PA joins about 14 other states who have told Obama to lump it.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania House State Government Committee Majority Chairman Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) and 96 other state lawmakers sent a letter to President Barrack Obama in response to his administration’s recent letter threatening to pull federal funding and seek legal action against public schools that prohibit transgender students from using bathroom and locker room facilities based on gender identity.
“We are writing to express our extreme outrage at the legally spurious ‘Dear Colleague’ letter issued jointly by the Department of Education and the Department of Justice on Friday, May 13, 2016, regarding the use of bathrooms by transgender students in public schools.
“The issue of whether Title IX protects a student’s gender identity has already been decided by a federal court in Pennsylvania. Title IX provides that educational programs cannot discriminate ‘on the basis of sex.’ In Johnson v. Univ. of Pittsburgh Com. Sys. of Higher Education, the federal court for the Western District Court of Pennsylvania found that Title IX’s language did not provide a basis for a transgender status claim. The Court held that ‘Title IX and its implementing regulations clearly permit schools to provide students with certain sex-segregated spaces, including bathroom and locker room facilities, to perform certain private activities and bodily functions consistent with the individual’s birth sex’ (emphasis added). Relying on this rationale, the Court upheld the University of Pittsburgh’s policy of separating bathrooms and locker rooms on the basis of birth sex under Title IX and the United States Constitution. An appeal of this decision was dismissed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on March 30, 2016.