meaning of “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to require employer accommodations for bathroom usage, dress code compliance, and pronoun usage in the workplace based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex," the release added.

The lawsuit filing is based upon a previous decision in a case that Texas won in 2022 that stopped similar guidance accommodations based on gender identity. According to the ruling at the time in 2022, the EEOC lacked authority to reinterpret employer accommodations law around "gender identity" instead of sex.

After the Biden administration's EEOC issued guidance on April 29 this year with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the organization tried took a similar approach in making accommodations based around "gender identity" in pronoun usage, bathrooms, dress code compliance, and other standards. These requirements follow the Supreme Court's 2020 Bostock decision, which determined that refusal to accomodate a person's use of cross-sex uniforms or workplace facilities is sex-based discrimination.

“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 in the press release. “Texas will not stand by while Biden ignores court orders forbidding such actions and will we hold the federal government accountable at every turn."