Tennessee’s outgoing attorney general is joining multiple states in suing the Biden Administration over its enforcement of federal anti-discrimination laws.
Attorney General Herbert Slatery filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the Eastern District of Tennessee. It seeks to block new guidance from the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) that recognized protections for LGBT students and employees under Title IX. That means any state, local agency or program that receives money through FNS cannot discriminate based on gender or sexuality, or else run the risk of losing federal funding.
This would hurt Tennessee school districts especially so. State lawmakers have passed their own laws preventing transgender students from using the bathroom or participating in school sports without invalidating their gender. As of July 1, the state can withhold its own funding from schools that allow trans girls to play on the girls’ sports team.
Slatery has been a vocal critic of the guidance. He argues that it imposes “new and unlawful” measures that “threatens essential nutritional services.”
The lawsuit comes after the federal government ended its COVID-era school lunch program, which ensured free lunch to all students, regardless of income level. Tennessee school districts have had to decide between ending the program and finding the money in their own budgets to keep the program going.
Metro Nashville Public Schools will continue the program this fall, but neighboring Rutherford County Schools has discontinued the program, and increased lunch prices to keep up with the cost of inflation.
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