Sen. Ted Cruz urges all parents and school districts to “disregard” the Obama administration’s decree that gender-confused students must be permitted to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their preferred sex.
“I encourage every school superintendent, school board, and parent across this nation to disregard this barely veiled threat from the White House aimed at overturning the utterly reasonable practice of preventing men and boys from entering girls’ restrooms and changing rooms,” Cruz says in a statement.
“As a father of young girls, I wouldn’t want my daughters being forced to change in the same room as men and boys,” the former GOP presidential candidate added. “It’s that simple. And parents across this country shouldn’t have to tolerate it either.”
Cruz observed that while the Obama administration’s decree “has no force of law” behind it in the nation’s constitutional system of government, the threat of lawsuits by the Department of Justice and the loss of federal aid to schools could actually serve to punish economically disadvantaged students and schools.
“[T]he money the federal government sends to local school districts provides lunches for economically disadvantaged children and vital services for those most in need,” Cruz explained. “So the Obama White House, for the sake of political correctness, is holding hostage the poorest, most disadvantaged children across the nation.”
Cruz added that the decision to condemn the common sense cultural norm that girls use girls’ bathrooms and boys use boys’ bathrooms is “yet another example of President Barack Obama going through executive fiat what he cannot get done through our democratic process.”
“There is a reason that we give girls access to their own changing rooms: It is for their privacy, safety, and security,” he said. “The administration’s dangerous departure from that common-sense norm must not stand.”
Cruz also addressed the Obama administration’s “decree” that schools allow biological boys in the girls’ bathrooms and vice versa at the Texas GOP Convention over the weekend.
The senator said:
Yesterday, Barack Obama issued a decree – now let me stop there. How many of y’all have read your Constitution? Tell me where in the Constitution does it say the president can issue decrees? There is no decree clause to the Constitution. The president issued a decree to every public school in America demanding that they change their bathroom policies, demanding that every public school now allow grown men and boys in the little girls’ bathroom.
We have entered the world of politically correct lunacy. And there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the president the power to be the bathroom police for this country. This is an embodiment of just how off-track we’ve gotten that the president believes he could decree to every public school in America, “I, Barack Obama, am in charge of bathroom policies in your elementary school.”
“Let me tell you what we need – we need a strong, conservative president who will repeal Common Core and abolish the Department of Education,” Cruz said.