Staff reports | S.C. Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver is recommending that state school districts disregard new federal rules that would expand definition of sex discrimination under Title IX to protect gay, lesbian and transgender (LGBTQ) students.
Casting herself as a defender of S.C. schools from “divisive distractions from Washinngton,” Weaver wrote in a memo that she expects the rules to be swiftly challenged in the courts before they take effect Aug. 1.
“South Carolina students are not pawns to be sacrificed in cynical political gambits,” Weaver wrote. “Accordingly, our state will defend the inherent dignity of every person, while refusing to upend long-standing federal law, violate common sense, or acquiesce to radical attempts to redefine biological reality by bureaucratic diktat.”
The new rules would mean schools could not treat students differently than their peers based on sexual orientation or gender identity. This could, for example, upend school policies that require transgender students to use the bathroom that conforms to their sex determined at birth.
Advocates for the LGBTQ community in South Carolina slammed Weaver’s memo, arguing that the superintendent is endorsing discrimination.
“Once again, Superintendent Weaver puts her political perspectives ahead of the kids she is supposed to serve,” said ACLU of South Carolina Executive Director Jace Woodrum. “In addition to encouraging districts to ignore federal regulations — and putting our underfunded schools at risk of losing critically needed dollars — her letter suggests transgender kids don’t exist and shouldn’t be protected from discrimination. This rhetoric is yet another example of her callous approach to serving our students.”
The ACLU also points to other efforts from Weaver and S.C. GOP lawmakers that they say would do more harm than good for LGBTQ students, including a push for an “overly broad” book-banning policy (Regulation R. 43-170) that would empower anti-LGBTQ+ groups to purge books from our schools and a classroom censorship bill (H. 3728) that would restrict the ability of teachers to discuss gender inequality in a classroom setting.
In other re
cent headlines:
S.C. senators approve K-12 bathroom mandate. Students in South Carolina’s K-12 schools would need to use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their biological sex at birth under a rule senators inserted into their state budget package.
S.C. House pushes to restart stalled power plant legislation. S.C. House leadership attached controversial energy legislation to a series of innocuous bills in an attempt to pressure senators to take it up.
S.C. House to take up proposed rules on book challenges in state schools. A regulation approved in February by the S.C. Board of Education advanced to the S.C. House floor Tuesday.
S.C. law aims to preserve dwindling farmland. Gov. Henry McMaster ceremoniously signed into law at Cottle Strawberry Farm a new fund to buy the development rights for agricultural lands, making it easier for families to keep their farms and preserve them from development.
Millions in S.C. summer grocery aid will expire in May. South Carolina families have just several weeks to claim millions of dollars in grocery assistance before the aid expires May 14.
S.C. looking at even stricter unemployment benefits. In February, a Republican majority in the S.C. House of Representatives advanced legislation that would index the maximum unemployment benefit payout to the statewide unemployment rate. The Senate has questions in a state that already has some of the nation’s strictest unemployment benefits.
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