COLUMBUS—Yesterday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a lawsuit with 21 other state attorneys general against the Biden Administration’s policy updates that force schools receiving federal funding for free and reduced lunch programs to adopt detrimental and onerous gender-identity policies or risk losing that financial support.

Those policies include forcing girls to share bathrooms with boys and allowing boys to compete in girls’ sports.

Despite a warning letter from 26 attorneys general last month, the Biden Administration ignored what would be best for children and continued to push their extreme ideology onto schools, prompting this legal action.

The following statement is from CCV’s Ohio Christian Education Network Assistant Director Corrinne Vidales:

“Many of the schools in our Ohio Christian Education Network participate in the free and reduced lunch program. Requiring them to include a radical gender-identity and sexual-orientation policy not only takes food from the mouths of hungry vulnerable children, but places their safety and privacy at risk, and violates essential religious-freedom rights.

"On behalf of the more than 125 Christian schools we represent, Center for Christian Virtue thanks Attorney General Dave Yost for once again taking quick action to safeguard religious freedom and to stand against the Biden Administration’s aggressive ideology that doubly endangers the wellbeing of Ohio children."

Take Action Now!

Progressive media groups and aggressively radical minorities are not happy with the timely actions of our Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost to preserve religious freedom and to protect our children from going hungry.

He needs to know your gratitude to keep the faith as he fights the good fight!

Take 60 seconds to break through the chaotic noise by using CCV's action center to encourage the Attorney General.

Want to learn more about the lawsuit? Check out these useful facts.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Tennessee, centers on USDA guidance issued May 5, 2022, and a rule promulgated on June 14, in which the department announced that it will interpret the prohibition on sex discrimination found in Title IX and the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

In their lawsuit, the attorneys general argue that the policies are an illegal mandate because:

1. They were issued without providing stakeholders the opportunity to provide input, as required by the Administrative Procedures Act.

2. The USDA premised its guidance on an obvious misreading and misapplication of the Supreme Court’s holding in Bostock v. Clayton County, which expressly disclaimed the decision’s application to “other federal or state laws that prohibit sex discrimination.”

3. The guidance imposes new and unlawful regulatory measures on state agencies and operators that receive federal financial assistance from the USDA – which will inevitably result in regulatory chaos that threatens essential nutritional services to some of our most vulnerable citizens.

State and local agencies and programs that fail to investigate discrimination claims related to sexual orientation or gender identity, or fail to update non-discrimination policies to include a ban on so-called gender-identity and sexual-orientation discrimination risk losing funds for both Title IX and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

SNAP aids nearly 30 million schoolchildren a day, many of whom rely on it for breakfast, lunch, or both. Roughly 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools and residential child-care institutions receive federal funding to provide subsidized free or reduced-price meals for qualifying children.

For more information, contact CCV at 513-733-5775 or info@ccv.org.

As Ohio’s largest Christian public policy organization, Center for Christian Virtue seeks the good of our neighbors by advocating for public policy that reflects the truth of the Gospel. 

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