Why Sam Olens Joined the Lawsuit over the DOE’s Guidance Letter
What do these things have in common?
- The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan
- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
- The EPA’s Waters of the United States
- The Guidance Letter from the Department of Justice and the Department of Education
Each of them is a regulation issued by one of the branches of the federal government that oversteps the boundaries of what Congress has enacted into law. In each case, an executive branch department, such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Education, has created a policy or regulation that goes beyond what was intended when Congress passed a law, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act or Title IX.
In each of these cases, the state of Georgia, through its Attorney General Sam Olens, has filed or joined a lawsuit intended to preserve the principle that Congress makes laws that the president and executive branch of government carry out. While an argument can be made that these regulations interfere with states’ rights under the tenth amendment, the Attorney General’s argument is that the regulations are unconstitutional based on the separation of powers delineated in Article I and Article II of the Constitution.
The most recent of these, is the lawsuit challenging the directives in the guidance letter. Take a closer read of Olens’s statement announcing Georgia was going to join in the Texas lawsuit:
The guidance letter is yet another example of the President’s unconstitutional overreach. The Constitution gives only Congress the power to write and rewrite laws. Threatening to withhold taxpayer dollars from schools if they don’t comply with this new and legally unsound mandate is unconstitutional. I will continue to defend the Constitution on behalf of Georgians.
Olens’s message said nothing about the T word or the B word. Instead, it was all about the C word.
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Jon Richards
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I think this is a nice way of trying to explain it away, but, as numerous experts have noted (including AG Olens himself), the guidance letter from the Obama administration doesn’t carry the force of law. And, as a guidance letter outlining best practices for inclusion, it’s certainly not an overreach.
What’s more, Federal courts have been interpreting Title IX to be trans-inclusive for nearly 15 years and the Education Department has been following that precedent since at least 2013.
Georgia had no plans to join the lawsuit until the ultra-conservative members of the GA legislature and others screamed bloody murder at the idea that trans kids deserve safety and respect. AG Olens also dedicated a significant portion of his tenure to ensuring same-sex marriage wasn’t legalized in Georgia. Simply, he’s got a terrible track record on LGBT rights.
We can try to connect the dots any way we want, but the reality is that Sam Olens is fighting to keep anti-trans discrimination firmly in place. Georgia has never been on the winning side of an anti-civil rights lawsuit in the past, and we won’t be now.
I think you protest too much. Olens stated he joined the lawsuit because of the threat of withholding funds from schools, which he regarded as unconstitutional. From my experience, Sam’s position has always been to follow the law rather than to make law. Back when US Attorney General Eric Holder was encouraging state attorneys general to ignore the Defense of Marriage Act, Olens publicly stated that he was going to follow the law. Last year, prior to the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality, Olens said he would follow the law.
I imagine that if Congress were to pass a law that covered the principles outlined in the guidance letter, Olens would follow that law as well.
Oddly, he’s ignoring all of the court cases that have said that this already is the law and all of the precedent that exists, as the guidance letter outlined.
Jon,
Do you think transgender people would not have the TEA PARTY argument? They do pay taxes, and are they getting equal access?
http://teaparty-news.com/55459/no-taxation-without-representation/
I’m not sure where you are coming from, John. As Americans, they are represented in Congress, the legislature and by local officials.
Yeah, Sam’s so interested in impartial law that he choose to sign onto the Texas lawsuit before the federal judge that 14 months ago ruled that FMLA didn’t apply to same-sex partners fired for taking time off to care for a dying partner.
Interesting perspective from former Georgia Congressman John Linder:
Jon,
The British would take money from Americans, calling it a tax, to offset the money the Brits were bleeding from imperialism. This would be the same type of concept, our government takes taxes from gays, yet they do not get the same services ie not treated the same, as the rest of us.
Your history is off a little there, John. The American colonists’ beef was that they were being taxed by acts of parliament, but they had no representation in parliament. They believed this was unfair, since they had no voice in whether they were taxed or not.
Transgender people have the same representation as you and I do, have a right to petition for grievances like you and I do, can vote like you and I do.
It’s not the same type of concept.
jon,
In all due respect, what you are saying if the British took tax money from Americans, and did not allow them to be discriminated against via public work projects in their towns that is not similar? HUH? If they voted for representatives who agreed with discriminating against them on contracts over British it would not be a massive issue?
Jon,
The reason we have 3 branches of government and every state no matter the size of population was to protect minority rights. This was to avoid mob rule type government in a 100 percent democracy, like what happens in places like Africa, Middle East…..one side wins and the abuse the other side. You could argue transgenders do not deserve the same rights as anyone else. But this should of been resolved when we ended the slave trade, and civil rights movement. Ironically President Reagan was very outspoken about equal rights for gay people. And did it during a time when the state of California was trying to treat them with less rights, than the rest of us.
……….Had Proposition 6 (also known as the Briggs Initiative, as it was initiated by Republican State Senator John Briggs) passed, it would have become legal for teachers to be fired if it were known they were gay or lesbian. A teacher could also be fired for publicly supporting homosexuality.
There is little doubt Milk’s yeoman efforts against Proposition 6 were significant. Yet if it were not for the intervention of Ronald Reagan the initiative would have almost certainly passed. Milk, to its credit, notes Reagan’s opposition to Proposition 6. ………
http://spectator.org/42050_reagan-and-milk/
But John, the problem was that the colonists couldn’t vote. At all. That’s the basis of the Boston Tea Party. You are distorting history in order to fit a round peg in a square hole. If your goal is to argue for transvestite rights, you would be better of using Plessy v. Ferguson here in the United States.
HUH? that was the point about the case? All Americans right or left should agree on this?
………Mar 13, 2015 – Remember “taxation without representation”? … was Henry Billings Brown, a white supremacist who also authored the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the 1896 “separate but equal” doctrine that maintained racial apartheid in the …………..
https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=Plessy+v.+Ferguson+taxation+without+representation
FYI
…..was made over issues of mounting taxation without representation in Parliament and because of the British blockade. Plessy v. Ferguson: Plessy v. Ferguson …
https://books.google.com/books?id=mrDLMeLFpecC&pg=PT396&lpg=PT396&dq=Plessy+v.+Ferguson+taxation+without+representation&source=bl&ots=GXW-Xq0Lnt&sig=W9S2PoyDKfM0IWQB3dzNJol1yVY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQieb72fzMAhXEYyYKHWJDAsIQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=Plessy%20v.%20Ferguson%20taxation%20without%20representation&f=false
Hard to see how this is going anywhere. Unless Congress wants to try to pass a revision to Title IX that says something like
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, except transgender individuals.
I guess the bottom line is that there are people who don’t believe there is any such thing as ‘transgender’. Anyone who claims that must be faking or confused.
Somehow reminds me of a scene from Rebel Without A Cause:
Frank Stark: You’ll learn. When you’re older, Jim.
Jim Stark: Well, I don’t think that I want to learn that way.
Mrs. Carol Stark: Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because we’re moving.
Jim Stark: [Grabs his mother] You’re not going to tear me loose again.
Frank Stark: Well, this is news to me! Just why are we moving?
Mrs. Carol Stark: Oh, do I have to spell it out.
Jim Stark: You are not going to use me as an excuse again!
Mrs. Carol Stark: I don’t.
Jim Stark: Everytime you can’t face yourself, you blame it on me!
Mrs. Carol Stark: That is not true!
Jim Stark: You say it’s because of me, you say it’s because of the neighborhood! You use every other phony excuse! Mom, I just… Once I want to do something right! And I don’t want you to run away from me again! Dad.
Frank Stark: This is all going too fast for me, son.
Jim Stark: You better give me something. You better give me something fast.
Mrs. Carol Stark: Jimmy, you’re very young. A foolish decision now could wreck you’re whole life. In ten years, you’ll never know this happened.
Jim Stark: Dad, answer her. Tell her. Ten years. Dad, let me hear you answer her. Dad.
[Mr. Stark sits quietly]
Jim Stark: Dad, stand up for me.
[Mr. Stark still sits quietly, he grabs his father and yanks him up]
Jim Stark: Stand up!