Gen. Boykin will not be returning to the classroom this fall. That’s because he tells me he’s been fired.
The man who was one of the original members of Delta Force and once commanded all of the U.S. Army’s Green Berets – the man who served his nation with honor and distinction for more than 36 years – was ousted because of political correctness.
In March, Gen. Boykin delivered a speech to conservatives and he referenced the national uproar over transgendered people using the ladies room.
He cracked a joke: “The first man who goes into the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery” . . .
Boykin, who also serves as an executive vice president of the Family Research Council, tells me as many as 150 activists signed a letter written to the college [Hampden-Sydney College] demanding that he be fired. (Read more from “College Boots Ex-Delta Force Hero After Complaint From LGBT Activists” HERE)
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UPDATE: College Reverses Decision
[T]he college [has] reversed its decision and offered the retired general a one-year contract.
“Hampden-Sydney College is a fine school with a proud history of young men who have led our country, and I am honored to be a part of shaping the next generation of leaders,” Boykin told me. “I would like to thank the leadership of Hampden-Sydney College for the courage they have demonstrated in reversing their decision and allowing me to remain a part of the Hampden-Sydney community.”
The LGBT activists had wanted Hampden-Sydney to fire Boykin over a joke he made to a gathering of conservatives. They accused him of advocating for violence against gays and transgender people. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/1280px-GayFest_Bucharest_2006_activist.jpg9601280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-20 01:53:572016-05-20 13:27:01UPDATE: College Boots Ex-Delta Force Hero After Complaint From LGBT Activists
The largest conservative congressional caucus is calling into question the legality of President Barack Obama’s transgender bathroom directive for schools.
Chairman Bill Flores, R-Texas, is encouraging Republican Study Committee members to sign on to a letter, pushing the Departments of Education and Justice to detail how, and on what authority, they plan to enforce the new guidelines.
“Americans are incensed by President Obama’s blatant executive overreach,” Flores said, citing the IRS controversy, Obamacare, and the Iranian nuclear agreement. “Now they are threatening school funding over an issue that should rightfully be left to the states. Their actions are politically motivated and Congress has every responsibility to challenge them.”
The effort is led by Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., who authored the letter.
In the letter, which is addressed to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Education Secretary John King, lawmakers ask them to “explain why schools must disregard the privacy, ‘discomfort,’ and emotional strain imposed on other students during use of bathroom, showering, and changing facilities and overnight accommodations as these schools comply with this guidance.”
By Wednesday night, the letter, which will be sent Thursday, had attracted 73 signatures from GOP lawmakers. To date, it represents the most significant development from a Republican Congress that’s been reluctant to challenge Obama on the issue.
In a sweeping proclamation last Friday, the Obama administration instructed local schools to extend Title IX protections, which prohibit sex-based discrimination, to transgender students.
Walker told The Daily Signal that the RSC inquiry is designed to begin returning discretion over the issue to the municipal and state level.
Under the current guidelines, Walker described a situation where individual students, not parents and teachers, dictate rules “from one week to the next.”
“If a 17 year-old young man wants to go shower with the girls on the soccer team,” Walker said then under the new guidelines, “he’s allowed to do that because of his will or his gender fluidity for the week [he] can tell the teacher ‘this [is] what I’m feeling, this is where I’m at’ and she has no recourse to step in.”
How Will the Guidelines Be Enforced?
The Obama directive has been widely interpreted as suggesting schools must comply with the bathroom proposal or potentially lose federal funding.
The letter asks the administration to detail what actions the departments would take against “a teacher, school administrator, educator, school contractor, or person volunteering at a school who does not comply with this guidance.”
What Legal Authority Does the Administration Have to Change Rules?
While the bathroom directive caught Republicans off guard, The New York Times reports that the Obama administration had been working on the new guidelines for months.
Walker argues that any change to Title IX requires an act of Congress. “The whole starting place, the foundation of this [letter],” he told The Daily Signal, “is basically to remind [the Obama administration] that they don’t have the jurisdiction to begin this in the first place.”
The letter orders the departments to “delineate the statutory authority under which the ED and DOJ issued this guidance,” and to confirm whether or not they consider the directive as legally binding.
Will Conscience Rights Be Recognized and Accommodated?
The letter pushes the Obama administration to detail whether or not exceptions to the new rules will be afforded to individuals and school administrations.
“Detail whether the ED and DOJ will recognize or accommodate rights of conscience and privacy in an individual’s or institution’s non-compliance with this guidance,” the letter states.
The lawmakers asked the Education and Justice Departments to respond by May 23. (For more from the author of “73 House Republicans Sign Letter Demanding Answers on Obama’s Bathroom Directive” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/3933276624_9f9968f77d_b.jpg6851024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-18 21:37:542016-05-18 21:37:5473 House Republicans Sign Letter Demanding Answers on Obama’s Bathroom Directive
The Obama administration’s bathroom directive, ordering local school districts to allow transgender students to use the restrooms of their choice, has caught congressional Republicans off guard.
The response has been a mix of pessimism, frustration, and a call for the states to defy the directive at the local level.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., ventured into the fray Tuesday with a strongly worded letter to Department of Education Secretary John King Jr. Lankford wrote that the department’s directive “conflates an individual’s gender identity with the widely accepted and longstanding understanding of sex without support in Title IX.”
The new guidelines, released Friday by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education, instruct local schools to extend Title IX protections, which prohibit sex-based discrimination, to transgender students.
The Oklahoma senator slammed King for advancing “substantive and binding regulatory policies” that didn’t go through the regular rule-making process or through an act of Congress.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, decried the directive and told The Daily Signal that “Obama has again abused his executive authority to disrupt the lives of millions of Americans.”
The bathroom directive, Lee said, underscores the need for reforms that “would defang the Department of Education.” But an aide to the senator noted that there were “no immediate plans” to advance reform.
Republican leadership has not tangled with the administration over the issue directly. Instead, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has maintained that states, not the federal government, should take point in crafting policies that best address the issue at the local level.
A Ryan aide told The Daily Signal that the speaker “believes this is a state and local issue and the federal government should respect that.” When asked if Ryan planned to offer a rebuttal, the aide predicted the speaker would let any legislative fix work its way through the committee process.
Ryan’s counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has remained quiet on the issue and didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
1. Push States to Ignore Obama’s Directive
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., advised states and local school districts “to just disregard the president’s directive.”
“It’s not a rule,” the Freedom Caucus board member told The Daily Signal. The administration “hasn’t gone through the rule-making process because it’d have to come through our [congressional] oversight. You would actually have to change a rule for it to have the effect of law.”
Many conservatives in both the House and the Senate see the bathroom battle as a conflict best suited to the terrain at the state level. Asked what recourse public schools have now, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., said he couldn’t “imagine what it is.”
“I would love to see some local school districts, mine included, just say ‘No, we’re not going to do it,’” Mulvaney, who is also a Freedom Caucus board member, said. “If that means having to figure out how to do without federal funds, then God bless them. You have to fight at some point and Congress is not showing the ability to fight back during this administration.”
While President Barack Obama’s directive does not carry the force of law, it’s been widely received as a veiled threat to local districts: comply or lose federal funds.
2. Clarify What Title IX Means
Heritage Foundation scholar Ryan Anderson explained that Congress could clarify federal law to stop what he considers “the Obama administration’s unlawful rewriting of Title IX.”
That would require the legislature, he said, to “reaffirm that ‘sex’ does not mean ‘gender-identity’ in statutes passed decades ago.”
3. A Voucher System
But there is some discussion in conservative circles about a potential fix—albeit a long-term one.
Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., imagines a voucher system specifically for families who have concerns with social issues.
“For any school that accepts federal funds, and the strings that come attached,” Lummis told The Daily Signal, “the families who send their children to those public schools should be able to receive a voucher to go to the school of their choice if any matter of social mores is inconsistent with their realm.”
The Wyoming lawmaker aims, she said, to introduce the plan as a standalone measure and gauge how much bipartisan support it attracts this year. As a standalone bill, that plan faces an uphill trek to passage in the current political climate.
What’s Next
Mulvaney interprets Republican leadership’s silence as a reluctance to challenge Obama on the issue through the legislative process. That would require tying a bill to a must-pass piece of legislation, Mulvaney said, and risking a government shutdown.
“We all know that there’s too many Republicans who just abhor the thought of any discussion of a shutdown during an election year,” he said, “so we won’t fight.” (For more from the author of “3 Ways Conservative Lawmakers Could Respond to Obama’s Bathroom Directive” please click HERE)
By Melanie Hunter. White House Spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Friday that the Department of Education issued specific suggestions today along with its directive that federally funded schools nationwide must allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their “gender identity” and that one of those suggestions was “just putting up curtains” in school locker rooms.
“There are some school districts across the country that have sought to enhance the privacy of their students by making relatively minor changes to shared use facilities,” Earnest said. “In some cases that means just putting up curtains, so that people are, have more privacy when they are changing their clothes or taking showers in what had previously been shared use facilities.”
The Department of Education and Justice Department issued guidance on Friday saying public schools nationwide must treat transgender students in a way that matches their gender identity – not their biological sex.
“The challenge here is not to isolate anybody. It is not to discriminate against anybody. It’s not to make anybody unsafe. It is actually to ensure that our schools are as inclusive and respectful and safe as they can possibly be, and that’s why the guidance that we’ve put forward includes tangible specific suggestions for how that can be achieved,” Earnest said. (Read more from “The White House Just Made This Disgusting Suggestion for High School Locker Rooms” HERE)
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Obama Admin. Forces Transgender Bathrooms, Locker Rooms, on Schools as Condition of Funding
By Ben Johnson. The Obama administration has issued a “guidance” to all public schools telling them to allow students of either biological sex to use the showers, locker rooms, and restrooms – and stay in the same hotel rooms during field trips – designated for the opposite sex or risk losing federal funding.
A joint letter from the Departments of Education and Justice, released Friday morning, states that students who identify as “transgender” must be allowed to use the private facilities that match their gender identity.
The letter clarified that schools should not require a “medical diagnosis or treatment” before accepting a student’s transgender self-identification. The moment a child’s parent or guardian says the child identifies as a member of the opposite sex, the school must recognize that and act accordingly “as a condition of receiving federal funds,” the eight-page letter says.
A school also cannot require a transgender student to use separate facilities, although it may choose to allow students who object to the new arrangement to use individual restrooms or changing facilities. (Read more from “Obama Admin. Forces Transgender Bathrooms, Locker Rooms, on Schools as Condition of Funding” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-49.jpg10801920Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-14 01:18:302016-05-14 01:49:46The White House Just Made This Disgusting, Ludicrous Suggestion for High School Locker Rooms
Faced with two estranged parents in utter disagreement about their daughter’s wish to be a boy, a British Columbia Supreme Court judge has appointed the child a legal guardian to protect her interests.
The father not only wants his daughter to cease taking hormone blockers but also to cease all contact with transgender activists or transgender-friendly therapists.
Though the case is about whether the 11-year-old can give informed consent to such serious medical treatment, which is intended to delay the onset of female puberty, the judge appears to have already conceded the point by referring to the girl by her preferred, male, initials, J.K., and accepting her male self-identification.
In his ruling, Mr. Justice Ronald Skolrood declared that, “This case is really about J.K. and his role in determining his own future. In my view, these issues cannot be properly considered without J.K.’s direct participation.”
Her father, referred to as N.K., has persisted in referring to his daughter by her female name at birth, or P.K., in court documents, despite an earlier court order that he refer to her with male pronouns, name, and initials. (Read more from “Court Orders Dad to Start Treating His 11-Year-Old Daughter as a Boy” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/3D_Judges_Gavel.jpg13652048Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-11 02:13:402016-05-11 02:13:40Court Orders Dad to Start Treating His 11-Year-Old Daughter as a Boy
North Carolina has sustained unrelenting and coordinated attacks from big business, the entertainment industry, the American Civil Liberties Union, and now the federal government over its commonsense bathroom policies.
Gov. Pat McCrory and the North Carolina Legislature have had enough of this bullying and filed separate lawsuits against the Department of Justice Monday in the reasonable expectation that a federal judge will order the ideologues at the Department of Justice to back off.
The Department of Justice filed its own suit in response hours later. At stake is up to $4.5 billion in federal education funding under a 1972 law known as Title IX, and a sea change in employment relations if the Department of Justice prevails under a 1964 law known as Title VII.
I must say, I’m very disappointed in my former colleagues at the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. They know very well that when Congress banned discrimination “on the basis of sex” in 1964 and 1972, it did not mean “gender identity.”
It disrespects the very notion of the rule of law for them to hold otherwise, but that is exactly what they have done by threatening North Carolina with lawsuits, fines, and revocation of federal funds because they dared to write in law what most people consider simple common sense—that biological men should not be given unfettered access to public bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms set aside for the needs, safety, and privacy of biological women.
But if you thought the latest front in the bathroom wars was limited to North Carolina, you’d be mistaken.
Laws from the 1960s and 70s designed mostly to protect girls and women from rampant sexism and harassment at work and in schools are now being used by the Department of Justice to cow school districts to grant boys the right to undress in the girls’ locker room (and vice versa), all in the name of psychological comfort and acceptance. When President Barack Obama said he still has a pen and a phone this is apparently what he meant.
These developments prove that same-sex marriage was merely the start, not end, of the left’s LGBT agenda. The radical left is using government power to coerce everyone, including children, into pledging allegiance to a radical new gender ideology over and above their right to privacy, safety, and religious freedom.
The people of North Carolina did not pick this fight. It was thrust upon them by the city of Charlotte after it passed an ordinance requiring private businesses and schools to change their bathroom policies to allow men in the women’s bathrooms. Charlotte was the aggressor and North Carolina restored the status quo that let businesses decide their own bathroom policies.
To see how radical the left’s agenda is, consider that North Carolina law allows accommodation of people who identify as transgender with single-occupancy facilities in government facilities, so people who identify as transgender will have more options than those who don’t. But the left and the Department of Justice have rejected this reasonable approach, and insist on nothing less than total victory by total affirmation.
To add to the problems, the definition of gender identity changes about every three months, so the rules we are supposed to live by are constantly moving. Under proposed rules from the Department of Health and Human Services, sex would mean not just male or female, but also “neither, both, or a combination of male and female.”
Indeed, a few months after the federal government forced a neighboring school district to allow boys into the girls’ locker rooms or lose federal education funds, Chicago Public Schools discovered that sex is merely “a label a person is assigned at birth” and that the reality lies in one’s internal “psychological knowledge” of their own gender “regardless of the[ir] biological sex.”
This includes “male/man/boy, female/woman/girl, trans/transgender, gender variant, gender nonconforming, agender, gender non-binary, or any combination of these terms.” According to the left and some corporations, there are 60 possible gender identities.
The people of North Carolina should not be blamed for resisting such radical changes when there are real victims on the other side. Students in school districts facing these novel bathroom policies have spoken out against them and in favor of privacy.
Female victims of sexual abuse have explained that, while they are careful not to associate transgender people with predatory behavior, they cannot deny that seeing any stranger of the opposite sex undressing in intimate settings can be traumatizing and trigger memories of past abuse. Their voices deserve to be heard, too. And we are already seeing allegations of men not even identifying as women taking advantage of laws that have mandated access to locker rooms and bathrooms based on gender identity. That these laws will be abused are not unfounded fears:
-Virginia, Nov. 17, 2015, a man dressed as a woman arrested for spying into mall bathroom stall.
-California, April 2016, Fullerton man arrested on suspicion of filming people in a Chapman University bathroom.
-Maryland, Feb. 10, 2016, Maryland teacher charged with filming sex videos in school bathroom.
-Ohio, March 22, 2016, teen arrested after videotaping a 13-year-old girl in the bathroom and forwarding the video to other students.
-Iowa, Feb. 16, 2016, University of Iowa Police locate suspect videotaping in women’s shower.
-Pennsylvania, April 21, 2016, Pennsylvania man arrested for taking photos of a 10-year-old girl in a public restroom.
These are a sampling of examples found here and here.
But whatever one thinks about gender identity, safety, and modesty, it is not the Department of Justice’s role to make up the law on this issue simply because it thinks it is lacking. Can we really still speak of it as “law” when one administration’s ideologically driven “guidance” and reinterpretations can potentially lead to overruling duly-enacted state laws?
If the next administration revokes the Department of Justice’s guidance, will the allegedly unlawful behavior instantly become lawful?
Our Constitution was designed to prevent this sort of arbitrary concentration of power and North Carolina was right to push back against the federal government’s unprecedented overreach. (For more from the author of “DOJ’s Lawsuit Against North Carolina Is Abuse of Power” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-9.jpg14112267Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-09 23:01:512016-05-09 23:01:51DOJ’s Lawsuit Against North Carolina Is Abuse of Power
Chicago Public Schools announced on Monday that students and staff must be granted unfettered access to intimate school facilities based on their chosen gender identity.
Put concretely, boys now have the “right” to undress in the girls’ locker room before gym class so long as they say they would feel more comfortable doing so. Kids and teens have many things to worry about as they grow into adulthood and get an education. But having to deal with people of the opposite sex in their bathrooms and showers shouldn’t be one of them.
This latest front in the bathroom wars proves that same-sex marriage was merely the start, not end, of the left’s LGBT agenda. As demonstrated by enforcement actions by the Department of Justice, private lawsuits, and court decisions, the radical left is using government power to coerce children into pledging allegiance to a radical new gender ideology over and above their right to privacy, safety, and religious freedom.
Here’s how it works. First, the left tried to elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to special protected status in law but failed repeatedly using the democratic process. Undaunted, the administration turned to lawmaking-by-rulemaking. Specifically, President Barack Obama’s Departments of Justice and Education issued diktats reinterpreting Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination in federally funded education programs to mean “gender identity discrimination.”
Of course, when Title IX was passed in 1972, “sex” referred then to what it still refers to now: the basic biological reality of being male or female. Nevertheless, having made their discovery to the contrary (over 40 years after the law was passed), the administration went around the country threatening schools with revocation of millions in educational funds if they did not allow kids unfettered access to the locker room of their choice.
Following this lead, Chicago Public Schools cites Title IX and sexual harassment policies to justify its new policies.
A law from the 70s designed mostly to protect girls and women from sexism and harassment in schools is now being used to grant boys the right to undress in the girls’ locker room (and vice versa), all in the name of psychological comfort and acceptance.
In a weak acknowledgement of the uproar this will cause, Chicago Public Schools says students that are not gender confused “should” be allowed access to alternative facilities. So, for example, if there are 50 girls who object to a boy undressing in front of them, it is the 50 girls, not the boy, who must go change in “single stall restrooms” elsewhere. Of course, the odds are high that school officials on the lookout for any sign of “bullying” will take careful note of which students leave the locker rooms, presuming they are allowed to leave at all.
To add to the confusion, the definition of gender identity changes about every three months, so the rules we are supposed to live by are constantly moving. But the latest definition, according to Chicago Public Schools, is that sex is merely “a label a person is assigned at birth” and that the reality lies in one’s internal “psychological knowledge” of their own gender “regardless of the[ir] biological sex.”
This includes “male/man/boy, female/woman/girl, trans/transgender, gender variant, gender nonconforming, agender, gender non-binary, or any combination of these terms.” Whatever bureaucrat or committee wrote this definition felt compelled to add that gender nonconforming also covers “gender expansive, gender variant, or gender creative,” apparently to cover all the bases, except they may have missed some because the latest count, according to the left and some corporations, is 60 possible gender identities.
Under this definition, the only possible way we can know a person’s gender identity is by asking them, and if they consistently answer the same thing, bingo, that’s their gender identity. If Chicago Public Schools or the Department of Justice simply required separate private facilities for the minuscule number of students who are not comfortable changing in front of people of their own sex, there would not be a national debate over bathrooms.
Except they require that if a boy says he is a girl, he must be treated exactly like a girl in every respect, otherwise it is psychologically traumatic and illegal discrimination. This means that portions of sex education classes reserved just for girls (so they can speak with less trepidation about sensitive topics, like menstruation) must include every boy that feels like a girl.
And therein lies the biggest affront from these new policies. Not only must government employees play along with a gender confused child’s every subjective wish, so must every other student. In fact, Chicago Public Schools specifies that students must address a gender confused child by whatever pronoun they wish, be it “they, their, ze, he and she.” Failure to do so “will result in appropriate consequences for offending staff and students,” in other words, discipline up to and including expulsion from school.
But many people of good will and faith conviction simply refuse to put aside their legitimate privacy, modesty, and safety concerns. Many children of good will resist being forced to say “she” when speaking of a boy they have known for years just as they would resist being forced to say “5” when asked “What does 2+2 equal?”
The left for years claimed that all it wanted was for LGBT persons to be left alone, but this was a lie. It is now clear that liberals and their enablers will not leave anyone alone and will use the full force of courts, lawsuits, and government to ensure any resistance to their new gender ideology “will result in appropriate consequences.” (For more from the author of “New Chicago Schools Bathroom Policy Proves Liberals’ Extreme Agenda” please click HERE)
The battle over men accessing women’s bathrooms and vice versa has little do with bathrooms or even transgenderism, a well-known LGBT activist admitted last week. It has everything to do with re-working society and getting rid of the “heterobinary structure” in which we live—eliminating distinctions between “male” and “female” altogether.
Riki Wilchins, who has undergone “sex change” surgery and is a far-left social change activist, wrote in the gay publication The Advocate last week that social conservatives and many LGBT activists are missing the point when it comes to the transgender bathroom debate . . .
People should be able to enter whatever bathroom “fits their gender identity,” Wilchins wrote, but the fact that we even have “male” and “female” bathrooms reflects something about society that needs to change . . .
Transgenderism presumes that a man can be “trapped” inside a woman’s body and a woman can be “trapped” inside a man’s body. It encourages men “becoming” women to embrace femininity and wear dresses and make-up. Similarly, transgenderism encourages women “becoming” men to make themselves more masculine through hormones and by altering their appearances, reinforcing the notion that men look and act a certain way.
“The long-term goals of many LGBT activists are actually not just access to the restrooms of their preferred gender identity, but actually destroying the concept of gender or the separation of the genders altogether,” Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council, told LifeSiteNews. Sprigg noted that when LGBT activists are appealing to a mainstream audience, they “are accepting or implicitly accepting the separation of male and female facilities” like bathrooms. (Read more from “Bathrooms Are Just the Beginning: A Scary Look Into the Trans Movement’s End Goals” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Lady_Bunny_and_Sherry_Vine_by_David_Shankbone.jpg24482670Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 01:42:422016-05-07 01:42:42Bathrooms Are Just the Beginning: A Scary Look Into the Trans Movement’s End Goals
A group of 50 families whose children attend a high school in Illinois filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday, attempting to reverse a policy that allows a transgender student to use girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-specific facilities.
The families are challenging a policy at Township High School District 211 that was mandated by the U.S. Department of Education to accommodate the transgender student, who was born male but identifies as a female.
“It’s an organic group of parents and students who came together and said, ‘We have to do something about this—we can’t just roll over and allow the federal government to force our school to commingle the sexes in locker rooms,’” said Jeremy Tedesco, a lawyer representing the families.
The suit, which challenges the Education Department’s authority to redefine the term sex in Title IX of U.S. law to include gender identity and to enforce it against schools, is the first of its kind, Tedesco told The Daily Signal.
The president of the group filing the lawsuit, Students and Parents for Privacy, said she and other Cook County parents with children in the school district decided legal action “was the only thing we could do at this point.”
“We tried,” she said, adding:
We did everything we could to work with the school district, and we were really hoping they would do the right thing and protect the privacy of all students, but when they chose not to, we felt we had no choice in order to protect the girls in the locker room.
The group’s president asked that her name not be published because of the sensitive nature of the case.
The issue began in December 2013, when Student A filed a complaint with the Education Department against Township High School District 211, based in the village of Palatine, Ill.
The complaint alleged that District 211 had discriminated against the transgender student on the basis of sex.
After completing an extensive investigation, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights said on Dec. 2 that Township High School District 211 was in violation of federal law for refusing to grant Student A full access to the girls’ locker room.
The school had granted Student A some accommodations, including changing the student’s name on official records, allowing the student on the girls sports teams, and granting the student access to the girls’ bathrooms. But District 211 drew the line at providing Student A unrestrained access to the girls’ locker rooms because of the privacy concerns of other girls using them. Instead, the school offered a private facility to Student A.
Daniel Cates, superintendent of District 211, said in an October newsletter:
The goal of the district in this matter is to protect the privacy rights of all students when changing clothes or showering before or after physical education and after-school activities, while also providing reasonable accommodations to meet the unique needs of individual students. Our responsibility is to provide an environment conducive to learning for all its 12,000+ students.
According to the Education Department’s investigation, the student felt “crushed” by the school district’s decision not to allow access to the locker rooms, “which she said indicated that the school did not accept her as a female.”
After the Education Department had completed its investigation, it ordered District 211 to grant Student A full access to the girls’ locker rooms and install privacy curtains inside those locker rooms, or else be at risk of losing federal financial assistance.
Thomas Petersen, director of community relations at Township High School District 211, said the school “could potentially lose up to $6 million in federal funding.”
Now, the 130 parents and students who are members of the group Students and Parents for Privacy are suing, arguing the Education Department lacks the authority to redefine sex in Title IX of U.S. law to include gender identity.
The parents and students also are asking for an injunction against the Justice Department, which has enforcement authority under Title IX, and an injunction against Township School District 211 from carrying out the Education Department’s demands.
The Christian legal aid group Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the parents and students, along with local support from lawyers at the Thomas More Society.
“What we’re attempting to do in this case is stop the Department of Education from redefining sex in Title IX to include gender identity,” Tedesco, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal. “It has no authority whatsoever to do that.”
Debate Over Title IX
Title IX is the federal law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program. Whether or not Title IX applies to transgender students is an issue that has been vigorously debated, with courts ruling on both sides.
Most recently, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled that a transgender high school student who was born female but identifies as a male has the right to pursue discrimination charges against a school district for blocking access to the boys’ bathrooms.
The judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit cited the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX in issuing their 2-1 decision.
The Obama administration stated in a 2014 document that “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination.”
Tedesco called the ruling in Virginia a “complete outlier,” arguing that other courts have ruled the opposite way:
There’s been several courts that have addressed the question of whether Title IX applies to and protects against gender identity discrimination, and all those courts up to the 4th Circuit’s decision have said it does not.
If Americans want to add additional protections for gender identity, Tedesco said, it’s the job of Congress—not the Education Department—to make those changes. He said:
If Congress wants to redefine sex to include gender identity—if they want to add gender identity as a protected class under Title IX—they can do that through the regular lawmaking process. But Congress has rejected it several times, so the Department of Education just comes in and makes it up and adds it to the law. That’s something they have no authority whatsoever to do. And now they’re running around the country and forcing essentially what is a new Department of Education rule against schools across the country.
Since 2010, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has proposed that Congress pass a measure that would provide protections for students from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Thus far, that legislation has failed.
Township High School District 211 is the first school in the nation that the Education Department found in violation of Title IX over transgender issues. Now, it’s the first school in the country to face a lawsuit of this kind.
The Path Forward
In December, six female students attempted to explain to the District 211 school board why they were uncomfortable with allowing Student A into their locker room.
“Although we will never fully understand your personal struggle,” the girls said, addressing the transgender student, “please understand that we, too, all are experiencing personal struggles that need to be respected.”
The president of Students and Parents for Privacy said she supports accommodations for Student A that balance the student’s interests with the rest of the student body.
“We understand why Student A doesn’t want to be in the boys’ locker room,” she said. “We get it. But the girls’ locker room isn’t the answer either. We believe in accommodation, but we don’t believe in an accommodation that hurts other students.”
Student A, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an earlier press release that using a separate locker room “stigmatized me, often making me feel like I was not a ‘normal person.’”
At the December school board meeting, one speaker called the old policy “institutionalized segregation.” Others brought up the high rates of suicide and depression for transgender men and women.
The head of the privacy group, who has children in the school district, said the group cares about Student A but is asking for fairness. She said:
We truly do care about these children who struggle with gender identity, and these children are welcome in my home. All I ask is that the respect go both ways. That’s what we’re not seeing. We’re just seeing demands.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, hinges on the idea that the school can and should make accommodations for Student A, but those accommodations shouldn’t violate the privacy and safety rights of other students.
Absent the lawsuit, Tedesco suggested, there’s little chance of finding middle ground.
“The reality is, the folks driving this agenda on the other side from us won’t accept anything other than full access to the opposite-sex restroom and locker room as the solution,” the families’ lawyer said, adding:
And what happened at District 211 is proof positive of that. They gave Student A accommodation after accommodation after accommodation, and ultimately the [Education Department] said no, full access is the only thing that’s going to solve the issue.
(For more from the author of “50 Families Sue Over Illinois High School’s Transgender Bathroom Policy” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Sensor-operated-urinals1377p.jpg8161232Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-05 02:07:342016-05-05 02:07:3450 Families Sue Over Illinois High School’s Transgender Bathroom Policy
Target’s announcement last week that it will let customers and employees use bathrooms based on their gender identity set off a firestorm competitors appear to reluctant to enter.
As reported by Western Journalism, nearly one million people have signed a petition (editor’s note: now over one million), to date, pledging not to shop at Target until it changes its policy of allowing men to enter women’s restrooms.
The Faith Driven Consumer encouraged its millions of supporters to #BuycottWalmart in a response to Target’s corporate policy. The organization began the Faith Equality Index last fall, which measures how faith-friendly a company is based on a number of issues including “Christmas” seasonal advertising, the causes the corporation contributes to (whether pro-life, abortion, etc.), and workplace discrimination policies.
“[H]undreds of thousands of consumers around the country are expressing frustration because they specifically feel excluded by Target’s actions and, more importantly, unprotected and unsafe in Target stores. They have reacted by signing up to boycott the retailer,” said Chris Stone, founder of the FDC.
“We believe a BUYcott offers consumers what they actually need and want. If you are unsatisfied with Target, the most effective way forward is a BUYcott — actively doing business with another brand that is a better fit for you. And in this case, that better fit is archrival Walmart,” he added.
Wal-Mart scored significantly higher than Target on the index. Western Journalism reached out to Wal-Mart to determine what its response is to the new Target policy, but so far the company has been mum. (Read more from “How Wal-Mart and Other Retailers Have Responded to Target Bathroom Policy” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/5266815680_c7abe8ea0e_o.jpg12981728Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-04-29 02:07:432016-04-29 02:07:43How Wal-Mart and Other Retailers Have Responded to Target Bathroom Policy
Target’s announcement last week that it will let customers and employees use bathrooms based on their gender identity set off a firestorm competitors appear to reluctant to enter.