As the fight heats up over transgender Americans’ access to the bathroom of their gender identity, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) labeled President Obama the “bathroom police” Saturday for his administration’s directive warning against discrimination of trans students in public schools.
“There is nothing in the Constitution that gives the president the power to be the bathroom police for this country,” Cruz said in remarks at Texas’ GOP convention, according to the Hill. “This is an embodiment of just how off track we’ve gotten, that the president believes he can decree to every public school in America, ‘I, Barack Obama, am in charge of bathroom policy in your elementary school.’”
The Obama administration issued the letter to public schools nationwide in response to state legislation — and particularly a law passed in North Carolina — that aims to ban transgender people from using the bathrooms that match their identity in state agencies and public schools. The Department of Justice and North Carolina are also engaged in a legal battle over the state law, HB2.
Proponents of the state “bathroom” laws say they are about protecting girls from male predators, though scant evidence has been produced to show how the legislation would prevent such crimes.
Nevertheless, Cruz repeated the claim when making Saturday’s speech, his first major speech since he suspended his presidential campaign.
He said Obama was “demanding that every public school now allow grown men and boys into the little girls’ bathroom.”
