Arkansas leaders on Friday railed against new federal instructions on transgender students' use of restrooms and locker rooms in public schools and urged school districts in the state to "disregard" the guidelines.
On Friday morning the U.S. Department of Education sent letters to school districts across the country that directed educators to let transgender students use the restrooms that correspond with their gender identities. The letter threatens legal action or the withholding of federal funds for school districts that refuse to comply.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson came out swinging against the directive, calling it "offensive, intrusive and totally lacking in common sense."
"I recommend that local school districts disregard the latest attempt at social engineering by the federal government and continue to use common sense to ensure a safe and healthy environment in Arkansas schools," he said in a news release. "While this letter implies federal money could be withheld, the letter is nothing more than guidance and is not legally binding."
The Arkansas Department of Education and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge quickly sided with the governor. Rutledge sent a statement Friday afternoon decrying the White House's move and vowed to work with other states to potentially take legal action over the directive.
"We've got a 19 trillion dollar debt, we've got national security issues, and this is what they want to double down on? Sending high school boys into the same bathrooms as high school girls?" said U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, R- Ark. "It's actually wasting members of Congress' time to even have to deal with these issues that they've dreamed up, to move some radical social agenda they've got."
The directive provoked intense backlash from conservative leaders across the country Friday, just days after the U.S. Justice Department and North Carolina sued each other in a standoff over a state law that requires people to use the public bathroom that matches the gender listed on their birth certificates.
Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange called the federal guideline an "absurd edict" in a statement, while Texas' Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick spent Friday telling various media outlets how the directive was "blackmail."
"I believe it is the biggest issue facing families and schools in America since prayer was taken out of public schools," Patrick, a Republican, said during a news conference.
Arkansas school districts have discretion when it comes to following the federal guideline. Many district officials said Friday that they needed adequate time to review the policy before deciding how to proceed on the issue. Many also said they had no pre-existing policies on bathroom use for transgender students.
"We don't want to battle with the federal government or the state government," said Jared Cleveland, deputy superintendent of the Springdale School District. "If this is going to be played out in the courts, it's not going to be because of Springdale."
The Arkansas School Board Association, which crafts policy models for nearly all Arkansas school districts to help them remain compliant with federal and state laws, sent out a nondiscrimination policy model in January that included sexual orientation and gender identity.
But, as the association's staff attorney Kristen Garner said, most school districts in Arkansas have yet to see a transgender student. Though some school boards have discussed policies that protect transgender students, none has been adopted.
"Educators' instinctual impulse is to meet the needs of the child, and not fighting the transgender child whose pain they can see in their eyes, over restrooms," Garner said.
Many teachers and school staff members, she added, might now feel relieved that they have some "legal cover to do what feels right."
Of the state's universities, only the University of Arkansas at Little Rock confirmed that it would follow the federal directive.
The issue puts school districts around the state in a bind, with the state Education Department urging districts to ignore the directive while the federal department threatens their federal funding.
According to Garner and the association's policy service director, Lucas Harder, losing federal funding could be a strain on school district budgets. Between things like school meal programs and Title I funding supporting children of low-income families, federal funds can comprise 20 percent to 50 percent of an Arkansas school district's budget.
And though the Arkansas governor, attorney general and Westerman have called the withholding of funds "empty threats," the federal Education Department said Friday that it does have the power to withhold such funds.
"While we do have a range of enforcement tools available to us, it is certainly the Department's preference to seek voluntary compliance by recipients of federal funds so that they may continue to receive funds," the department's spokesman Dorie Nolt said in an email. "Where recipients of funds do not voluntarily choose to comply with the law, there is a well-established process and an opportunity to seek review of the process before the Department would withhold funding."
Information for this article was contributed by Richard Perez-Pena and Jack Healy of the New York Times; and by Jonathan Drew and Paul J. Weber of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/14/2016