COLUMBUS — Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine warned the Obama Administration on Friday that he will “vigorously defend the interests” of Ohio against its transgender bathroom “edict” to schools.

The Republican said that, absent congressional authorization, he would fight any attempt to withhold funds from schools that don’t allow students to use bathrooms of the gender they identify with.

RELATED CONTENT: Ohio AG Mike DeWine’s letter to Obama administration

“This attempt to nationalize and politicize the way schools address gender identity issues down to the level of school locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms might be dismissed as simple bureaucratic arrogance were it not so potentially harmful to our civic discourse and to the important rights and needs of all the school children involved,” he wrote in a letter to his federal counterpart, Loretta Lynch, and U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr.

“Your assistants apparently have concluded that people of good faith across this country, informed by the basic decency and common sense of their communities, cannot be trusted to work through any particular locker room problems of this sort,” he wrote.

Eleven states, including Ohio’s neighbor West Virginia, sued in federal court this week to block the Obama Administration’s interpretation of existing discrimination law. On Friday, Kentucky’s governor said he also would join the lawsuit. 

Ohio is not a party to that litigation, but DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney said that remains an option.

“It is our hope, as in the past, that providing comment to the U.S. Department of Justice will hopefully change their position,” Mr. Tierney said.

Mr. Tierney said the attorney general, the state’s chief lawyer, sent the letter on his own and was not directed to do so by Gov. John Kasich’s administration or another state client.

The letter is a response to the Obama Administration’s “Dear Colleague” directive sent on May 13 to school districts across the country, telling them they must allow transgender students to use facilities that are consistent with their “internal sense of gender.” 

That would include not forcing them to use individual bathrooms or other facilities separated from other students.

Grant Stancliff, spokesman for the gay-rights organization Equality Ohio, said the few schools that have to deal with this issue are already in compliance with the federal directive.

“Ohio doesn’t have a lot of skin in this game,” he said. “... This is in fact what many Ohio schools are already following. We don’t have a bathroom bill like North Carolina that says your birth certificate has to match what bathroom you use. We know the attorney general is considering another statewide race.”

Brian Murphy, chief of staff for Toledo Public Schools, said earlier this month that students in the district are allowed to use the restroom that most aligns with their gender identity.

Mr. DeWine has confirmed that he is interested in running for governor in 2018.

“Rather than heavy-handed federal bureaucratic action guaranteeing prolonged controversy and litigation over locker room regulation, we need to let our communities sort out how best to advance the dignity and privacy interests of all students,” Mr. DeWine wrote.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette wrote a similar letter to Ms. Lynch and Mr. King on Thursday, according to Mlive.com, requesting that the Obama Administration retract the “Dear Colleague” letter. 

Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.

First Published May 28, 2016, 4:00 a.m.