FRC Submits Joint Brief Urging SCOTUS to Hear School Bathroom Case, Protect Privacy
Contact: J.P. Duffy, 866-FRC-NEWS, 866-372-6397
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2017 /
Christian Newswire/ -- This week Family Research Council (FRC), along with a coalition of twenty other family policy organizations, submitted a
joint amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of
Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 v. Whitaker asking the nation's highest court to hear the case and rule that current law allows schools to make distinctions based on biological sex for purposes of deciding who will use private school facilities.
FRC's Travis Weber, an attorney who assisted in filing the brief, commented:
"Our entire framework of the rule of law is based on the idea that law has an objective meaning. If the words of a statute are one day declared to mean something else than what they have for over 50 years, our entire system suffers, and Americans will further doubt the credibility of the courts and will become even more disenfranchised. In order for the notion that the people have a voice through Congress to mean anything, courts must honor what those people say through their representatives. We hope this Court respects the peoples' wish that when Title IX says it prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, it means 'sex' and nothing more."
The amicus brief argues in part:
"The Seventh Circuit ruling poses ominous threats to individual liberty, rights to privacy, and representative democracy generally.
"The circuit court hijacks a theory of sex stereotyping used for employment cases and applies it to force school children to sacrifice their privacy by sharing bathroom with members of the opposite biological sex. The ruling defies the explicit statutory language of Title IX and its implementing regulations, as applied in public schools.
"The result is an incoherent mandate demanding that schools violate the regulations in order to comply with the statute as interpreted--or rather redrafted--by the Seventh Circuit. Schools are already caught in the clutches of a Catch-22 where they increasingly face litigation, whether from a disgruntled student unable to use the restroom of the opposite sex, as in the recent G. G. v. Gloucester County School Board, or by other students whose privacy has been compromised.
"Moreover, public education is a matter entrusted primarily to the state and local elected representatives closest to the people and most responsive to their concerns. This ruling deprives individuals of the liberty to participate in a matter of vital importance in the public schools that educate their children. Public school students, subject to compulsory education laws, are compelled to sacrifice their liberty and reasonable expectation of privacy on a daily basis.
"This Court should grant the Petition in order to make clear that when Title IX and its implementing regulation say 'sex,' they mean biological sex--notwithstanding lower court arguments to the contrary."
