Obama lays down the gauntlet to states over school transgender issue; here’s how they should respond

(BigGovernment.news) Last week our imperial president issued a threat to every single public school district in America: You will open up locker rooms and bathrooms to any student who wants to use them, regardless of their birth gender, or face lawsuits and/or loss of federal funding.

As a response, states should politely inform the president where he can stick his threat by choosing, one by one, to stop taking federal money for education. Yes, that will sting and some states will have difficulty replacing the lost funding. But if state lawmakers and citizens want to be free from this insanity, that’s what it will take because there is no guarantee they will get any relief at all from the Judicial Branch.

To wit: In a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the states of South Carolina, West Virginia, Arizona, and Mississippi, and the governors of Maine and North Carolina, argue that the Obama administration’s “interpretation” of Title IX, the relevant statute addressing, among other things, discrimination in the public schools that receive federal dollars, is overly broad when claiming that the statute also applies to students who wake up one morning claiming they are another sex and demanding to be treated as such.

“G.G. was born a baby girl. G.G. has two X chromosomes, not an X and a Y chromosome,” the brief says. “It is also undisputed that G.G. has the female sexual and reproductive organs, and lacks the male sexual and reproductive organs. In short, there is no disagreement that G.G. is biologically of the female sex. That simple truth suffices to resolve this case,” the states said in their brief.

“The 1975 regulation expressly authorizes ‘provid[ing] separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex,’ ” the brief continues. “In 1972, 1975, and today, sex is a biological reality, unlike subjective or cultural constructions of gender or gender identity. Moreover, because Congress enacted Title IX under its Spending Clause authority, courts must apply a clear statement requirement; but there is certainly no clear statement that the law extends beyond discrimination based on biological sex. To hold otherwise disregards fundamental principles of federalism.”

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A lower court ruled in favor of the school.

But the Fourth Circuit overturned the lower court, which ruled that while denying a student who “identifies” as the opposite sex access to the self-identified sex’s bathrooms may indeed be discrimination, it did not fall within the purview of Title IX. The appeals court, in issuing a preliminary injunction to G.G’s Virginia school, noted that it’s up to the Department of Education to determine its own authority: “At the heart of this appeal is whether Title IX requires schools to provide transgender students access to restrooms congruent with their gender identity.We conclude that the Department’s interpretation of its own regulation . . . as it relates to restroom access by transgender individuals, is . . . to be accorded controlling weight in this case.”

If states are forced to rely on our activist president and his bureaucracy to be lenient on, or deferential to, them – or for Congress to clarify its intent regarding the statute – they are on a fool’s errand. The better, quicker fix is to cut the federal funding string, leaving them free to protect the children who are relying on adults to make the right decision on their behalf.

The thing to remember here is this: Obama and his merry band of disrupters will use any opportunity to “fundamentally transform” – as in, tear down – as many American institutions as he can. His economic policies have already destroyed growth; the military is a shell of itself when he took office. Now to go to work wreaking havoc on society as well.

The only recourse states have is to opt out.

More:

• Once again, loud and clear: School funding not tied to educational outcomes and achievement
• Big surprise: Public schools that got federal improvement grants aren’t improving
• It’s past time to get Michelle Obama out of school lunch rooms

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