(The Center Square) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration on a range of issues, from transgender policies to West Texas lizards.
His office has made a series of announcements over the past two weeks touting Texas’ continuing efforts to counter the Biden administration’s “weaponization” policies.
Earlier this month, Paxton notified the Biden administration that he was suing to block Texas from listing the Dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered, citing “false assumptions about oil and gas development and unfounded speculation about climate issues.” The designation is a step backwards, given that Texas businesses and ranchers have spent millions of dollars and decades to protect the lizard’s habitat in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas, according to The Center Square.
Critics argue the designation was made solely as a political move to appease environmentalists in an election year and “shut down U.S. oil and gas,” but the industry argues it has empirical evidence that conservation efforts are successful.
“The Biden Administration has explored myriad ways to weaponize federal power to harm Texas’ oil and gas industry,” Paxton said, adding that his office is “prepared to act to protect the Texas economy, preserve Texans’ private property rights, and uphold state-led conservation efforts that protect our environment.”
Days later, a federal court ruled in favor of Texas in a lawsuit it filed to block the Biden administration’s Title IX rule changes from going into effect. The rules redefined non-discrimination provisions to replace biological sex with sexual orientation or gender identity. “The rules would force schools to allow biological males onto girls’ sports teams and into girls’ bathrooms, showers and locker rooms, and require students and teachers to use the wrong pronouns,” Paxton said.
Next, Paxton sued the state over new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rules that he said would effectively close nursing homes in rural areas. He said the rules would force Texas nursing homes to “hire more than 10,000 individuals with very specific qualifications, which exceeds the number currently available in the labor market in the state and within specific service territories,” Paxton said. “Facilities in particularly challenging areas, such as rural areas, are at risk of closure because the shortage of qualified personnel in the industry is well known nationwide and disproportionately impacts certain areas.”
The lawsuit argues that the rule is arbitrary and capricious and violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the leading question doctrine.
“This power grab by Biden’s health bureaucrats could force desperately needed medical facilities out of business in some of the most underserved areas of the state,” Paxton said. “It could exacerbate rural health care shortages by forcing facilities to close due to new job openings that can’t be filled.”
Paxton sued the Biden administration again on Thursday over changes to federal regulations requiring private companies and state governments to implement transgender policies. He first sued on the same issue in April, but at the time it was his 75th lawsuit against the Biden administration. The defendants were slightly different in both cases, and the Heritage Foundation joined as a co-plaintiff in the second lawsuit.
At issue are Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines that rewrote Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to broaden the definition of “discrimination,” requiring employees to “use others’ preferred pronouns, allow transgender people to use showers, locker rooms, or restrooms consistent with their gender identity, and allow employees to comply with any dress code applicable to the opposite biological sex.”
Paxton argues the guidelines are unlawful and expand liability for all employers, including the state of Texas, which employed about 140,000 people in September 2022, according to the Texas Comptroller’s Office. The guidelines also open the door to lawsuits for employers who “don’t use so-called ‘preferred pronouns,’ don’t allow biological males into women’s facilities, or don’t eliminate gender-based workplace dress codes.”
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division, the same court where Paxton sued three years ago to block similar EEOC guidelines.
In 2021, the court ruled that the EEOC did not have the authority to reinterpret the law and issue an order based on that erroneous interpretation, and that the guidance was unlawful because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not require employers to provide accommodations based on an employee’s gender identity. The EEOC and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office did not appeal the court’s decision.
