Paxton sues Biden administration on several issues, from transgender policies to lizards

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration on a range of issues, from transgender policies to lizards in west Texas.

His office sent out a flurry of announcements over the past two weeks touting Texas’ ongoing commitment to challenge Biden administration “weaponization” policies.

Earlier this month, Paxton notified the Biden administration that Texas was suing to stop the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard from being listed as an endangered species, using “flawed assumptions about oil and gas development and unfounded speculation about climate concerns.” The designation was a reverse course after Texas businesses and ranchers have spent millions of dollars and decades to preserving the lizard’s habitat in the oil-rich Permian Basin in west Texas, The Center Square reported.

Critics argue the designation was made solely as a political move in an election year to appease environmentalists and “shut down American oil and gas” when the industry says it has empirical evidence of its successful conservation efforts.

“The Biden Administration has sought countless ways to weaponize federal power to harm Texas’s oil and gas industries,” Paxton said, and his office is “prepared to take action to protect the Texas economy, preserve Texans’ private property rights, and maintain our State-guided conservation efforts that protect our environment.”

A few days later, a federal judge handed Texas a win in a lawsuit it filed to block a Biden administration Title IX rule change from going into effect. The rule redefined an anti-discrimination provision to replace biological sex with sexual orientation or gender identity. It would “have forced our schools to accommodate biological men on women's sports teams and in female bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms, and required students and teachers to use incorrect pronouns,” Paxton said.

Next, Paxton sued the administration over a new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rule that he said would effectively shut down rural nursing homes. It would force those in Texas “to hire more than 10,000 personnel with highly specific qualifications – more personnel than are currently available in the labor market within the State and specific service areas,” Paxton said. “Facilities in particularly challenging areas such as rural locations are at risk of shutting down due to the well-known national shortage of qualified personnel in the industry with an outsized effect on certain regions.”

The lawsuit alleges the rule is arbitrary and capricious and violates the Administrative Procedure Act and Major Questions Doctrine.

“This power grab by Biden’s health bureaucrats could put much-needed care facilities out of business in some of the most underserved areas of our state,” Paxton said. It could “worsen rural care shortages by shutting down facilities due to new hiring quotas that are impossible to fill.”

On Thursday, Paxton again sued the Biden administration over another federal rule change forcing private businesses and state governments to implement transgender policies. He first sued over the same issue in April, which was at the time his 75th lawsuit against the Biden administration. The defendants are slightly different in the cases and the Heritage Foundation joined as co-plaintiff in the second lawsuit.

At issue is Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance that rewrote Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by broadening the definition of “discrimination.” It requires employees “to use others’ preferred pronouns; allow transgender individuals to use the shower, locker room, or restroom that corresponds to their gender identity; and allow employees to adhere to the dress code that applies to the opposite biological sex.”

Paxton argues the guidance is 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. It also opens the door for employers to be sued that don’t “use so-called ‘preferred pronouns,’ allow biological males into women’s facilities, or abolish sex-specific workplace dress codes.”

The lawsuits were filed in U.S. District Court Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division, the same court where Paxton filed a lawsuit three years ago to block similar EEOC guidance.

In 2021, the court ruled the EEOC lacked any authority to reinterpret the law and issue any mandates based on that faulty interpretation. It also ruled the guidance was unlawful because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not require employers to provide accommodations to employees based on their perceived gender identities. The EEOC and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office did not appeal the court’s ruling.