Haslam: School Districts, Not Federal Government, Should Decide On Transgender Bathrooms

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is criticizing the Obama administration for weighing in on which bathrooms transgender students use.

Haslam says the guidance issued Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education is “heavy-handed,” and decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis.

The Obama administration is telling schools they break federal laws against sex discrimination if they don’t let students use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.

That’s the opposite of what Tennessee lawmakers tried to do during the legislative session, when they attempted to pass a law that would have made transgender students use the bathroom of their birth sex.

Haslam says his advice is the same to both the feds and state lawmakers: Leave the issue to local authorities.

“When the long arm of government reaches in, in cases like this, I don’t think the answers are necessarily better than letting our local school boards and superintendents deal with it,” he said.

But Haslam is striking a less defiant tone than other Republican governors. They’ve described the guidance as ”
blackmail” and urged
Congress to step in.

Haslam notes the guidance doesn’t have the force of law. He says both sides should wait for the courts to sort things out.

Update 4:15 p.m.

After Haslam made his statement, 26 Republicans in the Tennessee Senate sent him a letter urging him to join North Carolina’s governor in a lawsuit against the Obama administration.

They call the administration’s guidance an “unconstitutional decree” that violates the privacy rights of “more than 99 percent of Tennesseans.”