Eleven states and state officials sued the Obama administration on May 25 for issuing a guidance asking public school districts to allow transgender students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. 

According to the Washington Post, the federal lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The lawsuit claims that the guidance “has no basis in law” and that the directive could cause “seismic changes in the operations of the nation’s school districts.”

The guidance was released on May 13, days after North Carolina filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice over NC House Bill 2, a law that prohibits transgender people from using public bathrooms and facilities in North Carolina that differ from the gender on their birth certificates. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a conference on May 25 that the directives issued by the Obama Administration represent an attempt by the administration to rewrite the law. 

“This represents just the latest example of the current administration’s attempts to accomplish by executive fiat what they couldn’t accomplish through the democratic process in Congress,” Paxton said.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch issued a statement after the release of the guidance which states that discrimination of any kind has no place in schools. 

“This guidance gives administrators, teachers, and parents the tools they need to protect transgender students from peer harassment and to identify and address unjust school policies,” Lynch said.

Texas, Alabama, West Virginia and Georgia were among the eleven states that filed the lawsuit, which is expected to be a prolonged and complicated legal battle, according to Fox News.  

A letter jointly written by the Department of Justice and the Department of Education meant to answer questions that many schools had regarding the guidance cited Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination at educational facilities that receive federal funding. The letter states that the Obama Administration’s interpretation of discrimination includes how schools treat transgender students. 

Because of this, schools that dwo not abide by this guidance potentially risk their federal funding under Title IX. 

“This is no reinterpretation of terms,” Paxton said. “It’s an entire rewrite of law, and that is constitutionally the purview of the Congress, not the President of the United States.” 

In a conference about the situation in North Carolina this month, Lynch described how this battle is about more than just bathrooms. 

“This is about the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we, as a people and as a country, have enacted to protect them,” Lynch said.