Several Republican state attorneys general, including Alabama’s Steve Marshall, are challenging a federal regulation that seeks to protect the rights of transgender students in the nation’s schools.

Title IX protects students in all levels of education from sex-based discrimination. Updated regulations from President Joe Biden’s administration would adjust how colleges respond to sexual assaults and expand protections for LGBTQ and pregnant students.

The federal rule would conflict with laws already on the books in at least 11 states, including Alabama, that stop transgender people from using the school bathrooms that align with their gender.

“Alabama parents do not share the Biden Administration’s goal of genderlessness in our schools,” Marshall wrote in a statement Monday. Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, along with four advocacy organizations, filed a suit in federal court in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Monday. Texas filed a similar suit in federal court in Amarillo, according to The Associated Press.

The officials argue the new policies would hurt women and girls, trample free speech rights and create burdens for the states, which are among those with laws adopted in recent years that conflict with the new regulations.

“This is federal government overreach, but it’s of a degree and dimension like no other,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a news conference Monday.

Another lawsuit has been filed in federal court by lawyers for Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana. Indiana, Tennessee and South Dakota also have stated intentions to file suits.

Filing in multiple federal courts gives the states a better chance that one of them will put the rule on hold nationally before it takes effect on Aug. 1.

“The Final Rule drives a dagger through the heart of Title IX’s mandate,” states contend in the Louisiana court filing. “The central feature of the Final Rule is the Department’s extraordinary move to transform Title IX’s prohibition of discrimination based on ‘sex’ to include discrimination based on ‘gender identity,’” which the lawyers call “a wildly ambiguous term.”

The states say the rule prohibits single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms, “compels school officials both to use pronouns associated with a student’s claimed ‘gender identity’ and to force students to do so as well,” and that it “cannot help but sound the death knell for female sports.”

Biden’s updates do not specifically address sports.

Last week, a federal appeals court ruled in a 2-1 decision that West Virginia cannot bar one teenage transgender athlete from her school’s girls track and field and cross country teams. The state government said it was appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The lawsuit says that even though the Title IX regulation does not address sports participation specifically, it would apply there, too. In the last few years, at least 25 states, including Alabama, have adopted laws keeping transgender students out of girls sports competitions.

The regulation is also murky when it comes to laws intended to protect students and/or teachers from discipline if they misgender transgender or binary students by using the wrong pronouns for them; at least four states have such laws.

The regulation says that using the wrong pronoun “can constitute discrimination on the basis of sex under Title IX in certain circumstances.” But it also spells out that a “stray remark” doesn’t constitute harassment.