Transgender Bathroom Directive Is Obama's 'Final Drive to Fundamentally Transform America,' Tony Perkins Says
President Barack Obama's transgender bathroom directive is part of a broader effort to fundamentally transform America, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins argued.
Earlier in May, President Obama sent a directive to public schools informing them that they must allow transgender students to use whichever bathrooms or showers correspond with their chosen gender identity.
Perkins said a statement released Wednesday that he was "encouraged" by the eleven states filing suit against the directive.
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"We commend Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and these 10 other states for resisting the president's locker room and bathroom decree that sacrifices the privacy and safety of children," stated Perkins.
"We are also encouraged by the scores of state leaders who are standing up to the Obama administration's unilateral redefinition of federal law."
Perkins also decried Obama's directive as "imperial" in nature and called upon the Republican majority in Congress to reel in the White House's overreach.
"In President Obama's final drive to fundamentally transform America, he has pushed aside the concerns of parents and schools, the privacy and safety of students, and ignored the boundaries of his constitutional power," continued Perkins.
"If the White House can dictate the policies for every school locker room, shower, and bathroom in America, what could possibly be beyond its reach?"
Earlier this week eleven states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over the federal government's controversial transgender directive.
Filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the lawsuit demanded that the directive be deemed "substantially unlawful" and "invalid."
"Plaintiffs include a diverse coalition of States, top State officials, and local school districts, spanning from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, and from the Grand Canyon to the Grand Isle, that stand behind the singular principle that the solemn duty of the Federal Executive is to enforce the law of the land, and not rewrite it by administrative fiat," read the complaint.
"Defendants have conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights. Defendants' rewriting of Title VII and Title IX is wholly incompatible with Congressional text. Absent action in Congress, the States, or local communities, Defendants cannot foist these radical changes on the nation."
The complaint was filed by Texas, who was joined by the states of Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
In defense of the directive, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement accompanying the order to schools that the measure was meant to protect transgender students.
"There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex," stated Attorney General Lynch.
"This guidance gives administrators, teachers, and parents the tools they need to protect transgender students from peer harassment and to identify and address unjust school policies."
