Free Republic

The Obama administration told U.S. public school districts across the country on Friday to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity, rather than their gender at birth. The new guidance comes as the Justice Department and North Carolina battle in federal court over a state law passed in March that prohibits people from using public restrooms not corresponding to their biological sex. Officials from the Education and Justice departments told schools that while the new guidance does not carry legal weight, they are obligated not to discriminate against students, including based on their gender identity....

I was expecting to see this as top news today. I realize not everyone has daughters and granddaughters and might not realize what a big deal this is, but is anyone else seeing it?

News of the president’s forthcoming directive requiring educators to let students use bathrooms according to their gender identity — not their birth certificate — offered a welcome set of guidelines to some school administrators Thursday night about how they ought to proceed amidst the ongoing legal and cultural bathroom battle embroiling the nation. As Obama’s time in the White House ticks away, the president wants his administration to leave a legacy of social reform, especially when it comes to issues like same-sex marriage, immigration, healthcare, clean air and climate change. Because Congress is under Republican control, Obama has mostly had...

What if a state department of motor vehicles or a public school insisted that only biological females could use the restroom set aside for females and that biological males had to use the restroom set aside for males? Would that be a rational policy? Would it be just? The U.S. Justice Department is now arguing in federal court that such a policy wrongfully discriminates against people whose "gender identity" does not "align" with their biological sex. The department filed suit on Monday against the State of North Carolina. At issue is the law North Carolina enacted this year that states:...

A North Dakota woman said Monday she was kicked out of a Garth Brooks concert before the show started for using the men’s bathroom. Samantha Bergh told Valley News Live that her husband took her to go see the country music superstar as a Mother’s Day gift. The concert in Fargo was attended by thousands of fans wanting to see Brooks. “Right before Garth Brooks was to start we went to the bathroom. The women’s line was a good 100 people long,” Bergh told Valley News Live. “It was insanely long and there was no wait for the men’s so...

The latest salvos in the struggle over whether a law passed during March in North Carolina forces transgender people to use public restrooms that don't correspond with their “gender identity” came on Monday, when Dan Savage tweeted that those who disagree with House Bill 2 should leave jars filled with their urine at Republican Governor Pat McCrory's office. The strategy promoted by the gay activist and columnist drew the immediate attention of Noah Michelson, an editorial director on the liberal Huffington Post website, who called Savage's idea a “brilliantly gross” method of protesting the state's “Anti-LGBT Law.” “If Dan Savage...

The U.S. Justice Department is putting the feelings of transgenders -- men who think they are women and women who think they are men -- above the privacy rights of the vast majority of people who don't contest the biological facts of who they actually are. "And what we must not do, what we must never do, is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans for something that they cannot control and deny what makes them human," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Monday. "[N]one of us can stand by when a state enters the business of...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department is putting the feelings of transgenders -- men who think they are women and women who think they are men -- above the privacy rights of the vast majority of people who don't contest the biological facts of who they actually are. "And what we must not do, what we must never do, is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans for something that they cannot control and deny what makes them human," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Monday.

As a Western revolutionary, Obama has been relentless in his efforts over the last seven years to use all the machinery and influence of government, whether illegally (Since 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled 13 times that Obama’s actions have been unconstitutional) or legally, to fundamentally transform America into the neo-Marxist democracy he and his father have long dreamed about. His most recent stunt to this end is to use North Carolina’s “bathroom” law or House Bill 2 as a springboard for the U.S. Justice Department to issue a sweeping dictate in the name of social fairness and...

In a 2–1 panel ruling in mid April, a federal appellate court decided (or at least seemed to think that it decided) that G.G., a girl who identifies herself as male, has a legal right to use the boys’ restrooms at her high school in rural Gloucester County, Va. In so doing, the panel’s majority, consisting of two appointees of President Obama, kowtowed to the Obama administration’s radical claim that federal law requires any college or school that receives federal funding to make its single-sex restrooms, locker rooms, showers, housing, and sports teams available to “transgender students consistent with their...

The so-called bathroom wars have nothing to do with bathrooms but are all about war. The push to allow a person to use the bathroom of his or her choice is merely the latest phase of the sexual revolution. It is part of a relentless war to bring about an irrational equality that now seeks to break down the final public barriers that make the sexes different.Let’s face it. Once it is held that anyone can use the bathroom that he or she feels comfortable with, the words “men” and “women” on the door are meaningless since anyone can...

Breaking with Republican-led states and cities that have moved to restrict bathroom use, the California Assembly on Monday passed legislation requiring all single-stall bathrooms to be open to people of any gender.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The North Carolina governor is turning right around and suing the DOJ on this bathroom law that they passed. The DOJ, the Obama Justice Department, gave Colorado three days, essentially, to throw that bill out. What people don't know is it's not just North Carolina they gave three days, they gave everybody three days. If the DOJ gets their way, every business 15 employees or more, is gonna have to have unisex bathrooms and anybody can go into whatever bathroom they want depending how they want to identify or want to present that day. The solution here...

Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina on Monday escalated the nation’s clash over transgender rights by suing the Justice Department, which said last week that the state had violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it passed a law prohibiting people from using public restrooms that do not correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificates. In the suit, the governor accused the Justice Department of a “radical reinterpretation” of the law. “The department contends that North Carolina’s common sense privacy policy constitutes a pattern or practice of discriminating against transgender employees in the terms and conditions of...

On Monday, CNN not only continued to misinform its viewers about the contents of the North Carolina bathroom law, but it also used a misleading CNN/ORC poll to dubiously claim that most Americans oppose the law. New Day, CNN Newsroom, and Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield have so far cited the poll claiming that 57 percent of Americans oppose the bathroom law, but the wording of the poll gives the false impression that transgenders are required to use the public restroom of their gender at birth when, as clarified by the North Carolina governor's office, the law still allows transgenders...

A "law enforcement action". Will be live-streamed. 3:30 Eastern. https://www.justice.gov/live-stream

Americans broadly oppose laws that would require transgender people to use facilities that correspond with their gender at birth rather than their gender identity, according to a new CNN/ORC Poll, and three-quarters favor laws guaranteeing equal protection for transgender individuals. Overall, 57% say they oppose laws requiring transgender individuals to use facilities that do not match their gender identity, 38% support such laws. Strong opposition (39%) outweighs strong support for these laws (25%). There's a partisan gap on the question, with Democrats and independents more apt to oppose them than Republicans. But Republicans aren't broadly in favor of them either....

Police in Frisco, Texas, are looking for a young man who went into the ladies changing room at a Target store and began to take pictures of a young girl who was trying on clothes. The Dallas Morning News reports the girl was in the women's changing room at the store at about 7 p.m. Tuesday when she saw a man peering over the wall with a cellphone pointed at her. The girl told her parents and Target employees, but the man had already left the store.

The U.S. Department of Justice has weighed in on the North Carolina transgender bill, claiming it violates civil rights laws and threatening to cut federal funds to the state if it did not abandon the measure. Under North Carolina’s law, transgender individuals are asked to use public restrooms that correspond to the sex with which they were born, not with which they identify. North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has defended the law as “very common-sense,” but the LGBTQ community claims the law is discriminatory. This week, Justice Department lawyer Vanita Gupta sent a letter to Governor McCrory, indicating that he...

(NBC News) - Dozens of women have come forward to share their stories of encounters with a convicted voyeur after video of a Florida woman's confrontation with the man went viral. Candice Spivey was shopping at a Target in Yulee, Florida last week when she was approached by Jeffrey Polizzi. Spivey immediately recognized Polizzi from a previous encounter that took place two years ago in a different store a