Judge Temporarily Blocks Obama Administration’s Transgender Bathroom Rules

Decision affects school nationwide just as many students return from summer vacations.

A federal judge in Texas has temporarily blocked the Obama administration’s directive allowing transgender public school students to use the bathroom of their choice, siding with Texas and a coalition of 12 other states that filed a lawsuit over the issue.

In a ruling issued late Sunday, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor said that administration failed to take proper steps in crafting the recent guidelines, which say schools should let students use the bathroom of their chosen gender identity.

Judge O’Connor said that because the guidelines were in effect legally binding regulations, the Department of Education should have held a formal process allowing those impacted—in this case, states and school districts—to publicly comment on them.

“The Guidelines are, in practice, legislative rules—not just interpretations or policy statements because they set clear legal standards,” Judge O’Connor wrote. “Although Defendants have characterized the Guidelines as interpretive… their actual legal effect prove that they are ‘compulsory in nature.’”

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