The Biden administration threatens to cut off federal funding to those schools and entities such as food banks that “discriminate” against gender-confused individuals (“transgenders”) and other representatives of the LGBTQ community.
As reported by the Daily Caller, the new rules were announced earlier this month in a May 5 statement by the USDA saying that the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) will interpret Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of biological sex, as well as the Obama-era Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, to include so-called gender identity and sexual orientation as protected characteristics.
The USDA stated,
As a result, state and local agencies, program operators and sponsors that receive funds from FNS must investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Those organizations must also update their non-discrimination policies and signage to include prohibitions against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The press release did not specify when the relevant regulations would be issued.
According to the USDA, FNS funding supports food security through the administration of 15 federal nutrition assistance programs for low-income Americans, including the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, aka food stamps), and school meals.
In an announcement, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack argued that the move was taken as a step recognizing “the vulnerability of the LGBTQI+ communities,” which needed to be provided “with an avenue to grieve any discrimination they face.”
The USDA added that the decision was made in light of President Biden’s executive order against “discrimination” toward homosexuals and “transgenders,” and consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which determined that anti-LGBTQ discrimination violates the federal law against discrimination in the workplace. This arguably unconstitutional decision does not apply to educational and social-service institutions.
As reported by The Federalist, in practice, the USDA rule means that “K-12 schools must allow boys into girls’ private areas to obtain federal funds for lunches, breakfasts, and snacks.”
John Elcesser, executive director of the Indiana Non-Public Education Association, told the outlet that the administration is “playing politics with feeding poor kids.”
“Because if a school feels like they cannot participate because it’s in conflict with their mission or values, if a religious exemption is not granted, you’re taking away a program that’s feeding low-income kids,” he added.
According to the latest USDA update, in 2017-2018, the agency sent 1.6 billion pounds of food to schools, which cost the taxpayers $1.6 billion.
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which operates in nearly 100,000 public and non-profit private schools, fed 29.6 million children each school day in 2019, at a total cost of $14.2 billion.
In a statement issued to The Federalist, Indiana attorney general Todd Rokita blasted the administration’s “power grab” and reminded his fellow attorneys general that it is within their authority to push back against it, and that it is their duty to do so:
The Biden administration is grossly extending the Bostock holding where it does not belong. Like many of the Biden administration’s power grabs, this imposition transgresses areas of proper state and local authority. As the principal guardians of federalism, state attorneys general have the ability to combat such overreach where it injures state functions.
The policy that allows gender-confused boys to use shared spaces with girls puts the later in real danger.
In October 2021, the court found a “gender-fluid” male student guilty of sexually assaulting a female student in the bathroom in Loudoun County, Virginia. The story made national headlines after the father of the victim was arrested by the police after a confrontation at a school-board meeting. As it became apparent, the Loudoun County School Board was fully aware of the incident yet tried to cover it up.
The Federalist reported that the parents it spoke to said that “their daughters no longer use the bathrooms or locker rooms at their public schools because they don’t feel safe there.”
Indeed, both parents and teachers confirmed that in those schools that allowed for the gender-mixed use of bathrooms, a great number of girls were afraid to use them because they felt they were not safe.
That, in turn, had terrible ramifications for the girls’ psychological well-being and physical health.
As reported by the Daily Mail in 2019 on the matter,
Gender-neutral toilets in schools have left girls feeling unsafe and even put their health at risk, parents and teachers have warned.
Girls who are menstruating are so anxious about sharing facilities with boys that some are staying at home for fear of being made to feel “period shame”.
With a growing number of both primary and secondary schools installing unisex toilets, some girls are risking infections by refusing to urinate all day.
Others are so fearful they have stopped drinking liquids at school.
It seems that by threatening public schools and other venues serving poor Americans, the Biden administration is utilizing authoritarians’ favorite tactics. First, it deliberately creates a vast class of dependents that are promised to be taken care of. Then, the government imposes senseless and harmful policies in return for the “service” that it provides.
It is within people’s power to reject this type of “care.”
