(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- Biden administration rules expanding rights for gays and transgender students and employees have been blocked by a federal judge because regulators under Biden evaded an essential requirement of federal law- giving notice of the regulation, giving the public ample time to submit comments, and forcing the agency to address those comments.
Charles Atchley Jr., a U.S. District Court judge, agreed with 20 state attorneys general that the limits may infringe on state rights and are poorly drafted. As reported by the Associated Press, Atchley has put off the limits until a lawsuit can be resolved.
According to the APA, “legislative rules” and “interpretive rules” have different procedural requirements.
APA processes must be followed for a legislative regulation to be valid.
Notice and comment allow concerned parties to express their views on potential legislative changes before they become law. This helps the agency avoid mistakes and make better-informed decisions by preventing them from occurring.
A court chosen by Donald Trump ruled that “As seen above, Plaintiff States’ sovereign competence to apply their legal code is hampered by Defendants’ directions, and they face immense pressure to change their state laws.”
South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia filed a petition asking for the restrictions to be abolished. They were joined by the states of Alabama, Arizona, the District of Columbia, and the states Georgia and Idaho, Indiana, and the states of Kansas, and Kentucky.
U.S. Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued the guidelines in June, according to the AP. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court passed a significant civil rights judgment, protecting gay, lesbian, and transgender workers from retaliation under Title VII.
Biden’s regulators believe that the Bostock judgment has to be widened to include transgender and LGBTQ people. On the other hand, this reasoning is at odds with the verdict, which implies that, as the administration has demonstrated with the further judgments, the decision is limited in scope and cannot be extended beyond the specific instance.
Legal rules” need public notice and criticism.
A precedent from the Sixth Circuit (which has authority over Tennessee) explains that
because interpretive rules cannot impact substantive regulations, a rule that adopts a new position conflicting with any of the agency’s existing regulations is essentially legislative. Plaintiffs may argue that Defendants’ challenged guidance papers are legislative rules that create new rights and obligations, and Defendants don’t think they complied with the APA’s notice and comment requirements.
The Defendants’ interpretations of Title VII and IX are irrelevant to Bostock.
The state attorneys general claim that the Biden administration misinterpreted the high court’s Bostock decision as a backdoor approach to overturn legislation recently adopted in many states that bans transgender women from competing in sports with natural-born women and other laws that limit transgenderism.
