Eleven states have filed suit against the Obama administration over its directive to public schools that would allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that conform to their gender identity.

The lawsuit announced Wednesday includes Oklahoma, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Maine, Arizona, Louisiana, Utah and Georgia. It asks a North Texas federal court to declare the directive unlawful in what ranks among the most coordinated and visible legal challenges by states over the socially divisive issue of bathroom rights for transgender persons.

 The suit says the Obama administration "conspired to turn workplace and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights."

The White House had no comment about the lawsuit.

The Lt. Governor of Texas had said earlier he was willing to forego the $10 billion in education funding from the federal government to ignore the directive.

"It's not moot because it was thrusted upon us by the federal government," Superintendent David Thweatt said, "or we were going to risk losing our federal funding."

The Department of Justice issued the directive after North Carolina passed a law that requires transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender listed on their birth certificate.

"The fact that the federal government has yet again decided that it knows what is best for every one of our local communities is insulting and, quite frankly, intolerable," Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas said.