For me as a liberal, this presidential election campaign has been one, long nightmare. I have visions of a President Donald Trump ripping up the U.S. Constitution, instituting a religious test for prospective immigrants and tinkering with the libel laws, enabling him to sue unfriendly reporters.

I like to think of myself as a relatively honest man. So I have to add that, unless Trump wins the November election, his end run around the Constitution is more rhetorical than real. But the present occupant of the White House has sometimes played fast and loose with the rule of law, thinking himself on the side of the angels.

I am indebted to a Texas judge for prying that realization out of my unconscious — the deep recesses of the mind where, according to Sigmund Freud, we hide unpalatable facts from ourselves.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor enjoined the Obama administration from requiring public schools to allow some transgender students to use the women's room, although they are biologically male. Other transgender students would have been allowed to use the men's room, though they are biologically female, under the administration's now-suspended mandate.

Judge in Texas temporarily blocks Obama's transgender rules for schools

Texas and 22 other states had sued, arguing that the regulation ran roughshod over mores dating to time immemorial. Adam and Eve, the Bible says, "knew they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings."

President Barack Obama explained the bathroom mandate as an extension of civil rights to sexual minorities. His attorney general, Loretta Lynch, told a transgender group: "History is on your side."

That may well be. A court could find that the mandate is perfectly kosher. Even so, Judge O'Connor's order shows that the Obama administration took a shortcut to the future — one that is deeply troubling.

The administration based its transgender mandate on a piece of congressional legislation known as Title IX. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex by educational institutions receiving federal funding. When it was enacted in 1972, "sex" and "gender" were synonyms. Since then, "gender" has taken on a secondary meaning of an individual's perception of being male or female.

In defending its bathroom mandate, the administration argues that what Title IX called "sex" also encompasses what is now known as "gender." So new legislation wasn't needed to give transgender students a choice of toilet facilities, locker rooms and showers. They were just "interpreting" Title IX, the feds say.

Local schools take note of Texas transgender ruling

Government agencies regularly issue interpretations of congressional legislation. There is an established process for doing so, as Judge O'Connor noted. A potential interpretation has to be published, and the public given an opportunity to express its opinion. To be sure, that isn't necessary for a trifling change of a word or two.

But it's a world-class long jump from "sex" in Title IX — meaning women and men have equal rights — to "gender" in Obama's mandate — meaning transgender people have unprecedented bathroom privileges. To my way of thinking, that can't be done by presidential fiat. Only Congress can do it.

Yet the administration didn't preadvertise its bathroom mandate. Obama didn't ask Congress to update Title IX to include gender provisions. Yet there was precedent for doing so. Title IX of 1972 was itself a congressional update on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Convinced he knew what was the right thing to do, Obama authorized the Justice Department and the Department of Education to send a memo to the nation's schools, on May 13 of this year. Basically it said: "This is now the law. Do it or else!"

The memo noted: "Schools receiving federal money may not discriminate based on a student's sex, including a student's transgender status."

In a previous dispute over immigration policy, Obama explained why he felt entitled to unilaterally change the rules. Frustrated by Congress' failure to act, in 2014, he announced new criteria for deciding which of the 11 million immigrants in this country illegally get to stay, and which get deported. It is currently suspended pending review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A federal judge in Texas has blocked an order by the U.S. government that allowed transgender students to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity.

Even before that, the president anticipated criticism, saying: "To those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill."

Yet bypassing the rules in order to do a good deed presents us with a classic slippery-slope problem. If one president is given a pass, how can another be denied the privilege?

Suppose Trump is elected president. Suppose he, too, issues executive orders putting into effect some of his campaign promises. Like subjecting prospective immigrants to "extreme vetting." Or keeping all Muslims — American citizens included — from entering the U.S. "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."

Also suppose that liberals, myself included, haven't called Obama out for bending the rules. How, then, can we protest President Trump's transgressions with a straight face?

rgrossman@chicagotribune.com