The Obama administration sent a letter earlier this month to every public school in America requiring them to ensure equal treatment for students regardless of gender identity.
Now Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder is firing back with a letter of his own.
Kinder, who is also a Republican candidate for governor, sent a letter Tuesday to President Barack Obama demanding he rescind his administration's letter, which says schools must allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match the student’s declared gender identity even if that gender is different than the one labeled on their birth certificate or risk losing federal funding.
“The letter and its demands are an unconstitutional abuse of authority by your executive branch,” Kinder says in his letter, which he also sent to representatives from the U.S. departments of justice and education. “It is a blatant attempt to change established law, which is a function reserved for the legislative branch by the Constitution. By threatening local school districts with the loss of federal funding, your administration is seizing local control from public schools while threatening the privacy rights of Missouri students.”
Kinder published the full text of his letter on his campaign website here.
Missouri is not one of the eleven states suing the federal government over the guidance issued to public schools on May 13, but officials here—especially Republicans, particularly those running for office—have taken a hard stance against the administration’s edict.
See also: Lawmaker Urges Missouri To Reject Federal Protections for Transgender Students
Last week, Missouri Rep. Mike Moon sent a letter to education commissioner Margie Vandeven that described being transgender as “a behavior inconsistent with natural law” and called on Missouri to reject federal rules protecting transgender students from discrimination at school.
“If we, as a society, are intent upon instructing and training our children on the difference between right and wrong, we must stand against decrees from the federal government or any other entity forcing us to do otherwise,” Moon said in the letter.
Eric Greitens, another Republican candidate for governor, has called the administration’s edict an “obscene overreach of federal power that must be stopped.” Rep. Andrew Koenig, a Republican from Manchester running for state Senate, pushed for Missouri to take legal action against the rule.
See also: Can Eric Greitens Become Missouri's Next Governor?
Even Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat and a candidate for governor, criticized the administration’s letter as moving “too quickly and too unilaterally.”
U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill took the opposite approach by coming out in support of the federal protection for transgender students, calling it “a solution looking for a problem.”
“To me it’s kind of common sense,” McCaskill, a Democrat, told Missourinet. “I’m not aware of any problem that has occurred because of transgender people using the bathroom with the gender they are identifying and living as.”
Kinder criticized the Obama administration’s “federal abuse of power” when the Department of Justice sued North Carolina over its new law requiring public bathrooms and changing facilities to be divided according to “biological sex,” not gender identity, comparing it to the Department of Justice’s threat to file a costly lawsuit against Ferguson unless the city made mandated changes to its judicial process.
“This DOJ will not stop in North Carolina,” Kinder wrote. “By targeting this one state, the Obama Administration has telegraphed what it intends to do to any state that tries to protect its residents’ right to privacy against a far-left radical agenda.”
In this week’s letter, Kinder focuses on the legality of the Obama administration’s edict about transgender students in school bathrooms and locker rooms. Kinder says the new rule goes against federal and state court decisions as well as Title IX regulations and asks Obama directly to rescind it to avoid “serious, unconstitutional infringement on the liberties and lives of the people of Missouri.”
“The letter puts Missouri public schools in the unjust position of having to choose between either doing what they know is best for their particular student population or receiving federal funding. School districts that feel forced to follow the letter’s decree in order to continue to receive funding will undoubtedly open themselves up to huge liabilities and potential lawsuits for violating students’ privacy rights and undermining parental authority rights,” Kinder writes.
Here’s the letter:
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
