(TheConservativeNews.org) – Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem has promised to protect women’s sports, preventing transgender woman from competing. But now, the Biden Administration is threatening to defund lunch programs for schools that don’t adopt Biden’s Title IX policies.
“President Biden is holding lunch money for poor Americans hostage in pursuit of his radical agenda,” Noem said in a statement Thursday morning. “He is insisting that we allow biological males to compete in girls’ sports or else lose funding for SNAP and school lunch programs.”
“South Dakota will continue to defend basic fairness so that our girls can compete and achieve. I would remind President Biden that we have defeated him in litigation before and are ready to do so again,” Noem added, referencing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) vaccine mandate, which was struck down.
“Mr. President,” the governor warned, “we’ll see you in court.”
Noem signed a bill that bans biological males from competing in girls’ and women’s sports in the state, including provisions for college athletics.
The bill, SB 46, is designed “to protect fairness in women’s sports.”
“One way a young girl exercises her liberty is on the fields and in the gyms of South Dakota: playing basketball, swimming competitively, and running track, just to name a few popular sports here in the Mount Rushmore state,” the governor said in the statement.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) said it will interpret “the prohibition on discrimination based on sex found in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 … to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
This would mean that schools that do not allow biological males in women’s sports, women’s locker rooms, or women’s restrooms would be considered to be discriminating against students based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“Under the leadership of the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA and FNS are issuing this interpretation to help ensure its programs are open, accessible and help promote food and nutrition security, regardless of demographics,” the USDA said.
“This action is in line with President Biden’s Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, and is consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the Court held that the prohibition on sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” the department said in a release.
State and local agencies, as well as program operators and sponsors receiving funds from FNS will be required to “investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation,” the USDA said, and these organizations must update their policies and signage to “include prohibitions against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.”
Jay Richards, Director of the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family said, “Biden told us last November that gender ideology would be a central theme of his administration, and he’s making good on that promise.”
Richard continued with, “States such as Florida, Alabama, and South Dakota are starting to push back against this ideology, as least when it comes to kids.”
Richards noted that many GOP states have begun introducing laws to “reserve girls’ sports for girls.”
“The Biden White House is committed to fighting such states who resist the gender juggernaut,” he said. “The threat from the USDA, to withhold funding for poor public school students in states that don’t surrender, shows just how radical the Biden Administration is on this question. And it’s a terrific opportunity for politicians who claim to defend families and parents’ rights to show their mettle.”
