Co-leading a coalition of 15 states, Attorney General Ken Paxton today filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the United States Supreme Court urging the court to overturn attempts by lower federal courts to bypass Congress and to judicially expand provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibit discrimination based on a person’s sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The brief was co-authored by the Attorneys General of Tennessee and Nebraska.

“This is a case about whether federal courts can simply re-write a federal statute when they disagree with the policy choices of the peoples’ elected representatives in Congress,” Attorney General Paxton said. “Congress has repeatedly declined to expand Title VII to cover these characteristics, so unelected federal judges took it upon themselves to do so. It is the duty of the judicial department to say what the law is, not what it ought to be. The Supreme Court must reverse all judges who attempt to do the latter.”

The brief points out that the plain meaning of the word “sex” in the statute refers only to biological status as male or female, and no ordinary reading of that term includes sexual orientation or gender identity. The fact that Congress has considered proposals to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list or characteristics covered by Title VII further shows that the current language of the statute does not include those terms. The attempt by several federal courts to read the statute to include those terms lacks any real basis in the law and is based on the policy preferences of the judges. Our Constitution entrusts such policy decisions exclusively to Congress.

The State of Texas previously won two injunctions against the Obama Administration over similar attempts to expansively re-define sex discrimination in healthcare and education.

Texas is joined in the amicus brief by Tennessee, Nebraska, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.

Read a copy of the brief here.