America's Talking - Biden Rule Takes Lunch Money From Schools That Reject Progressive Gender, Sexuality Agenda

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

A new Biden administration rule forces schools to comply with progressive ideology on gender and sexuality or risk losing the federal aid for free and reduced-price school lunches. Legal observers say this is just the first in a slew of new rules on the horizon tying federal education funding to far-left policies on gender and sexuality. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Vice President of News and Content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Join me again today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you, Casey. We are recording this on Friday, December 1st.

Casey, you were a story for thecentersquare.com today. about a new Biden administration rule that forces schools to essentially comply with progressive ideology when it comes to gender and sexuality or risk losing federal aid for free and reduced school launches. What's going on here? Yeah, this is a pretty fascinating story. And I've written about this before at the center square.com. I wrote that this, you know, change was happening or about to happen. And but now it's it's here.

and actually there have been schools and that have lost their school lunch funding because they refuse to comply with some of the gender and sexuality thinking and policies of the Biden administration. Let me interrupt you there. Let's just give me an example. What is some of these sexuality and gender policies that the Biden administration? Well, you know, an example would be, you know, transgender bathroom signage, allowing a, you know, a biobiles. biological boy who identifies as a girl to use a girl's locker room. Those are kind of those things. It could also be something with someone who, one of the teachers, who wants to do the same. So those are

some examples of things that could happen. I think preferred pronoun usage could also come into play here. This is very new, Dan. It's really developing. I think that we're really at the very beginning of all this in the legal battles. And I think a lot of schools may not even really have had to deal or grapple. with this yet because it is a pretty new policy. But basically how it happened is the USDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, people may not know this, but they actually oversee the money that goes for, like, you know, lunch money for kids, where kids need to eat for free or eat reduced lunches, you know, in poorer schools, especially this is going to be more used.

The federal government helps pay for that. And so, you know, which I think most people would agree is a great thing to pay for, you know, a poor, fourth grader to eat lunches. And so that's what they do. but there is a federal law, and part of it's called Title IX, and it regulates basically everything that schools do. It has this non-discrimination clause in Title IX says that you cannot discriminate against students or any way based on sex.

And so, you know, sex and race is part of that as well. But what the USDA announced is that they're going to change what is meant by sex, which is traditionally been understood as you can't discriminate against people who are being girl. They're going to change that to include basically every gender that has, you know, sort of been evolved. And as I think we all know that there is a kind of growing and a number of genders now, a dozen, or maybe hundreds of genders. And also, not just more genders, it's going to be multiple, your sexual orientation as well. But I just, I just want to clarify, there may be dozens of genders, maybe even a hundred genders. That's according to progressive ideology. That's

Right. Yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, that's what the new way of thinking is, you know, you can be a agent. You could come up with your own gender right now if you wanted. I think people aware that, you know, through the universities and through some of this ideology that there is this ongoing evolution of LGBT is growing into 2S, LGBTQI, like the acronyms keep growing. And that's kind of what I'm getting at. And so that way of thinking, if schools, if a student is bought into that or parents have bought into that, or even a teacher, and they want to be treated accordingly. They want to use their bathroom. They want to be able to use a bathroom of someone of the opposite. Jitter. They want to maybe have certain pronouns used the way they were. Or they want to really be endorsed in their sexual orientation. If the schools don't get behind that, they can risk basically have their lunch money taken away.

So that actually happened to a school in South Carolina that is now suing the Biden administration. And there was another school that was a religious school that had already sued the Biden administration. They basically settled out of court. And the USCA kind of released a follow a memo, which said that there are some more protections for religious schools. But I would not by any means say that religious schools are in the clear here. This is something that's going to be litigated. It's in the courts. And I think it's going to be really shocking to people.

When I talk to people about this story, Dan, no one's ever heard of it. And it affects all schools. and it's a major change, but I don't know, have, do you feel like, I feel like there's not an awareness that this is really going on right now. Yeah, well, I think, I mean, the Center Square, you, you and the Center Square are one of the few media outlets, really, that are, that are writing about this. But let's get to the core of the issue. Essentially with this new rule, the Biden administration will punish lower income students who qualify for these free or reduced lunches. by taking away those lunches if a school district overall or a school, the entire school doesn't comply with these new, you know, gender and sex rules essentially.

Right. That's exactly right. And it's a, it's, it's, why are, why is the Biden administration punishing lower income students and not the school in general? Well, I think that this is, this is just, a sign of things that come. I don't think they're not just targeting the lunch program. The lunch program was just kind of an easy way to, thing to do up front, but they're actually rolling out more roles or expected more rules through the Department of Education next year. I think this is the first sign of a total overhaul within the Department of Education on this issue.

They're going to make pretty much all federal money for education have to comply with this redefinition of sex and gender. I really believe that's the ultimate plan. And so Pell Grants, FAFSA, any kind of, any kind of, of the, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars that come to the Department of Education is going to come with these strings attached. And unless really the courts do something about it because Congress, you know, the Senate tried to vote to the Congressional Review Act to overturn this USDA reinterpretation. It failed, 47 to 50. I assume that was along party lines. Yes.

but I believe Joe Manchin voted with Republicans on that one. But it still wasn't enough. And so Congress kind of tried, and, you know, I don't think people really heard about it. There wasn't a long extended campaign that got a lot of national tension. But they tried to fail. And this is already being in the courts. I think this is the kind of case to me that could go all the way into the Supreme Court. Because I think it's a pretty hard argument to say that, you know, the lawmakers who wrote this law 50 years ago, when they wrote sex, what they really meant,

was, you know, sexual orientation and many genders that at the time people had never even heard of. So, and I talked to Sarah Perry, who's a lawyer and an expert on this issue at the Heritage Foundation, and she pointed out that the LGBT activists at the time were very disappointed with the Title IX because they felt that the law did not represent them and did not include a provision for them. And so now this is kind of the word, the meanings of the words are being changed to make it mean what the kind of progressive activist wanted to mean. I think it's really interesting. This is all coming out of, you know, unelected bureaucrats as well, Dan.

This isn't like Congress passed a law to do this and the people's will was heard. It's, you know, a handful of bureaucrats. We don't know their names, really, are making these decisions from the Biden administration and it has huge nationwide implications. Crazy story. I'm Casey. I'm sure you'll keep our readers informed with any updates at the Center Square.com, but we are out of time. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulb. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening.

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