A pair of school board officials in deep blue Washington State are fighting back as the state’s education chief remains committed to defying President Donald Trump‘s executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.
“It’s an absolute joke,” Kennewick School Board Vice President Micah Valentine said Monday on “Fox & Friends First.”
“He has been promoting his radical leftist ideology since we’ve been on the board…. Grades are dropping under his watch. Meanwhile, he’s promoting LGBTQIA+ things…”
The Kennewick School Board filed a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights against Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal last week, seeking federal intervention over the state’s refusal to comply with Trump’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order.
Reykdal defended transgender athletes in girls’ sports in an address last month, claiming it was “inaccurate” to say “biologically” there are only two genders.
“There’s a continuum. There’s a science to this. There are children who are born intersex. There are children whose hormones and whose chromosomes are not consistent with their sex at birth,” he said.
“That’s not a debate we’re going to have today. I just want to remind you of our civil rights obligations. Our state laws make clear that children get to identify and participate based on the gender in which they identify. We’re going to uphold that law.”
With mixed directives from the federal and state levels, the district is concerned not only about jeopardizing the well-being of female student athletes but also about putting lower-income students at risk if they lose federal funding because of the mix-up.
Kennewick School Board President Gabe Galbraith told Fox News that the district is seeking federal intervention to ensure the order will eventually be honored.
“There’s boys participating in girls’ sports. There’s boys in girls’ locker rooms. It’s unfair. It’s not safe, and we’re asking the federal government to just step in and put an end to this and ensure that the state is following President Trump’s statements,” he said.
Reykdal said his office “has continued to advise Washington’s school districts to stay in compliance with state law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity” in a statement to the Washington State Standard.
He also argued that Trump’s order “attempts to override the authority of states and local school districts by requiring educational institutions to agree to discriminate against trans female athletes in order to continue receiving federal funds.”
“An executive order is not law, and it does not override state law. OSPI will enforce our current laws as we are required to do in a constitutional democracy until Congress changes the law and/or federal courts invalidate Washington state’s laws,” he added.
Fox News’ Jackson Thompson contributed to this report.
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