At the beginning of the month, U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Texas dealt a blow to the Biden administration’s attempt to legislate the ‘woke agenda.’ Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee, agreed that last year’s U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) ruling went too far.

In his ruling Kacsmaryk wrote that while Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ individuals from discriminatory hiring practices, that doesn’t cover “necessarily all correlated conduct” including choosing which bathroom and pronouns to use.

The EEOC’s ruling at the heart of the discussion sought to protect LGBTQ individuals from discrimination in the workplace by permitting them to use bathrooms based on their gender identity; not their biological gender.

The Conservative Brief reports:

The EEOC’s guidelines were issued in the wake of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which earlier found in Bostock v. Clayton County “that Title VII extends to protect individuals in the workplace from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” The Daily Caller reported, adding: “Several LGBT employees sued after losing their jobs because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

“Case by case, category by category, controversy by controversy, Justice Gorsuch deferred judgement, stating Bostock decided only what Bostock decided . . . . Curiously, the Guidances imply and Defendants continue to argue that Bostock’s reach exceeds the grasp of its author . . . . Defendants . . . cannot rely on the words and reasoning of Bostock itself to explain why the Court prejudged what the Court expressly refused to prejudge,” Kacmaryk wrote.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the administration in September 2021 over the guidance, arguing that it “increas[ed] for the State in its capacity as an employer — and Burrows did not even have authority to issue it.” He also argued that states have the inherent authority to act under their own policies instead of relying on such specific employer guidance from the federal government.

“The court decision’s is not only a win for the rule of law, but for the safety and protection of Texas children,” Paxton said in a press release. “The Biden Administration’s attempts to radicalize federal law to track its woke political beliefs are beyond dangerous. I will continue to push back against these unlawful attempts to use federal agencies to normalize extremist positions that put millions of Texans at risk.”

The statement also noted:

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller supported this challenge and provided compelling evidence that the rule conflicted with the Department of Agriculture’s authority to set reasonable workplace policies. Paxton later amended the lawsuit to include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a defendant after the agency released a new rule threatening to cut federal funding to states that prohibit “sex-change” procedures and classify it as child abuse.  The District Court struck down both rules.