Executive Overreach: Why Obama is Wrong on the Transgender Bathroom Controversy

As a Libertarian, I have proudly mixed feelings about the transgender bathroom controversy now raging across America. On one hand, I do not want to see any American discriminated against, I do believe the Obama administration is acting very imperialistic in the way it is handling this sensitive issue.

Last Friday, the Obama administration issued, by fiat degree and without a singular vote of Congress, “guidance” to our nation’s public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their chosen gender identity.

A joint letter from the Departments of Education and Justice was sent out to schools Friday with news federal guidelines to ensure that “transgender students enjoy a supportive and nondiscriminatory school environment,” the Obama administration said.

The Obama Administration’s “guidance” letter seems innocuous enough until you actually read the document in it’s entirety. The Education and Justice Department’s letter is a clear example of Executive overreach in the most purest of forms. Essentially Obama has attempted to wade into a highly controversial social issue and determine for the entire nation how it is to proceed in a matter where there is not unanimous consensus.

Via Obama’s executive powers, now a condition of receiving federal funding, our nation’s schools must now “treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for the purposes of Title IX or a school district may lose federal funds.

This is a direct assault on state rights and the doctrine of Federalism which maintains that America is system of government in which entities such as states or provinces share power with a national government.

Another glaring problem with Obama’s executive action on the transgender bathroom controversy is the suddenness and execrated pace of such a decree. In a matter where there is not unanimous scientific and ethical consensus, the Obama administration has decreed that every public school in the United States obey its dictates immediately or suffer the consequences.

I believe this is a sensitive issue that must be decided by the will of the people and each individual state and not by executive decree.

This whole ordeal also delineates the problem with the public school system in the first place. Since America’s public schools are an extension of the federal government, it has the right to dictate policy for these schools and reserves the right to cut off federal funding and implement further punitive measures to those who do not comply.

I believe the solution, while drastic, is for parents who do not agree with Obama and the left’s social engineering, to pull their kids out of the public schools and either homeschool them or place them in private schools that reflect their moral and religious values.

I believe Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Dave Brat and the other Liberty- minded members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives need to act immediately and take this issue up in the Halls of Congress for America is still a constitutional democracy not Obama’s fiat kingdom.

As a Libertarian who is fiscally conservative, suspicious of government intervention and yet socially tolerant, I do not give acquiescence to discrimination of any kind and believe LGBT people should have the same rights as every other American.

Yet, I do not like Obama’s manner of issue executive degrees like this one bit and believe it undermines Democracy and the U.S. Constitution that clearly establishes the separation of powers between three separate branches of government. Each of these three branches of government have clearly defined abilities in the U.S. Constitution to check the power of the other branches.
The U.S. Constitution clearly delineates the powers of the legislative (or lawmaking) branch in Article I, the executive branch in Article II, and the judicial branch in Article III. James Madison explained in Federalist No. 51 how the system of separated powers provides checks and balances on the power of government.

I believe the Obama administration is abusing it’s executive power and it is time for the Judicial and Legislative branches of government to have their say. Without their input on another highly controversial and sensitive social issue, our democracy is undermined, the will of the people circumvented and the U.S. Constitution trampled upon.