Attorney General Chris Carr, along with 19 states, filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Tennessee last week. The complaint seeks to stop the Biden Administration from enforcing new, expansive, and unlawful interpretations of federal antidiscrimination laws.
“The administration is willfully circumventing the authority of Congress and ignoring the rule of law with this regulatory overreach,” said Attorney General Chris Carr. “There is an established process to change antidiscrimination law and federal agencies lack the authority to change the law in this way.”
In the complaint, the multi-state coalition challenges federal guidance issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Education (the Department) concerning issues of enormous importance. The guidance purports to resolve highly controversial and localized issues such as whether schools must allow biological males to compete on girls’ sports teams, whether employers and schools may maintain sex-separated showers and locker rooms, and whether individuals may be compelled to use another person’s preferred pronouns. The federal agencies claim that the guidance simply implements the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, but that decision did not address any of the issues covered by the guidance. The agencies have no authority to unilaterally resolve these sensitive questions, let alone to do so without providing the public with notice and an opportunity to comment.
The multi-state coalition asks the Court to declare the EEOC and Department guidance invalid and unlawful and to prohibit their enforcement.
Georgia is joining this effort alongside the following state attorneys general: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
The complaint is below
