Obama fights back after judge blocks transgender bathroom mandate
The Obama administration is appealing an
injunction against its mandate for transgender bathrooms in public schools.
Last Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Reed
O'Connor rejected the Justice Department's request to limit his nationwide
injunction against enforcement of Obama's redefined Title IX law that mandated
opposite sex use of showers, locker rooms, and toilets. Obama threatened public
schools with losing federal funding if they failed to comply.
The Justice Department had requested that
O'Connor's injunction be limited to the 13 states where attorney generals sued
to stop government-imposed transgender bathrooms. The judge responded that
not only does he have the authority to issue a nationwide injunction, but
"a geographically-limited injunction would be ineffective" because
"both Title IX and Title VII rely on the consistent, uniform application
of national standards."
On Friday, the Obama Department of Education
filed a notice that they will appeal to the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. The
Dallas Morning News noted
that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals "is considered one of the most
conservative federal appellate courts in the nation."
"President Obama's obsession with this
destructive transgender ideological agenda exposes his rank opposition to
Constitutional rule as well as natural law and biological reality," Arthur Christopher Schaper,
director of California MassResistance, told LifeSiteNews. Schaper said the
issue is a civil rights one. It is not about the "right" of gender-confused
children to use opposite sex bathrooms but the right of citizens and schools
not to have transgender ideology forced upon them.
"Male and female are clear, distinct
identities, and any attempt to ignore or remove recognition of these
distinctions is destined to fail, hurting children physically, mentally, and
spiritually, and undermine the long-held truths of our society," Schaper
said.
"Any court ruling which attempts to force
transgender ideologies into public schools (or anywhere) should be met with the
same opposition which followed the abusive Plessy v. Ferguson or Korematsu v.
United States Supreme Court rulings."
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld state racial
segregation laws for public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but
equal."
Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone
dissenter from Plessy, famously writing, "There is a dangerous tendency in
these latter days to enlarge the functions of the courts, by means of judicial
interference with the will of the people as expressed by the legislature. Our
institutions have the distinguishing characteristic that the three departments
of government are coordinate and separate. Each must keep within the limits
defined by the constitution."
Korematsu v. United States (1944) upheld the
constitutionality of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order forcing
Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II regardless of
citizenship.
MassResistance Executive
Director Brian Camenker agrees with his colleague, but he expressed skepticism
to LifeSiteNews. "Unfortunately, this is probably only a temporary
reprieve," he said. "A federal judicial system that is capable of
mandating 'gay marriage' is not going to be stopped here."
Camenker then placed blame on conservative
citizens who remain passive. "Our side is paying the price for not
fighting this aggressively. Only talking about bathrooms and 'privacy' instead
of attacking the core issue – the insanity of transgenderism – is a losing argument
in the long run."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton believes
this is an issue of executive overreach. He commented that
Texas won’t sit idly by as President Obama "ignore(s) the
Constitution" and added, "The president cannot rewrite the laws
enacted by the elected representatives of the people and then threaten to take
away funding from schools to force them to fall in line."
The issue of transgender use of opposite sex
intimate facilities has created contrary opinions from the nation's courts. The
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia ruled the Obama transgender school
mandate was constitutional and issued an injunction allowing Caitlyn Grimm, a
transgender girl who changed her name to Gavin, to use the boys' facilities.
The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily stayed that injunction.
The day after Judge O'Connor granted the
nationwide injunction, Paxton sued to
also block Obama's new health care transgender accommodation mandate against
physicians, hospitals and insurers