Diplomacy in Drag

At a time when inflation has forced belt-tightening in households across America, the State Department has seen fit to give a cultural center in Ecuador $20,600 to host “drag theater performances,” with the goal to “promote diversity and inclusion.” Heritage Expert: Simon Hankinson

How Catholic Are Congressional Catholics in the 118th Congress?

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue 

In the 118th Congress, Catholics comprise 28% of the seats, the largest of any religious affiliation. But just how Catholic are these Catholics? 

We reviewed the scorecard of incumbent representatives and senators as tallied by National Right to Life and NARAL, the two most authoritative sources measuring congressional support for the right to life and the right to abortion, respectively, in the nation. For newly elected members, we consulted their stated record on this subject when they were candidates. Here is what we found. 

In the House of Representatives, there are 65 Democrats who claim a Catholic identity, 54 of whom have a perfect pro-abortion record; and all 10 of the newly elected members are in the pro-abortion camp. Of the 56 Republicans who claim a Catholic identity, 48 have a perfect pro-life voting record; one has a mostly pro-life record; and the seven newly elected members espouse a pro-life position. 

This means that 98% of the Catholic House Democrats are pro-abortion and 100% of the Catholic House Republicans are mostly pro-life. 

In the Senate, there are 15 Catholic Democrats, 12 of whom have a perfect pro-abortion record. Of the 11 Catholic Republicans, 7 have a perfect pro-life record. 

This means that 80% of Catholic Senate Democrats are pro-abortion and 100% of Catholic Senate Republicans are pro-life. 

In the last two years, both parties have become more entrenched in their positions. Even people known to be more moderate on this issue ventured closer to their party's extreme. For instance, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine moved more to the pro-life camp. However, moving in the opposite direction was Joe Manchin of West Virginia: he had a perfect pro-life rating in the 116th Congress but dropped down to a 67% score in the last congress. 

Similarly in the House, Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) became more pro-life after leaving the Democratic party. Henry Cuellar (TX-D), who was widely seen as the last pro-life Democrat in the House, earned a higher score from NARAL and a lower score from National Right to Life. 

Does this mean that Catholic Republicans are better Catholics than Catholic Democrats? On the issue that the bishops regard as the "preeminent" issue of our time, namely, abortion, it certainly does. It must be said, however, that as a true measure of one's Catholic status, one's voting record on one issue is not necessarily dispositive. 

Some argue that a congressman's record on social justice issues is a more accurate gauge of his Catholicity. The problem with that contention is that it is much more difficult to make comparisons on such matters. To wit: Catholics who favor more government welfare programs contend that their position is better aligned with Church teachings, yet Catholics who oppose more government dependency maintain that they are more faithful to the Church's teachings on the poor. Climate change is another issue that is difficult to score. 

Ultimately, whether one is a "good Catholic" depends on factors of a more intimate nature. But it is not wrong to suggest that elected Catholic officials who maintain a decidedly pro-abortion voting record are an embarrassment to Catholics. They most certainly are. After all, the right to life is the most foundational of our natural rights. This is not an observation—it is a fact of life. 

To read our tally of the voting records on the issue of abortion for all Catholics:

For the House, click here.

For the Senate, click here.

Why Biden Doesn’t Care About The Border But You Should

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – One of the nice things about the Christmas holidays is that this paper skips an edition at the same time my radio station goes to all sacred music through January 1. That gives me a nice respite from column writing and program producing to just relax and contemplate what the Old Year has wrought and what the New Year might unveil.

As I watched the year-end reviews on television I was reminded of a column I wrote back in September of 2020. I looked it up and had an amazing, but not unexpected revelation. And the first thought that crossed my mind was: I warned you!!!

Here is, with some new additions, what I wrote back then:

I started with the old maxim of “divide and conquer” which had been used throughout history to achieve military and political victory over one’s opponents. A variant of that was used in our political system but it was toned down somewhat by an overwhelming sense of national unity.
Unfortunately, I wrote then, that over time we have lost the sense of an overarching unity that transcends all, with each side playing to its own base of niche groups, railing against the other side’s groups in order to gain power.

With that in mind, let’s go back to 1966 when two members of the Democratic Socialists of America, Columbia University sociologists Richard Cloward and his wife, Frances Fox Piven, articulated a strategy which sought to quicken the fall of capitalism by overloading the government with a flood of impossible demands which would push society into crisis and economic collapse.

Much of their theory was based on the work of socialist community organizer Saul Alinsky. Cloward and Piven started with welfare reform. They argued that the welfare system manipulated and weakened the poor who could only advance when “the rest of society is afraid of them.” Yet in their view, the welfare program provided a safety net which calmed anxieties and placated the poor.

Thus Cloward and Piven argued that activists should work to sabotage the welfare system by forcing it to collapse which would spark a poor people’s rebellion to which the government must respond. They suggested endorsing goals, such as a guaranteed living wage and the redistribution of wealth.

Their strategy was outlined at the 1966 Socialists Scholars Conference. The following year the National Welfare Rights Organization was founded which began to use the tactics Cloward and Piven had suggested, in which the poor and minorities were urged to seek all the benefits allowable under law. The idea was to overwhelm the system using such tactics as relaxing welfare requirements, like the elimination of work or job requirements, which would lead to economic collapse.

As I wrote in 2020: Organizers used sit-ins, mass demonstrations, school boycotts, picket lines, and riotous behaviors, to gain legislative and court victories. Despite good economic times, welfare rolls jumped over 200 percent; in New York City alone for every two working persons, there was now one on welfare. Although the guaranteed living wage was not achieved, the tens of billions of dollars in welfare entitlements came close to sinking the economy, just as Cloward and Piven had predicted, and was partly responsible for the bankruptcy of New York City in 1975.

After the attempt to scuttle the economy by trying to overload the welfare system, the pair moved to other areas, one of which was the voting system. They disapproved of the electoral system for the same reason they complained about the welfare system: It placated the marginalized, giving them the idea that their vote gave them a stake in the government which dissipated their anger.

To that end the team concentrated on transforming the Democratic Party. In 1982 they presented their plan in the left-wing publication, Social Policy, which entailed the same roadmap they used to try to overwhelm the welfare system: flood the system with new voters to provoke a political backlash.

As I wrote back then: “The backlash would force officials into using unfamiliar and cumbersome registration procedures, purging non-voters from the rolls, and other voter suppression devices that would create an anti-backlash against the establishment over voting rights. The result led to the transformed Democratic Party, now allied with the poor in their new ‘class struggle.’ Groups like ACORN led on these issues demanding such things as the 1993 Motor-Voter law which made it easier to register to vote but harder to determine the validity of the new registrations.”
The journalist and writer John Fund wrote in his book Stealing Elections: “Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship. States had to permit mail-in voter registrations, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election officials. Finally, states were limited in pruning ‘deadwood’ — people who had died, moved, or been convicted of crimes – from their rolls.”

Fund reported that Motor-Voter did swamp the voter rolls with millions of invalid registrations filed on behalf of sometimes dead or nonexistent persons, setting the stage for unprecedented levels of voter fraud and voter disenfranchisement claims.

As I wrote then, Fund reported that in 2010 then-Cong. Barney Frank (D., Mass) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) were preparing legislation whereby any person whose name was on any federal list would be automatically registered to vote without any identity verification at polling stations. The intent was to overwhelm the voting rolls to collapse the system as was tried with the welfare system. It was all an outgrowth of their plans to destabilize the election system causing chaos to the benefit of the socialists.

Of course, this necessitated help from friends embedded in the government bureaucracies to “assist” in the administration of the new socialist economic programs which were now being provided by the taxpayers.

Libertarian economist Wayne Allyn Root wrote in 2010: “Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven….They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they’re alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival…and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.”

He also suggested that if you add healthcare (Obamacare) with statehood for the District of Columbia as well as Puerto Rico, legalization of the approximately 12 million illegal immigrants then in the country, and raising taxes you’ll get the “perfect Marxist scheme.”

That is what I wrote back in 2020, before the disastrous response to the COVID pandemic which forced school, business, and even some church closings and well before the debacle of the “COVID requires rules change” election. And yet what happened immediately after the election was the unofficial opening of the Southern Border and the swamping of our Homeland Security system by a flood of incoming immigrants who were allowed to boarder-jump all the while our border protectors were reduced to administrative duties, baby sitting, and scattering the new arrivals across the nation by the dark of night.

And we still hear of plans to give amnesty (read that citizenship and voting rights) to all those who entered the country illegally, as well as statehood for DC, and we already have authorized 87,000 new IRS agents to suck up any lose change the bumpkins in the cheap seats have left.
Things are progressing nicely for those wishing to overload and override the systems of government. Biden and his cronies know exactly what they are doing: following the Marxist playbook of Cloward and Piven. It’s working nicely for those who wish to — not to coin a phrase — “fundamentally change America.”

And we wonder why our traditional civic values, beliefs, and even religious institutions are under attack. It’s all part of the plan.

Fentanyl anyone?

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Weekend on Faith On Trial at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/)

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Biden Wants Reparations For Africa

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue 

President Joe Biden recently said he wants Congress to write a check to African nations to the tune of $55 billion. Why? “We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains, subjected to unimaginable cruelty. My nation’s original sin was that period.” 

Biden is factually wrong. He made four errors. 

1. The slaves taken from Africa were not “stolen”— they were bought by Europeans from their African slavemasters. 

2. Children were rarely taken: most of the slaves were men. 

3. Most slaves were not subjected to “unimaginable cruelty.” This was not because the slavemasters were kind: it was because they wanted their slaves to be healthy. The worst thing they did to their slaves was non-violent: they denied them the right to keep some of their bounty, which would have allowed them to develop a work ethic. As for the cruelty, more Irish died on the ships to the New World than Africans, and that is because they were not slated to be slaves—so they were expendable. 

4. Slavery is not our original sin. As Harvard scholar Orlando Patterson has detailed, it is one of the most common institutions in the history of the world. In fact, there is not a place on earth that has not had slavery at one time or another. 

Here are some more facts about slavery that Biden doesn’t know. 

As black economist Thomas Sowell has noted, slavery was never an issue anywhere in the world until the 18th century, and that was when the leaders in Western civilization started to condemn it. “You could research all of the 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there.” 

Sowell also maintains that “Just as Europeans enslaved Africans, North Africans enslaved Europeans—more Europeans than there were Africans enslaved in the United States or in the 13 colonies from which the nation was formed.” 

A CNN report on slavery found that “For centuries along the West African coast, millions of Africans were sold into slavery and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas. The middlemen were European slave traders based in forts like Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle....” 

Researcher Akosua Perbi of the University of Ghana concluded that “It was the Africans themselves who were enslaving their fellow Africans, sending them to the coast to be shipped outside.” 

In September, CNN’s Don Lemon interviewed Hilary Fordwich, an English commentator and business consultant. Lemon contended that the English are immensely wealthy and that they should pay reparations for enslaving Africans. He said as much as $100 billion should be paid. 

Fordwich did not disagree that reparations should be made, only that it is important to note who started the slavery supply chain. 

“Where was the beginning of the supply chain? That was in Africa.” She pointedly said, “The first nation in the world to abolish it [slavery]—it was started by William Wilberforce, was the British. In Great Britain, they abolished slavery. Why? Because the African kings were rounding up their own people. They had them in cages waiting in the beaches. No one was running into Africa to get them.” 

“And you’re totally right. If reparations need to be paid, we need to go right back to the beginning of that supply chain and say, who was rounding up their own people and having them handcuffed in cages. Absolutely. That’s where they should start.” 

Lemon was dumbfounded. He simply said, “It’s an interesting discussion, Hilary. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We’ll continue to discuss.” 

One more thing. Instead of worrying how much cash people should get for a condition they never endured, shouldn’t we be concerned with modern-day slavery? 

Slavery is widespread today, though it is not well reported. The countries with the most slaves are India, China and North Korea. In terms of the highest prevalence per 1000 residents, the top three are North Korea, Eritrea and Burundi; of the top ten, half are African nations. 

This raises the question: Who should pay whom for atrocities occurring in real time? It would be great if Joe Biden weighed in.

How Welfare Programs Discourage Marriage: The Case of Pre-K Education Subsidies

Many welfare programs give greater benefits to unmarried individuals than to a married couple of otherwise identical income. The resulting marriage penalty discourages marriage and rewards single parenthood. Combined marriage penalties across federal and state welfare programs can reach tens of thousands of dollars per year for a given family. One component of the marriage penalties comes from state-level free or subsidized preschool programs. In addition to a failed track record in providing high-quality preschool education, the majority of government-funded preschool programs also have severe marriage penalties. Marriage is highly beneficial to adults, children, and society as a whole. Policymakers should consider the implications of their programs on marriage and design policies that do not discourage marriage, and, in fact, actively promote marriage and support married couples with children. Heritage Expert: Jamie Hall

The Attack on Legal Protection for the Unborn Moves to State Courts

Heritage take: By overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the U.S. Constitution allows legislatures to protect the unborn. Abortion advocates, therefore, will attack pro-life laws in state courts under state constitutions. Six state constitutions reject any right to abortion; 14 of them, explicitly or by interpretation, protect abortion; and 14 others have an equal rights amendment that could do so. Pro-life Americans, however, have new opportunities to protect the unborn: Voters in each state elect the legislators and governor responsible for that state’s abortion laws; have a direct role in changing the state constitution; elect the attorney general who must defend those laws; and, in many states, determine who sits on the supreme court. Heritage Expert: Thomas Jipping

‘New York Must Stop Disarming Its Religious Citizens’ Under New Court Order

Heritage Report: A federal court has blocked New York from enforcing a ban on the concealed carrying of firearms at houses of worship, ruling Thursday that the state law likely discriminated against religious New Yorkers and may have violated the First Amendment. The state’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, signed the legislation

Repeat of 2020? Left-Wing Tech Group Doles Out Millions in Grants in Eerily Familiar Election Scheme

Heritage Report: A letter from the Alliance for Election Excellence to election officials in each of the 10 jurisdictions, dated Dec. 1, says: “I am pleased to inform you that based on and in reliance upon the information and materials provided [that] the Center for Tech and Civic Life (‘CTCL’), a nonprofit organization tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code (‘IRC’) section 501(c)(3), has decided to award a grant to support the work of Town of Greenwich (‘Grantee’).” The letter says the amount of the alliance’s grant is $500,000, with the first $150,000 to be paid in December 2022 and another $350,000 to be paid in December 2023. That would place the bulk of the funding just ahead of the 2024 presidential election.  Heritage Expert: Fred Lucas

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Florida’s Transgender Bathroom Ban. Now What?

Heritage Report: Transgender male student Drew Adams (a biological female) challenged the policy in 2020, claiming that it violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, which provides that no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Adams also argued that the policy violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program that receives federal funding. Heritage Expert: Sarah Parshall Perry

Students for Life of America (SFLA) Responds to President Biden’s Pill-Pushing FDA

“The Biden Administration is making dangerous Chemical Abortion Pills attainable at every corner as it lowers the medical standards for protecting women,” said Kristan Hawkins, SFLAction and SFLA President. “Making Chemical Abortion Pills accessible at your local pharmacy is certainly not the product of the ‘safe, legal, and rare’ lie we were fed as we fought for the reversal of Roe. The objective of this Administration has always been increased access to dangerous drugs which is why Students for Life has launched a multi-layered campaign to demand transparency and real tests into the impact of these pills on women and the environment.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Students for Life Action (SFLAction) and Students for Life of America (SFLA) President Kristan Hawkins responded to breaking news made by President Biden’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that it will be furthering Chemical Abortion Pill distribution by allowing local pharmacies to sell the life-ending pills. “While this news is unsurprising, we are appalled by the priorities of the FDA that seek to risk women’s lives and expose them to infertility, injury, and even death while discarding of the preborn.”

Last month, SFLAction and SFLA filed two citizen petitions to the FDA demanding answers on the distribution of Chemical Abortion Pills that now end more than half of all preborn life lost to deliberate abortion. “Americans deserve answers before we expose women to pills known to kill,” Hawkins added.  

Under this new guidance, any pharmacy can now opt-in to this deadly distribution and doctors can sign up to be certified to prescribe Chemical Abortion Pills. The combination of the drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, kill a preborn child and cause a woman to have contractions and pass the deceased child. Already ranking as the leading method of direct abortion, Hawkins added that fast-tracking pharmacies to sell these drugs is a “win for the abortion lobby who profits off the death of the preborn and a loss for women who will suffer physically, mentally, and emotionally.”

Instead of addressing issues before his Administration like raising inflation prices on eggs and milk and the still shortage of baby formula, President Biden is increasing the number of entities willing to risk women’s lives. Biden’s no test, online distribution of Chemical Abortion Pills exposes women to a myriad of risks but expanding to local drugstores and pharmacies will only increase the danger women face when self-administering the life-threatening pills.

Given studies at NIH showing Chemical Abortion Pills and other endocrine disruptors in our water supply are harming aquatic and animal life, SFLAction and SFLA called for a pause of the reckless campaign of the Biden Administration to fast-track death by Chemical Abortion Pills. This is a time for a real environmental assessment, and for the Biden Administration to come clean on their claims of “studies” supporting their proposals.  

The Biden Administration is pushing a reckless plan without regarding studies and transparency on how these drugs can harm the least of these. SFLAction and SFLA continue to educate the Pro-Life Generation about this issue while garnering thousands of signatures in its citizen’s petitions as it calls for the restoration of the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) that at minimum protected women from the most dangerous outcomes of a Chemical Abortion.

Fentanyl poisoning among youth a health crisis

The Heritage Take:  The American public needs to understand these fentanyl deaths aren’t classic overdoses among addicts. These aren’t broken kids with “substance use disorder.” The overwhelming majority aren’t actively seeking fentanyl at all. In a time where drug use among our youth is as much a rite of passage as alcohol use, illicit fentanyl hit the stage, and it’s killing them. When medication is ordered online or when recreational drugs are passed out by an acquaintance at a party, it is far too often illicit fentanyl, and it kills before the victim even realizes what is happening to them. Additionally, those who do suffer from substance use disorder are all future opportunities to recover stolen from them by fentanyl-contaminated drugs consumed without knowledge or intent. Heritage Expert: Virginia Allen

Looking Back or Forward?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – The beginning of a New Year is most often thought of as a time to look forward, make resolutions, and imagine a future sans the troubles of the past. I want to take a different tack and look back a bit, so if you will indulge me, let’s step on board the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman and visit the early days of our Republic when a man named John Adams was the first president to sit in the White House — or as it was known then, the Executive Mansion.

Mr. Adams belonged to the Federalist Party which, for the time involved here, also controlled the Congress. The opposition party, the Republicans, the forerunner of today’s Democratic Party, was led by the man who succeeded Mr. Adams into the White House, Thomas Jefferson — maybe you heard of him?

Anyway that’s all you need right now to set the stage as the Wayback Machine reaches its destination.

In the spring of 1798 it appeared to the Federalist administration and Congress that war with France was imminent and it passed four “wartime” measures to curb seditious language and to deport “troublesome” aliens. Thus was born the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The first three dealt with aliens; one extended the time for naturalization, the second gave the president the power to deport or imprison “dangerous” aliens; and the third empowered the president to restrict, jail, or deport any enemy alien.

The more troubling act was the Sedition Act which prohibited the decimation of “false, scandalous, and malicious” statements “against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, with intent to defame … or to bring them … into contempt or disrepute.” Violators convicted of such “disinformation” could face up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $2,000.

All four acts were scheduled to terminate at the end of Adam’s term, March 4, 1801.

One provision in the Act which was insisted upon by Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton, allowed those charged with sedition to plead the truth of their statements, a legal defense that was not recognized in common law and ultimately did not survive the Act’s expiration.

This began a series of prosecutions under the Act and under the common law of seditious libel. Prosecutions under the Act resulted in 25 arrests, 15 indictments, and 10 convictions. Under the common law prosecutions there were a number of additional convictions, eight involving newspapers.

Some of the cases were serious and some not-so serious. A few examples:

Matthew Lyon, a Vermont publisher and sitting member of Congress, was charged under the Sedition Act, not for what he published, but for a letter he wrote that was published by another newspaper which was critical of the president. He was imprisoned for four months and fined $1,000. Interestingly, he was re-elected to Congress while in prison and later elected to Congress from Kentucky, and still later was elected a Congressional delegate from the territory of Arkansas.

Anthony Haswell, editor of the Vermont Gazette, was arrested for negative comments made about the Federalist Party while trying to raise funds to pay Lyon’s fine.

The government indicted the editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, a leading Republican newspaper, for criticism of the president and when the editor died before trial, the government indicted his successor.

In New York another Republican paper, The Argus, published a story about Alexander Hamilton accusing him of a plan to buy and silence another newspaper. The editor charged died, but the government pursued the matter against his widow and one of the paper’s printers. The widow’s case was dismissed but the $8 a week printer was convicted and fined $100 and jailed for four months.

James Callender, who wrote a pamphlet critical of President Adams, was fined $200 and sentenced to nine months in prison.

And in South Carolina, a Dr. Thomas Cooper was fined $100 and sent to jail for six months for calling the president an incompetent. He actually tried to call Adams as a witness to prove the truth of his statement, but the court refused to issue the subpoena.

The editor of the New London, Connecticut Bee was fined $200 and imprisoned for three months for “aspersions” on the army; and the editor of the Mt. Pleasant, New York Register was fined $50 and sentenced to three months in jail for reprinting from another paper a “libel” of the president.

In addition, there were a few quacky ones: A man in Massachusetts was fined $400 and jailed for 18 months for putting up a “liberty pole” with signs on it protesting the Acts. And a man in Trenton, N.J. was fined $100 for saying that the he hoped the wadding of the canon used to salute President Adams would have hit Mr. Adams “in his breeches.”

The public’s outrage over the prosecutions under the Acts grew and contributed to Adam’s defeat by Jefferson in the 1800 election. The last election in which the Federalist Party was competitive and was the death-knell of that party.

Jefferson, as president, pardoned all those convicted under the Sedition Act and the Republican Congress reimbursed those who were fined with interest. While the Act was blatantly unconstitutional, no case was ever appealed to the Supreme Court. Since the expiration of the Acts at the end of the Adams’ presidency, there have been only a few court cases involving criminal sedition.

And, by the way, there was no war with France.

Isn’t it fun to ride the Wayback Machine and take a look at things the way they were then. Of course no one thinks that our government would try anything like that today — it would be impossible to do so considering how many media outlets there are now. One would have to have a key into the major media outlets and their sources to impose that control. They’d all have to be wired together by a computer, or something, for that to work. Fortunately that’ll never happen. Good for us that isn’t possible.

School bathroom policy based on biology upheld

ATLANTA, GA – The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 7-4 that a Florida public school district’s bathroom policy based on biological sex does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or the federal Title IX law. 

In Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, the Eleventh Circuit reversed and remanded the district court’s previous order regarding a student’s statutory and constitutional challenge to a school district policy barring students from using bathrooms that do not correspond with their biological sex. Drew Adams, a biological girl in Florida, wanted to use the boys’ restrooms instead of either the girls’ restrooms or the single-stall restrooms that the school made available for students. 

In the majority opinion, Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote, “This case involves the unremarkable—and nearly universal—practice of separating school bathrooms based on biological sex. This appeal requires us to determine whether separating the use of male and female bathrooms in the public schools based on a student’s biological sex violates (1) the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1, and (2) Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. We hold that it does not—separating school bathrooms based on biological sex passes constitutional muster and comports with Title IX.”  

The appeals court wrote that the school’s bathroom policy does not violate the Equal Protection Clause because it “clears the hurdle of intermediate scrutiny” and “does not discriminate against transgender students” and it “advances the important governmental objective of protecting students’ privacy in school bathrooms and does so in a manner substantially related to that objective.” 

Judge Lagoa further stated that the bathroom policy also does not discriminate against “transgender” students because it classifies on the basis of sex, not transgender status or gender identity. 

“Because the bathroom policy divides students into two groups, both of which include transgender students, there is a ‘lack of identity’ between the policy and transgender status, as the bathroom options are ‘equivalent to those provided to all’ students of the same biological sex…The contention that the School Board’s bathroom policy relied on impermissible stereotypes associated with Adams’s transgender status is wrong. The bathroom policy does not depend in any way on how students act or identify.” 

The court ruled that the school district’s bathroom policy also does not violate Title IX because the federal civil rights law provides a provision with respect to “living facilities,” and the regulations implementing Title IX explicitly permit schools receiving federal funds to provide “separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.” 

Judge Lagoa even wrote a special concurrence that addressed what a contrary ruling on Title IX would mean for girls’ and women’s rights and sports. 

“Affirming the district court’s order and adopting Adams’s definition of ‘sex’ under Title IX to include ‘gender identity’ or ‘transgender status’ would have had repercussions far beyond the bathroom door. There simply is no limiting principle to cabin that definition of ‘sex’ to the regulatory carve-out for bathrooms under Title IX, as opposed to the regulatory carve-out for sports or, for that matter, to the statutory and regulatory carve-outs for living facilities, showers, and locker rooms. And a definition of ‘sex’ beyond ‘biological sex’ would not only cut against the vast weight of drafting-era dictionary definitions and the Spending Clause’s clear statement rule but would also force female student athletes ‘to compete against students who have a very significant biological advantage, including students who have the size and strength of a male but identify as female’…Such a proposition—i.e., commingling both biological sexes in the realm of female athletics—would ‘threaten to undermine one of [Title IX’s] major achievements, giving young women an equal opportunity to participate in sports.’” 

“Nothing about this bathroom policy violates Title IX. Moreover, under the Spending Clause’s clear-statement rule, the term ‘sex,’ as used within Title IX, must unambiguously mean something other than biological sex—which it does not—in order to conclude that the School Board violated Title IX. The district court’s contrary conclusion is not supported by the plain and ordinary meaning of the word ‘sex’ and provides ample support for subsequent litigants to transform schools’ living facilities, locker rooms, showers, and sports teams into sex-neutral areas and activities. Whether Title IX should be amended to equate ‘gender identity’ and ‘transgender status’ with ‘sex’ should be left to Congress—not the courts.”

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “This a commonsense decision by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals that protects the privacy and safety of all students. Biology is fixed at birth and giving legal credence to fiction would undermine the law and cause chaos and significant harm.”

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