Feds hide communications with Soros-funded groups on Title IX and gender identity proposals
Nineteen months later, Department of Education hasn't provided any records or timeline to fulfill Parents Defending Education FOIA request, suit says.
Parents aren't just fighting to uncover the influence of gender ideology activists in their children's public schools, but their influence with federal policymakers who stand to upend 50 years of policy on sex discrimination in schools by redefining it to include gender identity.
The Biden administration has neither turned over its communications with activists related to the development of its proposed Title IX regulations in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, nor given any meaningful update in more than a year and a half, a new FOIA lawsuit alleges.
Parents Defending Education said it asked the Department of Education in July 2022 for all correspondence matching certain keywords with the New Venture Fund, Governing for Impact and the National Student Legal Defense Network for the first 18 months of the administration.
The keywords were Title IX and its common regulatory abbreviation “TIX,” as well as LGBT, transgender, gender identity, gender-affirming and gender support plan.
The latter two refer to policies that treat students according to their stated gender identity, including preferred names and pronouns and access to opposite-sex bathrooms, locker rooms and sports, and related instructions for school staff on how to treat each student, including when to keep gender identity from their parents.
PDE President Nicole Neily said the feds' proposed rules "largely mirrored" GFI and NSLDN recommendations.
GFI received more than $17 million from progressive megadonor George Soros's Open Society Foundations through the nonprofit NVF and 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund, both sponsored by dark-money powerhouse Arabella Advisors, from 2019 through 2021. NVF is Arabella's largest entity, according to Inside Philanthropy.
"Refusing to release these documents leaves Americans in the dark about the Department’s coordination with ideological activist groups as it contemplates sweeping regulatory actions that will affect millions of children across the country" and parental rights, PDE said in a statement Wednesday.
"Withholding these documents for fear of retaliation or pressure from third party groups may point to underlying unethical behavior in specific areas of the Department," the group said.
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/feds-hide-communications-soros-funded-groups-title-ix-and-gender