Court hands Texas a win against Biden-era EEOC on 'pronoun police' case

(The Center Square ) – A north Texas district court has ruled in favor of Texas in a lawsuit brought against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over its Biden-era Enforcement Guidance on bathroom and pronoun policies.

Last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the EEOC, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and other federal officials to block an EEOC guidance that redefined the meaning of “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Center Square reported.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division, the same court where Paxton filed a lawsuit in 2021 to block similar EEOC guidance, which the court struck down.

In 2021, the EEOC issued guidance requiring employers to allow exceptions for employees with stated “gender preferences and identities” to use bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, dress codes and personal pronouns contrary to their biological sex. Texas argued the guidance was unlawful and increased the scope of liability for all employers, including the state of Texas, which employed roughly 140,000 people in September 2022, according to the state comptroller’s office.

The lawsuit was later amended to include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a defendant after the agency promulgated a new rule threatening to cut federal funding to states that prohibit “sex-change” procedures on minors and classify the procedure as child abuse. Biden administration guidances would have allowed biological males to use women’s facilities and abolished sex-specific workplace dress codes.

The court struck down both rules, vacated the 2021 guidance and issued a binding declaratory judgment between the EEOC and Texas.

A similar ruling was issued on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The 2024 guidance sought to redefine “discrimination” to include “gender identity,” opening up private and state employers to lawsuits if they didn’t adopt sweeping “transgender inclusive policies” and comply with “pronoun police,” Paxton argued.

“The Biden Administration unlawfully tried to twist federal law into a tool for advancing radical gender ideology by attempting to force employers to adopt ‘transgender’ policies or risk being sued,” Paxton said. “The federal government has no right to force Texans to play along with delusions or ignore biological reality in our workplaces. This is a great victory for common sense and the rule of law.”

Kacsmaryk’s 34-page ruling says the EEOC exceeded its statutory authority and its guidance was “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent” and vacated it.

He also rejected EEOC’s arguments, said it misread the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v Clayton County, “cited no binding authority for its metastasized definition of ‘sex,’” and contravened Title VII by defining discriminatory harassment to include transgender bathroom, pronoun and dress preferences. He also said if Congress wanted to redefine "sex" in Title VII to include “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” it would have. “But it did not,” he wrote. “Congress has the power to amend statutes to add accommodations, EEOC does not. Yet that's exactly what the enforcement guidance does.”

Kacsmaryk also listed sections of the guidance that he said are unlawful and vacated them.

The Trump administration EEOC is unlikely to appeal the ruling.