Louisiana’s local education agencies should heed State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley’s advice to disregard new and radical rulemaking from the federal Department of Education that likely is unconstitutional that conflicts with present and likely Louisiana law.
Last week, the Democrat Pres. Joe Biden Administration released its recodification of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which lays down rules to which state-regulated (because the U.S. Constitution grants states the power to regulate education provision) education provision must adhere in order tor receive federal grants. The sweeping and unprecedented changes it had telegraphed with its initial filing last year and reinvented Title IX only four years after substantial revision had occurred.
The purpose was to expand coverage, despite the clear wording of statute denying that, of nondiscriminatory classes, redefining “sex” to, among other things, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” It tried to justify this deviance by referring to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in an unrelated area of law, and almost certainly is unconstitutional for that overreach. Any attempt to deny funding for not following the rule if challenged would lead to the regulation’s overturn by the judiciary.
In contrast, Brumley’s letter noted that to accept the demands of the rule at face value could open up LEAs to legal liability by conflicting with Louisiana law. It could run counter to the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act as well as other legislation currently making its way through the Legislature that almost certainly will become law within months. In particular, Brumley pointed out that the nature of this oncoming legislation – forms of which passed last year but vetoed by culture warrior and past governor Democrat John Bel Edwards – also could put schools at risk of violating the First Amendment if after these law’s enactments they followed the rule.
He's not alone in this warning. A number of state school chiefs after release of preliminary versions of the rule levied similar criticisms and concerns. And in nearby Oklahoma, its top school official said it would make school districts adhere to state law mandating that bathroom usage align to the physical sex of the individual, contrary to the rule. Louisiana’s Legislature is considering a similar law the enabling bill of which already has passed the House of Representatives.
That’s not picayunish. Policy in Loudoun County, VA schools allowed any student claiming a gender identity to use the restroom of that, which played a part with one male teenage twice assaulting females (the second attack occurring after the policy’s implementation) in women’s restrooms about which the school system did little except to prosecute the complaining father of one victim. Eventually, as a result of its decisions the district’s superintendent was fired and the district now faces an expensive lawsuit from the victims. While an extreme example, the new regulation would present greater opportunities such as in that incident for assaulters and create huge potential liabilities for schools if something like that happened.
The letter didn’t outright order school systems to disregard the rule, which Brumley couldn’t do, but he made clear that they should ignore it. Perversely, he pointed out, by the privileging of students who declare themselves possessors of a particular sexual identity – perhaps as part of a psychological condition that research shows that the majority grows out of – it subverts the very intent of Title IX by making females second-class citizens. For both legal and moral reasons, Louisiana schools need to heed his counsel.
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