Following Sage Blair Lawsuit, 67 Groups Call on DOE Officials Suzanne Goldberg and Catherine Lhamon to Resign

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Hain: 513-479-3335

Following Sage Blair Lawsuit, 67 Groups Call on DOE Officials Suzanne Goldberg and Catherine Lhamon to Resign

WASHINGTON / November 1, 2023 – Seeking to fulfil Joe Biden’s campaign promise (1), acting director Suzanne Goldberg at the Department of Education commenced work on a Title IX regulation that would redefine “sex” to include “gender identity.” Less than six months after Joe Biden took office – and sidestepping legal requirements for public review-and-comment — the new regulation was issued on June 22, 2021. (2)

Just weeks after the unlawful policy took effect, Sage Blair informed officials at Appomattox County High School in Virginia that she had decided to identify as a male. Her plan to be referred to with a new gender pronoun and use the boys’ bathroom was met with skepticism. Sadly, Sage’s parents were not informed of these developments until weeks later.

Sage, 14, had experienced mental health problems as a child, and her condition now took a turn for the worse. Sage dropped out of school and left her home. Her life turned into a nightmare as she was drugged, sex trafficked, and repeatedly raped (3).

After Sage was rescued, her parents filed a lawsuit against the high school, charging:

“All of this could have been prevented if Sage’s parents had been fully apprised of her mental state and given the opportunity to provide the necessary mental health counseling when she first began questioning her identity. Instead, both the school district and public defender’s office decided they knew better than the parents. As a result of their arrogance, Sage was victimized multiple times over.”

When Goldberg began to draft the new regulation, serious safety concerns about medical services for transgender youth already had been documented in Finland, Sweden, and elsewhere (4). In England, the High Court ruled that youth under the age of 16 were unlikely to be mature enough to give informed consent to take puberty blockers (5). But Goldberg and her boss, Catherine Lhamon, blithely pushed ahead.

On October 24, House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx rapped the knuckles of the Department of Education for subverting the “constitutional authority vested in Congress.” (6)

One week later, 67 organizations endorsed a letter calling for the resignation of Suzanne Goldberg and Catherine Lhamon:

“Encouraging hundreds of thousands of children and youth to transition to a different sex represents a radical medical experiment…These violations of the Administrative Procedure Act are unlawful, willful, and utterly contrary to the public interest. We call on you to immediately resign your positions at the U.S. Department of Education.”

The letter, signed by 67 national and state organizations, is available online: https://www.saveservices.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Suzanne-Goldberg-and-Catherine-Lhamon-Coalition-letter-11.1.2023.pdf

Citations:

News and Commentary