Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a thirteen-state-coalition in suing the federal government over the Title IX guidance letter handed down by President Obama regarding transgender students use of bathrooms and shower at public schools.
“How you feel about your gender does not change your sex, and how the president feels about his authority to write laws cannot change the fact that the Constitution grants that power to congress,” Paxton said when speaking about the Obama Administration’s mandate on a panel at the Heritage Foundation Wednesday.
According to Paxton, by misinterpreting the term “sexual discrimination” in Title IX, President Obama’s administration has rewritten the words that Congress specifically chose by adding rules that make gender and sex interchangeable, despite Congress separating the two terms when Title IX was originally created.
As Paxton points out, redefining sexual discrimination and rewording Title IX so that sex and gender have the same meaning amounts to rulemaking, a practice President Obama does not have the Constitutional authority to do.
“Obama thinks that sex is the same as gender but as Inigo Montoya told Vizzini, ‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means,’” Paxton joked.
With eighteen percent of the Texas state education budget coming from the federal government, the state cannot afford the threat of losing funding over President Obama’s misinterpretation of Title IX.
Paxton says he will continue to fight to ensure that schools are protected and don’t lose funding if they choose not to allow boys to use girl restrooms or girls to undress in a boys locker room.
