Life is WINNING. Will you donate today to spur LifeSite’s coverage of this momentous decision in the pro-life movement? We will need your help to continue our pro-life news now more than ever.
WASHINGTON, D.C (LifeSiteNews) — The attorney general of Ohio recently criticized President Joe Biden’s plan to take away funding for school lunches for low-income students if their schools do not embrace his LGBT agenda.
“I just can’t get my mind around the idea that we’re using hungry children as a human shield in a policy dispute between adults,” Attorney General Dave Yost said on Fox Business Thursday morning. He said it applies not just to public schools but also some private schools and daycare centers.
“We’re talking about taking food out of the mouths of hungry children,” Yost said. “Can’t we at least agree that using hunger as a weapon in a policy dispute is a bridge too far?”
The attorney general said this “violates basic human dignity.”
Ohio AG to Biden: Using hunger as a weapon in a policy dispute violates human decency | https://t.co/vUDjEMpwEV
— Matt Lamb (@MattLamb22) June 24, 2022
Biden has proposed taking away subsidized meals for poor kids unless their schools agree to support gender-confused children in transitioning. Schools must “update their non-discrimination policies and signage to include prohibitions against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation” or otherwise the institutions would lose their federal funding for lunch programs.
Tens of millions of students rely on the subsidized meals to eat every school year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
This could include allowing male students to use female locker rooms and punishing teachers who refuse to use someone’s “preferred pronouns,” for example.
It would also include requiring schools to allow gender-confused male students to compete in female sports
READ: State attorneys general argue Biden’s new LGBT school lunch rule is illegal
“The Biden administration has actually proposed this as a good idea. It feels like some kind of perverse, new version of ‘Hunger Games,'” Yost said.
“To us funding for school lunches as a way to force this transgender issue, seems so wrongheaded,” host Maria Bartiromo remarked.
She asked Yost if he would sue the administration to stop this, noting he had sent a letter with other attorneys general to Biden.
The Ohio attorney general said he hopes the administration will “come to its senses” and not “weaponize food,” but if it does not, he said he and other attorneys general are open to legal action.
READ: DeSantis says Biden is ‘off his rocker’ for tying school lunch funding to transgender acceptance
The letter criticized the administration for misapplying the 2020 Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton County, somehow finding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“[T]he Guidance is unlawful because the USDA has premised it on an obvious misreading and misapplication of the Supreme Court’s holding in Bostock v. Clayton County,” the attorneys general letter stated.
“We have long had a productive relationship with the federal government, managing various food and nutrition programs guided by the principles of cooperative federalism,” the signatories stated. “We would like to continue this cooperative relationship.
“But the Guidance flouts the rule of law, relies on patently incorrect legal analysis that is currently under scrutiny in the federal courts, and was issued without giving the States the requisite opportunity to be heard,” the letter stated.