The ban on the transgender bathroom rule remains in place pending appeals.
Continued lack of access in public schools to bathrooms matching transgender persons’ gender identity won’t cause them irreparable harm, a Texas federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Reed O’Connor of Wichita Falls, Texas, made that finding Sunday in ruling against two federal executive branch departments.
O’Connor concluded the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Education had failed to show they will suffer irreparable injury if he allows to continue his nationwide ban on their policy for allowing transgender people in public schools access to the bathrooms assigned to the gender with which they self-identify.
The federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “sex”—the scope and meaning of which the federal government agencies claim now includes gender identity—were promulgated nearly 40 years ago, O’Connor wrote.
He referred specifically to the time gap between the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and May this year when the federal agencies announced their new transgender bathroom guidelines for public schools. “[T]he Court views this delay as strong evidence that Defendants will suffer no irreparable injury if a stay is denied and enforcement of the [federal agencies’] guidelines delayed until their legality is established,” O’Connor wrote.
See here for the background. I’m sure no one suffered any injury at all during the time between the passage of Title IX and the much more recent recognition of transgender people as actual human beings.
The litigation over the Obama Administration executive order on immigration will be on hold until next year.
The first major litigation effect of the election of Donald Trump took place in a Texas federal district court Friday when the lawyers in the case against the Obama administration’s plan to delay deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants asked the judge to postpone proceedings until Feb. 20.
“Given the change in administration, the parties jointly submit that a brief stay of any further litigation … would serve judicial efficiency and economy so that the parties have a better understanding of how they might choose to move forward,” U.S. Justice Department lawyers wrote in the filing.
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The injunction will remain in place if the judge grants the motion to stay the proceedings. President-elect Trump would have the option of ending the litigation after his inauguration by withdrawing the guidance that authorized the deportation delays.
SCOTUS had declined to intervene in the appeal of the original ruling that halted this order nationwide, so here we are. Both of these cases involve non-legislative action – an executive order in this case, and an updated administrative guideline from the Department of Education in the other – and so in some sense the litigation doesn’t matter, since both of those actions can and almost certainly will be reversed by the next President. I would imagine that once that happens, the Attorneys General who filed these suits will withdraw them. Such will be life for the next four years.
The best thing both sides of this lawsuit could do right now is agree to suspend work and spending time and money on it until after Trump takes office. He can, and probably will, revoke the Obama dictated guidance letter, and push this back to the states. In other words, this suit will most probably be moot in a couple of months anyway…..stop chasing good money after bad on it.