Rep. Scott Franklin of Florida is leading a contingent of lawmakers denouncing the Biden administration for threatening to withhold federal funding for school lunches over pro-LGBTQ politics.
Franklin, a Lakeland Republican, told the website Florida Daily on Wednesday that he is proposing legislation that seeks to prevent the U.S. Department of Agriculture “from withholding school lunch funding and retaliating against schools that do not comply with the White House’s sexual orientation and gender identity policies.”
The USDA plan seems to resurrect an idea the agency floated last year.
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As the Tampa Free Press reported in 2022, President Joe Biden had declared that Title IX, the 1972 federal law that bans discrimination based on sex in educational settings, would apply to the LGBTQ community.
Accordingly, the USDA stated that state and local agencies that receive federal funding for food programs, including the National School Lunch Program, must investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, as well as update policies and signage to ban discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
That was a reference to new laws in red states that sought to primarily protect girls from being subjected to sharing restrooms and locker rooms with boys who identify as transgender. Those jurisdictions that didn’t comply were at risk of losing funding.
The National School Lunch Program feeds nearly 30 million children.
In response, in August 2022, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called Biden “deranged” for holding actual lunch money hostage to LGBTQ politics.
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This week, Rep. Franklin noted, “While the Biden White House stoops so low as to use school lunch as leverage in a political game to intimidate school systems into adopting their woke agenda, we’ve worked hard in Florida to kick progressive culture wars out of the classroom and keep parents in charge.”
“We don’t co-parent with the federal government. The USDA does not have the authority to impose LGBTQ ideology and dangerous social experiments like shared bathrooms and locker rooms in local schools. I thank my colleagues for joining me to hold the Biden administration accountable for this abuse of power.”
Florida Daily reported that co-sponsors of Franklin’s bill include Florida GOP Reps. Gus Bilirakis, Bill Posey and Greg Steube.
“Forcing schools to accept the woke agenda by withholding school lunch money for underprivileged kids is wrong and unacceptable. Congress must repeal this effort to extort our school districts,” Posey said in a statement.
“The federal school lunch program provides essential nutrition for many of Florida’s most vulnerable children. For some, it is the only consistent meal they can rely upon,” Bilirakis noted in a statement. “This critical program should not be held hostage by the Biden Administration’s continued attempts to force its liberal ideology and a woke agenda down the throats of all Americans.”
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