Conservatives File Lawsuit to Rollback LGBTQ+ Protections in Pennsylvania

From the Buck County Beacon

the Beacon

A conservative law firm has once again sued to make Pennsylvania a more repressive state, targeting LGBTQ protections in public schools. Thomas More Society attorneys filed suit earlier this month to force the Shapiro administration to get rid of the state’s broader definition of “sex” as it applies to sex discrimination. It’s not the first time this national right-wing group has tried to roll back civil rights for Pennsylvanians, and used Pennsylvania lawyers to do it.

The Lawsuit

The Petition for Review was filed March 6, 2025, on behalf of two school districts (South Side in Beaver County and Knoch in Butler), as well as several parents and taxpayers, including State Representative Barbara Gleim (District 199) and State Representative Aaron Bernstine (District 8). The two representatives were part of the group of PA House members who tried to block certification of the 2020 election, falsely claiming election improprieties.

The suit challenges the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission (PHRC) over the expansion of its definition of “sex” beyond “the individual’s biological chromosomes and genitalia at birth” to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. The PHRC, says the suit, have added whole new sub-categories such as homosexual, asexual, and bisexual (at no point in the suit can they bring themselves to use the word “transexual”).

The argument comes in two parts.

First, the lawsuit argues that the PHRC does not have the authority to make such an alteration to make such an alteration, arguing that folks have always understood that “male” and “female” as a reference to biological chromosomes and genitalia at birth, and the PHRC is illegally rewriting law to suggest otherwise by creating sub-categories of “sex” based on a person’s inclinations, practice, expression, or sexual attraction.

Second, the suit leans heavily on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Allegheny Reproductive Health Center v. PA DHS. The case challenged the state’s ban on using Medicaid dollars to fund abortion in the state. The 2024 decision was a victory for the reproductive health center and it hinged on the state’s Equal Rights Amendment, arguing that by funding men’s reproductive health care, but not women’s, the state was violating the ERA.

The lawyers in the current case are arguing that this previous State Supreme Court decision codified “sex” to mean only male and female.

But Allegheny acknowledges in several places that transgender and non-binary people may be capable of pregnancy and childbirth. The suit quotes the ruling, “[B]ased upon the unambiguous text of the Equal Rights Amendment, there is no room for a carve out for laws that differentiate between the sexes for any reason.” But it’s not clear that this rules out definitions of sex based on factors other than chromosomes and genitals.

The legal firm expresses particular concern that the PHRC regulation would “have profound implications for the preservation of equal rights and parental authority, while threatening school policies on issues like bathrooms and athletics—placing districts in legal jeopardy.” In other words, the PHRC rules would create trouble for school districts that wish to discriminate against LGBTQ students.

Read the full article here (no paywall).