Obama Administration Guides Schools to Make Bathrooms Nondiscriminatory

Statement

Last Friday, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice told teachers that they must allow boys to use the girls' bathroom and girls to use the boys' bathroom. Apparently telling one or the other that they must use a particular bathroom is now discriminatory.

On Friday, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice released a letter telling teachers that any "sex-segregated activities" (AKA, letting students use the bathroom or locker room showers) must make room for transgender students who might feel discriminated against by being required to use a bathroom that doesn't fit their subjective gender identity.

Yes-- the federal government is dictating how to best accommodate a child as young as five years old's "subjective gender identity." It's a major overreach by the U.S. government into the minutia of how our school systems are run, and the environment in which our children learn. And ironically, for an Administration who acts as if it is the champion of the poor, this mandate will probably affect the underprivileged more than any other group. Wealthier demographics will be able to pull their children out of public schools when the cross-gender bathroom mandate self-implodes (it will, if House Republicans don't kill it first), while the lower income bracket kids will be subjected to showering in the same rooms as members of the opposite biological sex, and their parents won't be able to do anything about it.

It's almost as if North Carolina's decision to govern its own state by clarifying its bathroom laws made the White House throw a temper tantrum and clamp down on all states before they could get the chance to govern the way they wanted to handle this issue, too.

Even if this sort of mandate were the federal government's job to tell every public education institution across America how to handle its bathrooms, such a move would certainly require legislation. But this latest bathroom guidance didn't have even a whiff of participation by Congress.

That's alright-- White House Secretary Josh Earnest assures us that the letter is just "guidance" that that was requested by schools across the country and that it "does not add any additional requirements under the law." While that may be technically true, the letter threatens schools' Title IX funding if they don't comply and warns them that they may face lawsuits. Sound to me like a lot more than guidance. Chalk that up to one more overreach by the Obama Administration; add it to the long list that includes executive amnesty, Common Core, and a personal favorite: discrimination by the IRS. Need I point out the irony?

Speaking of irony, this Administration has prided itself on working to prevent sexual assault, and now it has handed down a dictate that will allow not only transgenders into the opposite sex's bathroom, but also anyone who claims to identify as a transgender. James Gottry of the Alliance Defending Freedom says it well when he paints the theoretical picture of a man named Jack: "Imagine Jack doesn't subjectively identify as a female. Instead, Jack recognizes that policies like those promoted by the DOJ provide an opportunity for him to enter a woman's restroom… under a policy that enables any individual to use any restroom, simply by claiming a particular gender identity, it makes it easier for predators to access intimate settings and citizens will be dissuaded from voicing any concern or acting to ensure the safety and privacy of the vulnerable."

The Administration claims its intention is to prevent victimization of transgenders, but it's wide-sweeping mandate is creating new victims, victims that the White House has supposedly led the campaign to help.

In response to this enormous overreach by the Administration, I immediately joined my colleagues to write a letter to the President asking him to roll back these disastrous requirements disguised as "guidance."

The whole purpose of men's restrooms and women's restrooms is privacy, and this Administration is violating the privacy of our children in a place where they're supposed to be learning. The premise of this bathroom equality movement is based on making a certain group experience no discomfort, but it does so in a way that costs the comfort of the other 99.999% of the population. What about the self-conscious 12-year-old girl who has to use the bathroom in the stall next to her male classmate, or the class of 16-year-olds who must change clothes and shower in the locker room with someone of the opposite sex? Does their discomfort not matter?

Shame on the Department of Education for putting political correctness and the wishes of powerful special interest groups before our children.

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