Bathroom Wars Turning into a Legal Mess

bathroom_bill_0At the same time that 51 families filed suit against a Chicago-area school district for secretly opening its restrooms to members of the opposite sex, the Attorney General of Texas is demanding a review of Target’s bathroom bill and the federal government is now threatening to sue the state of North Carolina for their bill which they claim is a violation of federal civil rights laws.\

LifeSiteNews.com is reporting on a lawsuit filed by 51 families in Palatine, Illinois against two federal agencies and Township High School District 211 for secretly opening school restrooms to the opposite sex.

According to Alliance Defending Freedom, whose attorneys are representing the families, the district did so after the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) threatened the district’s federal funding if they failed to accommodate transgender students.

They believe the agency based its threat on an inaccurate interpretation of Title IX, a 1972 federal law that authorizes schools to retain single-sex restrooms and locker rooms. The lawsuit, which represents 73 parents and 63 students, contends that the DOE is unlawfully redefining the terms of Title IX, something only Congress can alter, and is forcing its political will on school districts.

“Protecting students from inappropriate exposure to the opposite sex is not only perfectly legal, it’s a school district’s duty,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “Allowing boys into girls’ locker rooms, a setting where girls are often partially or fully unclothed, is a blatant violation of student privacy. The school district should rescind its privacy-violating policies, and the court should order the Department of Education to stop bullying school districts with falsehoods about what federal law requires.”

Meanwhile, Fox News is reporting on a move by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who sent a letter to Target’s chief executive officer demanding to know what kind of protection the company is willing to provide for women and children as they implement this policy.

“It is possible that allowing men in women’s restrooms could lead to criminal and otherwise unwanted activity,” Paxton wrote in the letter obtained exclusively by Fox News. “As chief lawyer and law enforcement officer for the State of Texas, I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from those who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes.”

The federal government, which has been in the vanguard of the most extensive social engineering of American society in history, is also weighing in and is now threatening the state of North Carolina with a law suit and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding if it does not rescind HB2, the bill that requires persons to use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender listed on their birth certificate.

restroomsIn a letter to North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said federal officials view the state law as violating federal Civil Rights Act protections barring workplace discrimination based on sex. Provisions of the state law directed at transgender state employees violate their anti-discrimination protections, the letter said.

“The State is engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees and both you, in your official capacity, and the state are engaging in a pattern or practice of resistance” of their rights, the letter said.

North Carolina state officials are calling the letter a “gross overreach” by the government.

“This is no longer just a North Carolina issue, because this conclusion by the Department of Justice impacts every state,” Governor McCrory said during a forum with the state’s chamber of commerce. The move represented “something we’ve never seen regarding Washington overreach in my lifetime.”

House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, who helped pass the law, are actively pursuing the state’s legal options.

Moore told reporters that the letter was an attempt by the Obama administration to “continue its radical left agenda” in his final months in office.

Berger called the letter “a gross overreach by the Obama Justice Department that deserves to be struck down in federal court.”

The DOJ is seeking confirmation by Monday that state employees in North Carolina will be permitted to “access bathrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity” otherwise further action will be taken to protect their rights.

Noted psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow, also weighed in on the matter, saying that this brouhaha is about much more than who uses what bathroom.

“We’re talking about whether the closely held opinion of an individual will be allowed to overcome scientific data and history,” he said. “So if you believe you’re of one gender, but your DNA and your physical appearance and physical anatomy are evidenced that you’re another gender, then there’s that conflict. If we allow people culturally to dictate terms in our culture then we also by extension may be in a position where we allow people to say they’re 65 when they’re 45 in order to get Medicare or allow people to get tattooed head to foot and say I’m a black person. . .

The danger is this: ” . . .[I]f we believe that transgender individuals must use the restrooms they choose, one could argue that many of our cultural institutions must flex away from fact.  And one could argue that cultural chaos will result.”

These new bills are an unraveling of our culture, he said, and perhaps our ability to plan for the future as a species.

“This is where we’re headed,” he said. “Do we really want to go here?”

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