Another proposal, titled Senate Bill 1619, would declare an emergency in the state of Oklahoma that would give parents and students the right to claim a religious accommodation in order to avoid using the same bathrooms and showers as transgender students.
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In a measure called Senate Concurrent Resolution 43, Oklahoma lawmakers accused the Obama administration of overreaching its authority by issuing a directive last week stating that U.S. schools risk losing federal funding if they don’t allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice.
The impeachment resolution also introduced on Thursday night calls on the Oklahoma members of the U.S. House of Representatives to file articles of impeachment against Obama, the U.S. attorney general, the U.S. secretary of education and others over the letter.
Oklahoma schools would be required to grant religious accommodations to students who object to sharing restrooms or shower facilities with transgender students who were anatomically born a different sex under a bill introduced Thursday in the Oklahoma Legislature.
Republican state Rep. John Bennett called Obama’s decree “biblically wrong” according to Reuters, joining a growing chorus of critics who say the federal government is overreaching by imposing its will on state and local governments.
Republicans hold a majority in Oklahoma’s House and Senate.
“Our phones and emails are being flooded by citizens who are enraged by this president’s attempt to use our children as pawns in a liberal agenda”, he said in a statement.
“It’s about time schools understand that transgender students are fully protected”, said James Esseks, director of the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Project.
The federal guidance is not law, and courts have not definitively said whether federal civil rights laws protect transgender people.
The federal government wrote to every school in the United States to advise them that they are obliged not to discriminate against trans people.
In many states, legislators have proposed filing bills in current or upcoming sessions to set state restrictions that would limit restroom access in schools by biological sex. North Carolina’s GOP chairman asked Democratic state Attorney General Roy Cooper to clarify his position on the guidance.
The measure, sponsored by state Sen.
Opponents call the bill unprecedented in the post-Roe. v. Wade era.
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This report contains material from the Associated Press.
