Dan Patrick

Lieutenant Governor
Capitol Office
State Capitol, Room 2E.13
Post Office Box 12068

Austin, Texas 78711

June 3, 2016

(512) 46W>001
Fax; (512) 46S^668

Dear Superintendent/Board Chair:

On May 13, 2016, you received a directive from the Obama administration's Department of
Education and Department of Justice via a "Dear Colleague Letter on Transgender Students." In the
directive, school districts around the country were directed to allow students to use the bathrooms,

showers, and locker rooms they choose regardless of gender as well as to play on the girls' or boys'

sports teams of their choice. The letter also threatened the loss of federal funding for failure to
comply.

Make no mistake, the president's directive does not carry the fwce of law. Currently, Texas Attorney
General Ken Paxton is pursuing a lawsuit, joined by twelve other states, against the Obama
administration that seeks 1X) clarify this point. As your lieutenant governor, president of the senate,
and former chair of the Senate Committee on Education, 1am asking you to wait for the resolution of
this lawsuit before moving forward on this issue.

1believe that no student in anyTexas public school should be bullied or intimidated for any reason,
but this policy does nothing to help us reach that goal.
1pledge to stand with you if the federal government attempts to follow through on its threat to take
away any of your funding for low and reduced-price lunches. ITie most vulnerable students in our
public schools will not suffer from this unprecedented federal overreach into our classrooms. We will
fight back against the federal government.

Superintendent/Board Chair
June 3, 2016
Page 2

While the lawsuit moves forward against the federal government, 1have asked the attorney general to
clarify how current state law impacts the recently announced Fort Worth ISD transgender student
policy. Specifically, 1asked our attorney general to issue an opinion clarifying whether that
superintendent had the authority to unilaterally adopt his policy without a school board vote or public
comment from parents, and whether his policy violates the parental rights guaranteed under Chapter
26 of the Texas Education Code. It is my hope the attorney general's response will affirm parents'
rights to all information about their children along with the need for public hearings before any new
policy is adopted by a school board.

I'm sure upon receiving the Obama administration's threatening directive you quickly recognized the
new financial and administrative burdens for schools including the cost of building separate changing
facilities, enclosed showers, and separate bathrooms without any additional federal funding by the
start of school in a few months.

Additionally, should you unnecessarily follow the Obama directive of "sex" defined as a student's
subjective "internal sense of gender,"' you would be in violation of the university interscholastic

league (UlL) prohibition against allowing a boy to declare himself a girl to play on a girls' sports
team, which over time could effectively eliminate the girls' teams. The subjective gender
declarations mandated by President Obama's guidelines could also result in taking women's sports
scholarships from worthy girls at the mention of a new gender declaration by a boy? These are but a
few of the issues that arise from this ill-conceived directive that will assuredly create lawsuits from
parents against your schools.

I think we all know individual student issues are best addressed locally on a case-by-case basis and
not by a one-size-fits-all directive from Washington. Rest assured, Texas will not yield to this
unconstitutional federal overreach or allow our students, teachers and schools to be bullied. We will

protect and provide for every student, without exception.

So as you close out this school year and begin to prepare for the next school year, I call on you allow
the legal process to work on this issue and remain focused on educational excellence for all Texas
children.

For Texas,

m Patricl
Lieutenant Governor