A bid to undo anti-discrimination protections for LGBT students is underway in two western Pennsylvania public school districts.

South Side Area and Knoch school districts, several parents, and two Republican state lawmakers, Reps. Aaron Bernstine and Barbara Gleim, have sued the state, arguing that a two-year-old regulation that afforded protections for gay and transgender people oversteps what lawmakers intended and what the law allows. 

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The lawsuit was filed in the statewide Commonwealth Court late Thursday. It comes at a time when the rights of transgender high school athletes competing in women’s sports have taken center stage nationally. 

If the lawsuit is successful, the state’s Human Relations Commission would no longer be able to investigate complaints about discrimination involving gender, gender identity, expression, or sexual orientation. A favorable ruling would also prohibit transgender student-athletes from competing in women’s high school sports in the state.

The lawsuit names Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which investigates complaints about discrimination because of someone’s race, sex, religion, age, or disability in housing, employment, and public accommodations.

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Shapiro’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The lawsuit takes aim at the definition of sex discrimination that the Human Relations Commission expanded in 2022 to include gender identity, expression, and sexual orientation. The regulation itself was approved by a separate regulatory gatekeeper agency and took effect in 2023.

The plaintiffs argue that the state Supreme Court has interpreted the term “sex” as used in the Pennsylvania Constitution to mean either male or female.

“These regulations literally redefine the word sex to include an awful lot of categories that differ from male and female, and in many respects, they depend upon how people think or how people feel,” Tom King, whose law firm represents both South Side and Knoch, told the Post-Gazette. “It has little to nothing to do with their biological indicators of whether they’re male or female.”

The plaintiffs also claim the state legislature never gave permission to the Human Relations Commission to write regulations expanding the legal definition of sex discrimination. Therefore, their interpretation is not legal. 

“[The lawsuit is] trying to strike down the regulations that the Human Relations Commission set forth on the basis that only the legislature could make these kind of decisions,” King said. “The Human Relations Commission wasn’t elected by anybody and nor were they ever authorized by the legislature to do this.”

The commission has justified expanding the definition by claiming the state’s anti-discrimination laws should be consistent with federal law. 

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The cost of the lawsuit is being largely covered by the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based conservative public-interest law center that focuses heavily on anti-abortion litigation. 

The Thomas More Society has been involved in other Pennsylvania lawsuits, including one in 2023 filed by three school districts challenging the state’s “culturally relevant” teaching guidelines.