Hill GOP Ready to Enter Fray Over Transgender Bathrooms

House Re­pub­lic­ans are pre­par­ing to wade in­to the fight over trans­gender bath­room use in pub­lic schools.

Rep. Luke Mess­er, the fifth-highest-rank­ing elec­ted House Re­pub­lic­an lead­er, said he will in­tro­duce a bill this week com­batting Pres­id­ent Obama’s re­cent dir­ect­ive that pub­lic schools al­low trans­gender youth to use bath­rooms cor­res­pond­ing with their gender iden­tity.

“We made it 240 years as a na­tion without any fed­er­al re­stroom po­lice, so why start now?” said Mess­er, an In­di­ana Re­pub­lic­an. “To me this should be a loc­al de­cision. We don’t need the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment strong-arm­ing loc­al schools.”

Obama’s dir­ect­ive threatens to with­hold fund­ing from loc­al school dis­tricts if they do not com­ply. But Mess­er said his bill would dis­al­low that, and pro­hib­it the De­part­ments of Edu­ca­tion or Justice from im­ple­ment­ing rules and reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing bath­room use.

“I don’t think this so­cial ex­per­i­ment should start in our classrooms,” he said.

Still, Mess­er said he has not yet spoken with top con­gres­sion­al lead­ers, in­clud­ing Speak­er Paul Ry­an, about the bill.

A Ry­an aide said, “Speak­er Ry­an be­lieves this is a state and loc­al is­sue and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should re­spect that.” But the aide did not an­swer wheth­er Ry­an sup­ports le­gis­lat­ive ac­tion on the mat­ter or in­stead be­lieves the is­sue should be left to the courts. The DOJ has sued North Car­o­lina, and the state has coun­ter­sued over its law man­dat­ing bath­room use cor­res­pond with birth gender, not gender iden­tity.

As the House be­gins con­sid­er­a­tion of its first ap­pro­pri­ations bill later this week, mem­bers of both parties will have ample op­por­tun­it­ies to push the trans­gender-bath­room is­sue on the House floor with or without lead­ers’ sign-off. Re­pub­lic­an Study Com­mit­tee Chair­man Bill Flores said he has spoken to sev­er­al mem­bers about the is­sue and ex­pects amend­ments to be pro­posed to spend­ing bills in at­tempts to block the De­part­ments of Justice and Edu­ca­tion from im­ple­ment­ing the dir­ect­ive.

“What this is about is fol­low­ing the rule of law and fol­low­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion, so I think we’ll have le­gis­lat­ive ac­tion to stop the pres­id­ent’s and his re­lated agen­cies’ at­tempts to cir­cum­vent the law,” Flores said.

It is not clear wheth­er Demo­crats in­tend to force the is­sue as well. Rep. Mike Honda, a Cali­for­nia Demo­crat whose grand­daugh­ter is trans­gender, said he will look in­to of­fer­ing amend­ments that would man­date all-gender re­strooms in gov­ern­ment build­ings.

Mean­while, GOP Rep. Mark Walk­er of North Car­o­lina, a former Baptist min­is­ter, said he has writ­ten a let­ter to the De­part­ment of Edu­ca­tion ask­ing for cla­ri­fic­a­tion on Obama’s dir­ect­ive. He said his con­cern is the leg­ally “dan­ger­ous situ­ation” it puts teach­ers in if they use their dis­cre­tion to dis­al­low stu­dents from us­ing bath­rooms that do not cor­res­pond with their birth gender. Based on their an­swer, he said, he may also in­tro­duce le­gis­la­tion.

“Let’s say we have a 17-year-old who all of a sud­den one week tells her that he’s go­ing through this gender-flu­id trans­form­a­tion, that he now needs to use the fe­male lock­er rooms. The teach­er may say, ‘Well, listen, I have a con­cern with that. I’m not go­ing to let you do that,’” Walk­er said. “Does that bring Title IX in? Does that pro­tect the school board? Does she have any re­course of pro­tec­tion?”

Rep. Mark Takano, an openly gay Cali­for­nia Demo­crat who has been vo­cal about LGBT rights, said that on the con­trary, the dir­ect­ive is about the pro­tec­tion of vul­ner­able stu­dents, and that he and oth­er Demo­crats would fight back against any such le­gis­la­tion.

“It’s not about ex­per­i­ment­ing on the schools; it’s about schools ac­com­mod­at­ing and re­spect­ing a vul­ner­able minor­ity,” Takano said. “This is the polit­ic­al op­por­tunism of so­cial con­ser­vat­ives tak­ing ad­vant­age of a re­l­at­ively less­er-un­der­stood group of people.”

Re­pub­lic­ans, however, be­lieve that it is the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion that has turned a loc­al is­sue in­to a na­tion­al polit­ic­al mat­ter. Rep. Tom Cole, who chairs the ap­pro­pri­ations sub­com­mit­tee with over­sight of the De­part­ment of Edu­ca­tion, said he would wel­come amend­ments tar­get­ing Obama’s dir­ect­ive.

“This is a cheap polit­ic­al drive-by shoot­ing, and it’ll have con­sequences,” Cole said. “I think this is a fight that the ad­min­is­tra­tion wanted to pick. It’s cer­tainly not a hard fight for me to en­gage in be­cause I think it’s an in­cred­ible gov­ern­ment­al over­reach. We don’t have any busi­ness telling every school dis­trict in Amer­ica what their bath­room policy ought to be.”

Still, some Re­pub­lic­ans may not be com­fort­able en­ga­ging the ad­min­is­tra­tion in a le­gis­lat­ive fight that can be ex­ploited for polit­ic­al pur­poses. Rep. Trent Franks said he is in­censed by the dir­ect­ive, call­ing it “ar­rog­ant” and “a dis­grace bey­ond ex­pres­sion.” But he said the courts may be the best re­course for op­pon­ents of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s move.

“I think the fact that the state is su­ing in court on con­sti­tu­tion­al bases that are very sound could be the most ef­fect­ive way to beat this back,” he said.

Fur­ther­more, there is not un­an­im­ity in the House Re­pub­lic­an Con­fer­ence. Rep. Ileana Ros-Le­htin­en of Flor­ida, for in­stance, has a trans­gender son and has been out­spoken in fa­vor of rights for the LGBT com­munity, even cut­ting re­cent ads in Span­ish and Eng­lish ur­ging ac­cept­ance of trans­gender people.

“Every trans­gender per­son is part of someone’s fam­ily and should be treated with com­pas­sion and pro­tec­ted from dis­crim­in­a­tion,” she said in the ad.