Texas suing USDA over requirement to add LGBTQ protections to nutrition programs’ nondiscrimination policies

Students eat lunch in the cafeteria at a middle school in Kyle last year. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is joining a lawsuit challenging new federal requirements that schools add LGBTQ protections to their anti-discrimination policies to receive Food and Nutrition Service money. (Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune)

Attorney General Ken Paxton and more than 20 other attorneys general are challenging the federal Food and Nutrition Service’s new policy that recipients of food assistance funds update their nondiscrimination policies to protect LGBTQ people.

In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was expanding its interpretation of discrimination based on sex. As a result, state agencies and programs that receive funding from the Food and Nutrition Service were ordered to “investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation” and to update their policies to specifically prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.