(Stock photo/ MorgueFile)

Eleven states and state officials filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the Obama administration over federal guidance directing schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms and other facilities that match their gender identities.

The federal lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, states that this guidance “has no basis in law” and could cause “seismic changes in the operations of the nation’s school districts.”

This legal challenge has been hinted at by officials since the Obama administration released a letter earlier this month from two federal agencies — the Justice Department and the Education Department — that said they were issuing it in response to questions from school districts and schools.

In that letter, the two agencies cited Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination at educational facilities that receive federal funding, and said that this extended to how schools treat transgender students. The lawsuit filed Wednesday argues that with this letter, the Obama administration was “officially foisting its new version of federal law” on schools and accused federal officials of seeking “to rewrite Title IX by executive fiat.”

This lawsuit — which bears the names of nine states as well as a governor and another state’s education department — is the first filed in response to the administration’s letter. Although some politicians, parents, elected officials and school districts embraced the directive, others aggressively argued against it and said the administration was overstepping its authority.

After the guidance was made public, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, R, said that his state would fight the letter because Obama is “not a king.” Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, accused Obama of trying to “bully Texas schools into allowing men to have open access to girls in bathrooms” and vowed a legal fight. Last week, Paxton and the attorneys general of two other states — Oklahoma and West Virginia — wrote to the agencies that issued the guidance questioning whether states could lose federal funding if they don’t follow the letter. Joy Hofmeister, the state education chief in Oklahoma, had been among those who immediately objected after the guidance was released, calling it “disturbing” that that it carried “an implicit threat of loss of federal funds.”

Paxton argued Wednesday that the lawsuit was needed to protect Texas schools, saying that they face losing federal money “for simply following common sense policies that protect their students.” Jeff Landry, the attorney general for Louisiana, who also signed on to the lawsuit Wednesday, said he would “not allow Washington to wreak further havoc on our schools.”

In a news conference Wednesday, Abbott accused President Obama’s administration of overreach, saying that it was issuing directives on matters that should be dealt with by Congress. Abbott said the state joined the suit to protect the Harrold Independent School District, where the board passed a policy Monday requiring students to use bathrooms coinciding with the sex on their birth certificate.

The policy “means that the district is in the crosshairs of the Obama administration, which claims it will punish anyone that doesn’t comply with their orders,” Abbott said.

“The Obama administration is creating new law outside of the bounds of the Constitution . . . Just as they did with issues like immigration, the Obama administration has decided just to exclude Congress entirely,” he said.

David Thweatt, superintendent of the Harrold school district, which sits near the Oklahoma border and educates 100 students, said Wednesday he knew of no transgender students in his district. But Thweatt said at the same news conference that he felt the policy was important to safeguard students’ privacy.

Thweatt said his district should be able to pass a restrictive bathroom policy without being worried about losing federal funding. “Washington’s mandate doesn’t fit our schools so we are suing to keep the federal government out of our . . . locker rooms,” he said.

Texas is joined in the lawsuit by Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin, as well as the Arizona Department of Education and Maine Gov. Paul LePage, R. In addition, the Harrold school district and another small district in Arizona were included.

This lawsuit was filed against the Justice Department, the Education Department, the Labor Department and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as well as officials with these departments. The Justice Department did not respond to a message seeking comment, while the Education Department — which had said earlier Wednesday that it would not discuss pending litigation — did not respond to a message after the lawsuit was filed. The Labor Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission both declined to comment.

The Obama administration’s guidance, released May 13, came just days after the Justice Department and North Carolina filed dueling lawsuits centered on a law in that state banning transgender people from using restrooms that don’t match the gender on their birth certificates. In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, the states argue that “the Obama Administration’s disregard for federal law as written — and the ability to maintain separate sex intimate facilities — reached its nadir in the wake of events in North Carolina.”

–Emma Brown contributed to this report.