Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2021. Paxton sued the federal government in September over the Biden administration’s addition of a gender identity-related disorder to the disabilities protected under a section of a 1973 federal law. Republican attorneys general from 16 other states, including South Carolina, joined the lawsuit. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Amid a public backlash over the potential loss of disability protections, 17 Republican state attorneys general submitted a new court filing last week to clarify their position in a lawsuit that seeks to strike down part of a federal law that safeguards disabled people from discrimination.
The lawsuit, filed in September, targets the Biden administration’s addition of a gender identity-related disorder to the disabilities protected under a portion of federal law known as Section 504.
The AGs, in a joint status report filed with a U.S. District Court in Texas, clarified that they don’t want the lawsuit to take away Section 504 accommodations for people with disabilities.
“We’ve been saying all along that there was never any intention to take away 504 accommodations, and this court filing confirms that,” South Carolina Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement Thursday.
“We never asked the court to throw out Section 504 entirely. We were challenging the Biden administration trying to force states to adopt woke gender ideology by trying to attach it to Section 504 as a condition for federal funding,” he continued.
In recent weeks, the AGs have faced a growing public outcry stemming from conflicting messages about what the lawsuit would do.
The provision in question, Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, prohibits entities that receive federal funding from discriminating based on disability. For example, the law prohibits hospitals from denying organ transplants to people because they have a disability. It requires schools to allow deaf students to use speech-to-text technology. The law covers a wide range of disabilities, including vision and hearing impairments, autism, diabetes, Down syndrome, dyslexia and ADHD.
Last May, the Biden administration issued a rule that added to the covered disabilities “gender dysphoria,” the psychological distress that people may experience when their gender identity doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth. Gender dysphoria is defined in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
National disability rights groups, advocates and experts have pointed to parts of the lawsuit in which the AGs ask the court to find the entirety of Section 504 unconstitutional. They fear that if the court agrees, the law’s discrimination protections for all people with disabilities could vanish.
Arkansas Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin, Georgia Republican Attorney General Chris Carr and others issued public statements in recent weeks adamantly denying that interpretation. Griffin has said that if the states win the lawsuit, “regulations would go back to what they were” before the gender identity-related disorder was added.
“Plaintiffs clarify that they have never moved — and do not plan to move — to declare or enjoin Section 504 … as unconstitutional on its face,” the new joint status report reads.
The lawsuit is currently on hold. The parties in the case agreed to pause litigation shortly after President Donald Trump took office, while his administration reevaluates the federal government’s position. A spokesperson for Carr told Stateline in an email that they expect the Trump administration to reverse the Biden rule, which could cause the lawsuit to be dropped.
Before last week’s filing, Wilson said Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order stating that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female” resolved his concerns. “Our mission is complete,” Wilson said.
In his latest statement, Wilson said he expects the lawsuit to go away entirely.