Opponents of Austin's anti-discrimination ordinances have opened a second front in their attack on the city's protections for gay and transgender people.

Last weekend, a Houston-based group of conservative Christian pastors filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Austin's employment protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

That has been followed by a second, broader lawsuit filed on behalf of Texas Values, a conservative Christian public policy advocacy group, that seeks to invalidate Austin ordinances making it illegal to discriminate against gay and transgender people in housing and employment decisions.

The latest lawsuit also targets Austin's public accommodation ordinance that prohibits businesses and individuals from refusing to serve people because they are gay or transgender.

Both lawsuits argue that Austin's nondiscrimination ordinances violate religious liberties by forcing business owners, church leaders and individuals into actions that are contrary to the religious belief that homosexuality is immoral.

The Texas Values lawsuit, filed Monday in state District Court in Austin, argues that faith-based opposition to homosexuality should allow people and businesses to:

• Refuse to hire or retain "practicing homosexuals or transgendered people" as employees.

• Decline to rent property to tenants "who are engaged in non-marital sex of any sort, including homosexual behavior."

• Refuse to participate in or lend support to same-sex marriages.

• Refrain from providing benefits to the same-sex partners or spouses of employees.

• Declare that transgender people must use bathrooms that correspond to their "biological sex."

Ordinances that ban such actions, the lawsuit argued, violate the Texas Constitution's protection of the free exercise of religion and a state law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1999, that says governments cannot "substantially burden a person's free exercise of religion" except to further a compelling public interest.

“The city of Austin’s so-called anti-discrimination laws violate the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act by punishing individuals, private businesses and religious nonprofits, including churches, for their religious beliefs on sexuality and marriage," said Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values.

Austin officials on Wednesday repeated their commitment to defending the city's ordinances, with city spokesman David Green saying the anti-discrimination protections reflect "our values and culture respecting the dignity and rights of every individual."

Chuck Smith, head of Equality Texas, an LGBT-rights advocacy group, said the lawsuits were a thinly veiled attempt to allow discrimination to flourish.

"Nondiscrimination ordinances are designed to protect populations that are vulnerable to discrimination, and they exist because these municipalities have determined that discrimination is wrong and that fairness and equal treatment are values that they want to support," Smith told the American-Statesman.

"These are lawsuits whose purpose is to demonize and stigmatize LGBTQ people and attack municipalities that enact ordinances that reflect the views and values of residents of those cities," he said.

The battle over where to draw the line between religious belief and equal treatment for gay and transgender people remains an open question that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to answer in June when it considered the case of a Colorado baker who refused to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples, saying gay marriage violated his Christian beliefs.

The 7-2 ruling said some members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed hostility to baker Jack Phillips' religious beliefs when he was found to have broken anti-discrimination laws.

In returning Phillips' case to Colorado for a new review, Justice Anthony Kennedy — who is no longer on the court — acknowledged that other cases will have to determine whether refusing to serve same-sex couples amounts to impermissible discrimination or is allowed by constitutional protections for religious practice.

The federal lawsuit filed Saturday by the U.S. Pastor Council argued that Austin's employment protections should be invalidated because they do not include a religious exemption for churches that refuse to hire gay or transgender people as employees or clergy members.

That lawsuit and the Texas Values lawsuit were led by Jonathan Mitchell, a former state solicitor general, the chief appellate lawyer in the attorney general's office.

Mitchell also recently filed a lawsuit in Fort Worth federal court that seeks to stop the U.S. government from enforcing employment discrimination laws that do not exempt churches or businesses that oppose "homosexual or transgender behavior" on religious grounds.