A U.S. District judge has halted the Obama administration’s mandate that federally-funded schools allow students who identify as the opposite sex to use the restrooms, locker rooms and other sex-segregated facilities of their choice.

The instructions were issued in mid-May by Justice and Education department officials, after the administration reinterpreted the 1972 Title IX anti-discrimination law to protect gender identity. “It does not have the force of law,” the New York Times explained, “but it contains an implicit threat: Schools that do not abide by the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law could face lawsuits or a loss of federal aid.”

In response to the lawsuit, the administration said in a letter that the mandate — which it called “guidance documents” — is not legally binding. The documents “are merely expressions of agencies’ views as to what the law requires.” The administration is “backpedaling pretty fast,” said one plaintiff in the case.

A Difficult Issue

In his decision, issued Sunday, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor wrote that “This case presents the difficult issue of balancing the protection of students’ rights and that of personal privacy when using school bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and other intimate facilities, while ensuring that no student is unnecessarily marginalized while attending school.”

But, he noted, “the Constitution assigns these policy choices to the appropriate elected and appointed officials, who must follow the proper legal procedure.”

O’Connor ruled that federal agencies had not followed proper legal procedure and had overstepped their legal bounds in reinterpreting laws passed by Congress. Agencies are bound by the Administrative Procedures Act and they had both failed to obey its requirements for giving public notice and allowing time for comments and wrongly issued orders that contradicted the existing legislation and regulations.

Led By Texas

The decision was made in response to lawsuits filed by 13 states against various federal agencies earlier this summer, led by Texas. That state’s Attorney General, Ken Paxton, told The Stream before the decision that both federal and state laws protect schools from following the administration’s order. “Under the Texas Education code, parents can direct the education of their children,” he said, adding that only Congress — not federal agencies — can change Title IX.

After the decision, Paxton said in an official statement released to The Stream that “the court ruled against the Obama Administration’s latest illegal federal overreach. This President is attempting to rewrite the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people, and is threatening to take away federal funding from schools to force them to conform.” The states and local schools, he said, are the ones responsible “to establish a safe and disciplined environment conducive to student learning.”

Congressman Diane Black of Tennessee, a sponsor of a bill to protect state and local governments in this matter, praised the decision in a press release. “A federal government so big and so powerful that it has extended its reach all the way to the school bathroom stall is a government that has lost its way,” she said. “Educators and school administrators are better equipped than any DC bureaucrat to care for the unique needs of their student population.”

LGBT advocates expect O’Connor’s decision to be appealed, possibly to the U.S. Supreme Court. That Court has already gotten involved in the gender identity debate once, when in early August the Court put a temporary hold on a school being forced to allow a girl who identifies as a boy to use the restroom of her choice.