Getting to the Bottom of Obama's Bathroom Guidance

09-22-2016
Bathroom sign 3

When President Barack Obama's Department of Education issued its now famous bathroom guidance to every public school system in America, Sen. James Lankford wondered how the administration pulled a new national public policy out of thin air.

"When they want to do something they try to find an old law and reinterpret it in a new way," Lankford tells Beltway Buzz.

Today the Republican from Oklahoma will try to get to the bottom of it. His Senate subcommittee is grilling representatives from the Departments of Labor and Education along with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to find out how the regulation is justified.

"Regulations come from statutes, they come from law and after the law is written then the agencies can create regulations. They created a regulation with no law attached to it," Lankford said.

Last month a federal judge in Texas blocked the federal regulation and the Supreme Court is deciding whether or not to hear the case.

Lankford and other critics of the regulation believe issues regarding bathrooms, locker rooms and dorm rooms should be left up to local and state governments.

"We don't want any kid bullied, no one needs to be belittled, no one needs to be beat up or criticized, that shouldn't be the nature of an atmosphere at a school. A school should be a welcoming place to every single student regardless of your faith perspective, of who you are, whatever it may be - that's the nature of the way we treat education. We treat it fair for every single person across the country. Allow those school systems to be able to have accommodation rather than have someone in Washington, D.C., be able to dictate," Lankford said.

"They created this really odd rule that takes away people's individual privacy for the sake of preference for another group," he continued.

"We're still a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people and when the people get cut out it doesn't work," Lankford said.

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