By Hunter Hines
Christian Action League
August 25, 2016
AUSTIN, TX – Sunday, a Federal Judge in Texas, issued a temporary block on President Obama’s bathroom directive for the public schools. The decision handed down by Judge Reed O’Conner of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas is ordered nationwide.
The Department of Justice and Education issued “guidelines” back in May that essentially required every public school, college or university, to allow students to use the bathroom, locker room, or shower of the gender with which they subjectively identified, and not necessarily their biological sex. The Obama administration claimed the word “sex” in a federal anti-discrimination law enacted in 1972, more specifically Title IX, included “gender identity,” and schools that violated this interpretation were subject to losing federal funding.
O’Conner disagreed and ruled that the DOJ and the DOE failed to follow the proper procedure, using an illegal means to create the directive. He said it conflicted with existing definitions of “sex” in law that are not “ambiguous,” but distinctly denote “the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth.”
Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values told the Associated Press, “The judge made it very clear that the Obama administration has overreached, [that] they’ve tried to change the definition of ‘sex.’ They’ve tried to do everything they can to allow people who feel like they’re a girl – [but] they’re actually a boy – go into the girl’s bathroom and locker rooms and shower rooms and things of that nature.”
Texas and 12 other states brought the lawsuit after the Obama administration sent a letter to public schools about the new policy only days after the DOJ sued North Carolina over HB 2 – a measure requiring single sex multiple occupancy bathrooms and changing facilities in public schools and public agencies. U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch outrageously compared the law to racial segregation and “Jim Crow” laws.
O’Conner’s decision is the third time in only a month that a federal court has pushed back against anti-discrimination laws including “gender identity.” The U.S. Supreme Court blocked a similar policy from going into effect in Virginia schools after a favorable ruling by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. And according to the Detroit News, a funeral home won a legal victory when federal Judge Sean Cox “ruled that the company did not violate the law when it terminated a transgender employee who wanted to dress as a woman.” Cox rightly concluded, “[N]either transgender status nor gender identity are protected classes” in federal law.
“This is what we’ve been saying all along,” said Dr. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League. “You can’t just go around the Congress of the United States. You can’t ignore the democratic process and impose an extremist, even revolutionary policy, on the country. When Congress adopted Title IX in the early seventies, no one was thinking about ‘gender identity.’ It’s utterly absurd.”
“Of course, none of us knows what we will finally get from the courts, but I take these recent developments as a good sign. You would think they ought to have a positive impact on the current lawsuits against HB 2,” added Dr. Creech.
Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition and an attorney, also stated in an email blast to NCVC supporters that because of the Texas ruling, “The University of North Carolina and school districts across the state such as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools can no longer choose to ignore HB 2.”
“CMS, UNC, and all other school districts and public universities must comply with North Carolina’s law (HB 2) that clearly requires local boards of education and state agencies to make sure that multi-occupancy bathrooms or changing facilities are designated for and used only by students based on their biological sex,” wrote Fitzgerald.
“Now state and local officials nationwide can feel vindicated in their resistance to the administration’s unlawful action,” declared Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council. He added the decision should give “them encouragement that it is not they who are acting without proper authority in this matter – but the Obama administration.”
Matt Staver, head of Liberty Counsel, a Christian law firm specializing in First Amendment rights, said the directive to public schools by the DOJ and DOE “was a lawless and ridiculous act by the President…The facts show that one in four girls and one out of every six boys under 18 will be sexually assaulted. This unconstitutional mandate would have only increased those statistics.”
The Christian Action League encourages Citizen Christians to check with their local schools to urge them to follow these recent court rulings and ignore the illegal, immoral, and strong-arm tactics coming from Washington, D.C.