A school district in Utah is considering giving up their federal funding out of opposition to President Obama’s “tyrannical mandates” requiring schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
Alpine School Board members Brian Halladay, Wendy Hart and Paula Hill wrote a letter on May 15 to Gov. Gary Herbert (R) and the Utah state legislature, explaining the school board will vote next month on a budget free from federal funding – the financial leverage Obama has threatened to use against school systems that go against his dictatorial decree regarding transgender students.
In their letter, the school board members wrote:
The Department of Education has threatened that it may pull education funding from our State if we don’t comply. This is likely a baseless threat meant to force states into compliance. However, with only 8% of State funds coming from the federal government, this would be an ideal opportunity to declare Utah’s sovereignty, and to allow our children to be free from the tyrannical mandates of our federal government.
This level of federal overreach is as unprecedented as it is unconstitutional. As locally elected board members, we will be voting for a budget next month that includes no federal funding at all. While we realize we will have to tighten our belts and reallocate funds to accommodate those necessary programs, the safety and privacy of the students we were elected to serve outweighs the 6% that our district receives in federal funds. We would appreciate your support in this endeavor.
President Obama’s letter of “guidance” to schools states:
Title IX’s implementing regulations permit a school to provide sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms, shower facilities, housing, and athletic teams, as well as single-sex classes under certain circumstances. When a school provides sex-segregated activities and facilities, transgender students must be allowed to participate in such activities and access such facilities consistent with their gender identity.
If a school provides housing accommodations for students, they’re no longer allowed to prohibit a transgender student from being placed with a student of the opposite biological sex:
Title IX allows a school to provide separate housing on the basis of sex. But a school must allow transgender students to access housing consistent with their gender identity and may not require transgender students to stay in single-occupancy accommodations or to disclose personal information when not required of other students. Nothing in Title IX prohibits a school from honoring a student’s voluntary request for single-occupancy accommodations if it so chooses.
This ostensibly means a student who isn’t comfortable living with a person of the opposite sex could be forced to anyway, simply to accommodate another student’s “gender identity.”
It also stands to reason this could extend to temporary housing, such as students’ hotel accommodations for school trips and athletic events.
In their letter, the three Alpine School Board members said the directive is “not just a complete violation of privacy, but is morally reprehensible.”
“The consequences of this social experiment would be disastrous, not only as an invasion of the rights of a majority, but also with the potential legal liability this could incur upon school districts and the state, if we were to adopt this egregious guidance,” they wrote.
Other school districts throughout Utah apparently don’t take issue with Obama’s arm-twisting mandate, saying they’re perfectly happy to accommodate transgender students and have been doing so quite happily for years without issue. Which makes somewhat decent sense, since transgender people make up less than .03 percent of the population. Remind me again why the Left decided this was an issue?
But some people, including young students, have decided they’re not okay with the federal government waltzing in and telling them their locker rooms are about to become a kaleidoscope of new and interesting body parts.
A group of middle school students in Medford, Ore., skipped class Monday in protest of their school’s new policy allowing transgender students to use whatever bathroom they want. One student said since the new policy was announced, boys – as in boys, not just those who think they’re girls – had started going into girls’ bathrooms.
"I feel like they were just using it more to their benefit of just kind of being perverts more rather than actually using it because they were uncomfortable with going into the bathroom of birth," student Grace Milligan told KTVL.
You mean a bunch of pre-teen middle school boys thought it was funny that they could now peek into girls’ bathrooms and get away with it? And the girls didn’t like it? And no one thought that would happen?
Really?
Kind of like how it's going to blow the collective mind of self-righteous inclusivity zealots when creepers dressed in drag exploit our brand spanking new equality laws to prey on women in bathrooms. It's the perpetual circus that tends to camp out in the Land of Unintended Consequences.
It's downright unbelievable when the Liberal Left's ideological SWAT team obliterates the livelihood of a baker who just wants to go about their day without violating their own personal religious beliefs. But it's even worse when they target our kids.