The top Republican on the House Education and Workforce Committee accused President Obama on Friday of issuing “another unilateral decree” by ordering public schools across the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice.
Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., said Obama had moved quickly to impose his own personal beliefs on local schools and educators without a full and open debate that took dissenting opinions into consideration.
“These are deeply personal issues that should be discussed and decided openly, where all Americans have an opportunity to express their views and have their voices heard,” he said in a statement Friday. “This latest edict disregards the will and concerns of millions of students, parents, teachers, school administrator, and religious leaders.”
Kline said the move by Obama’s “lawless administration” also threatens to remove funding from schools that don’t comply, which could put the future of thousands of kids at risk. He said Obama has “no business – and certainly no legal authority—denying low-income students the financial support they deserve because their school or institution doesn’t bend to the president’s personal agenda.”
The Obama administration’s new rules aimed at protecting transgender students from harassment and alienation carry with them full weight of federal law. In essence, schools that ignore them run the risk of losing the federal funding they receive for disadvantaged and disabled students.
Rep. Diane Black was one of the first lawmakers to blast the administration’s transgender directive Friday. The Tennessee Republican pledged Friday to undercut a new Obama administration directive requiring public schools across the country to allow transgender students access to bathrooms and other facilities, or risk their federal funding.
Black issued a statement within an hour of the Department of Justice and Department of Education issuing new rules requiring public schools to allow transgender students access to bathrooms of their gender identity, and other protections, including ensuring that the school environment is harassment-free.
But she said the Obama administration is the one guilty of bullying — in this case reaching its hand into local school districts to dictate how it should handle bathroom access for transgender students.
“This attempt to bully our local schools into submission to the Obama administration’s agenda is shameful and a gross abuse of the federal government’s power,” she said in a statement. “It has nothing to do with compassion for minority student populations and everything to do with political opportunism for the next election.”
Black also pledged to introduce an amendment to the Department of Education’s spending bill when it comes up for consideration later this year that would bar the agency from withholding funds from states that pass “common-sense legislation protecting our children from sharing a bathroom with students of the opposite sex.”
If schools that receive federal funds ignore the new rules, they will jeopardize the federal funds many of them rely on to help educate disadvantaged and disabled students and those who are learning English as a second language.
Black argued that she believes that all students should be treated with “dignity and respect,” but said that right must co-exist with schools’ attempts to maintain the “privacy and safety” of other students.
“As a grandmother of young girls, I believe the Obama administration is now directly responsible for endangering our students,” she said. “It is worth noting that this directive does not carry the force of law, and I would encourage Tennessee school officials to continue following their consciences.”
Black stressed that states such as Tennessee should be able to make these decisions for themselves “without fear of reprisal from a heavy-handed federal government.”
