The Obama Administration is
continuing its push for transgender teenagers to use facilities of the opposite
sex – this time by explicitly threatening to pull federal funding from an
Illinois school district and backing a transgender girl’s appeal to use boys’
facilities in Virginia.
In a letter sent to Township High School District 211 school officials in Illinois, the
Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education declared that it found “by
the preponderance of the evidence that the District is in violation of Title IX
for excluding ‘Student A’ from participation in and denying her the benefits of
its education program, providing services to her in a different manner,
subjecting her to different rules of behavior, and subjecting her to different
treatment on the basis of sex.”
Title IX is a 1972 law designed to
prevent discrimination on the basis of sex – which an Alliance Defending
Freedom (ADF) attorney says has nothing to do with gender identity. “A federal court in Pennsylvania recently
rejected a similar lawsuit filed by a transgender student seeking access to
restrooms at a college,” ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco told LifeSiteNews in June, “ruling that ‘separating students by sex
based on biological considerations … for restroom and locker room use simply
does not violate the Equal Protection Clause.’ ”
“The court rejected the Title IX
claim for the same reason. It also
highlighted that Title IX’s implementing regulations state that schools do not
violate Title IX when they ‘provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower
facilities on the basis of sex.’ ” The
ADF attorney said that the change to Title IX “is not legally binding” and was
“politically motivated.” “In fact,
federal regulations expressly state that ‘significant guidance documents’ have
no binding legal authority,” he explained. “Further, the document does not mention access
to restrooms and it does not change binding Title IX regulations authorizing
schools to create ‘separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the
basis of sex.’ ” Tedesco went on to say,
“It would take an act of Congress to include ‘gender identity’ as a protected
status under Title IX. The school can
defend itself against this lawsuit without losing its federal funding. And it should. Allowing students access to the opposite sex’s
restrooms would violate the privacy rights of the vast majority of students and
trample the rights of parents as well.”
The Illinois district had attempted
to compromise with a teenage boy who identifies as female by saying the student
could use a private changing area. “At
some point, we have to balance the privacy rights of 12,000 students with other
particular, individual needs of another group of students,” said District 211 Superintendent
Daniel Cates earlier this year. “We
believe this infringes on the privacy of all the students that we serve.” In a statement issued last week, Cates called
the federal government’s decision “a serious overreach with precedent-setting
implications.” He also told The New York Times that part of the
district’s compromise included a privacy curtain in the girls’ locker room.
The Obama Administration has also
taken up the case for Gavin Grimm, a girl who identifies as a boy, filing a
brief with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Grimm’s appeal to use
boys’ facilities. Grimm sued her school
district after the school board voted 6-1 to install gender-neutral bathrooms
instead of allowing transgender students to use bathrooms of the opposite sex.
After a public hearing in December
2014, where most people opposed letting females use male restrooms, the board
voted to state: “It shall be the practice of the Gloucester County Public
Schools [Virginia] to provide male and female restroom and locker room
facilities in its schools, and the use of said facilities shall be limited to
the corresponding biological genders and students with gender identity issues
shall be provided an alternative appropriate private facility.” Three unisex bathrooms were subsequently
installed, but Grimm and the ACLU said this wasn’t good enough, and “subject[ed]
Grimm to discrimination.” Grimm lost her case, which led to the appeal.
Listen: Sexual preference and
identity is not a civil right … at least not yet! I don’t doubt that it is on the legacy agenda
of this Administration.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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