A group of students at the University of North Carolina are fighting back against the Obama administration’s civil rights lawsuit against the state this week by filing a lawsuit of their own, alleging that the federal government is forcing them to choose between their educational pursuits and personal privacy.
“Our clients, the students, are between the proverbial rock and a hard place,” Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the students in their case, told The Daily Signal. “They could lose their funding, they could have neutral restrooms and locker rooms—there’s really only two ways this could go and both of them violate their rights.”
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday against the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education, came a day after U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the Justice Department is pursuing a civil rights lawsuit against North Carolina over the state’s so-called “bathroom bill.”
