Federal Judge Blocks Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Executive Order
A Federal judge has temporarily blocked Obama’s executive order to U.S. public schools that transgender students must be allowed to use the bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity.
Regardless of your position on the issue of transgenders in restrooms, this injunction should come as a welcome limitation on executive authority.
Using an Executive Order to implement a controversial policy in every school district in the United States — without giving any of the school districts the opportunity to weigh in on the issue and without deference to the laws in each State — is a significant overreach of presidential authority and a troubling intrusion. Further, as Judge Reed O’Connor noted, Obama’s executive order was also disingenuous, as it took its legal authority from Title IX despite the fact that Title IX “is not ambiguous” about sex being defined as “the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth.”
In a Constitutional Republic, how decisions are implemented must be as important as what decisions are implemented. Especially when it comes to educating our children, the principle that government closest to the people governs best holds true. If and when transgender students are allowed to use the bathrooms of their choice, that policy should come from the school districts and the States, not be dictated upon them by the Oval Office.
