Hoorah for reason over blind parochialism! Stu Whitney doesn’t call Rep. Roger Hunt a pervert for asking for visual inspections of transgender students’ genitalia, but he does call him and his conservative cohorts “lesser lights” in our Legislature for bullying transgender kids with narrow-minded proposals that, if enacted, could swamp our schools with costly Title IX lawsuits:
The Office for Civil Rights has clarified that discrimination against transgender students falls under Title IX guidelines and that public schools are accountable for ensuring the safety and inclusion of all students in school-sponsored activities.
It’s one thing to oppose that stance on moral or religious grounds. It’s quite another to leave your state or school district vulnerable to a federal lawsuit because your personal beliefs run counter to the norm. Perhaps that’s why 77 percent of South Dakota high school superintendents favored the development of a statewide transgender eligibility policy in a recent SDHSAA survey.
“Member schools have told us that we need a policy, and it’s up to the state’s governing organization to put one in place,” says John Krogstrand, assistant executive director of the SDHSAA. “It’s not a political agenda or movement. It’s an effort to serve our schools.”
In that respect, legislators such as Hunt and Rep. Jim Bolin of Canton – who unsuccessfully fought to rescind the transgender policy during the last legislative session – are not only reactionary but reckless.
“We live in a very red state, and people who get voted to the legislature tend to follow those philosophies,” says Aberdeen Central activities director Gene Brownell, a former member of the SDHSAA board. “They’re determined to turn this into a political football, but if someone feels like we violated their civil rights as far as participation, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what will happen” [Stu Whitney, “Transgender Policy for Athletes Makes Sense,” that Sioux Falls paper, 2015.08.26]
Hunt and his fellow Republicans cheat our public schools of the money they need to recruit and retain teachers. Then they rush off to the culture wars expecting our schools to pay the price. The SDHSAA may not craft perfect policy, but they are looking out for the best interests of all of our students and schools much more reliably than Republican legislators like Rep. Roger Hunt. Let the SDHSAA set the transgender participation policy for its members schools, and keep the Legislature, the culture war, and costly lawsuits out of it.
Our elected Republican leaders seem to enjoy spending taxpayer funds to pay private attorneys who represented those folks that we discriminate against contrary to federal law. And Roger Hunt is no stranger to the process. For example, in this one voting rights case, Hunt and Janklow cost SD taxpayers $144,007.67 plus 10% interest, all paid to the lawyers (including the late Pat Duffy) of the civil rights Plaintiffs that prevailed.
http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/236/1033/2336509/
Add that to the fees paid to the private firms that the state hired to defend the case and we are not talking about “chump change.”
There is only one word I can think of to describe Roger Hunt; WEIRDO.
Lora Hubbel had a typical reply to this article.
“Intolerant? Why is it always the conservative that is intolerant? I content the debase deviant who proposed this downward spiral of Christendom and subsequent civility is the intolerant one. He/she, whoever this deviant one is who wants to destroy Bible-based values is the intolerant one. Why are they so intolerant of Christian values? Not only are they just intolerant …..they are militantly intolerant of the values that made our country great”
She needs to get back to her group in exposing Chemtrails, secret FEMA camps, vaccination conspiracies and UFOs. They are a greater threat than a few vulnerable kids and their families.
oops! Looks like I’ll have my name on their crazy Retribution Page again! lol
bearcreekbat, private attorneys are donors to the pot big time. You really do not think these highly payed barristers go to Pierre because they are socially responsible do you? Nope, they write the laws so they and the rest of the hucksters get big time free moolah from us rubes. The state and Jackson County have got that figured out to a T to the tune of a couple of million in fees. Good work if you can get it and the only way to get it is by other crooks and liars, like the pervert, who lavish it on ya.
My best guess is fiscally responsible wingnuts like Hunt and Jackley aren’t fiscally responsible as long as other people’s pesos are at stake. Maybe they are masochists and like to be spanked verbally. Meanwhile- http://www.wsj.com/articles/kentucky-county-clerks-office-defies-court-again-refuses-marriage-license-to-same-sex-couple-1440695198
Appeals court says issue licenses,she says no freaking way. Must be a Jackley adherent.
Financial responsibility is to South Dakota legislators as excrement is to your plumber. It all runs downhill.
Jerry, while it might be true that many private attorneys donate money to politicians and even help draft bills that various clients support, the private attorneys who take on civil rights cases on behalf of regular folks are providing a public service for us all.
Suing the state government is no easy task and can easily result in no compensation for a plaintiff’s attorney. The courts cannot order the state to pay plaintiff attorney fees unless the state loses the case, whether by judgment or by settlement. Absent a court order requiring the state to pay fees and costs, the private attorneys willing to represent the little guy will not get paid for his or her work and may not even be able to collect whatever costs of the litigation he or she advanced.
When folks like Hunt are able to convince other legislators to enact unconstitutional laws, we need private attorneys that are courageous enough to challenge such laws to protect our civil rights. Another cost to these private attorneys is that they earn the angst of public officials and may lose out on contracts or other benefits, such as being appointed to the judiciary.
Roger Hunt is a idiot. He is one of the not very smart people Donald Trump keeps talking about
Roger Hunt is a pervert who should be disbarred for his lack of mental competency and demonstrated ignorance of constitutional law. He’s masqueraded many times as some kind of medical expert, but this time he’s at his screwiest.
South Dakota deserves Roger Hunt, Pat Powers and the legislature is has. Get pissed or move to blue states, people.
Jerry, I wish I had a law degree. I could clean up on South Dakota… but I’d have to sell my soul working for the state. :-)
BCB, thanks for making clear the challenge we face in getting good legal representation to challenge the state. Every now and then we get a towering figure like Patrick Duffy, who was willing to put his great skills to work for the people of South Dakota and take the heat. Not every good lawyer can set himself up for a lifetime of the stress of not playing along with the crowd.
How often in cases challenging our retrograde Legislature and Governors have South Dakota defendants had to recruit help from out-of-state lawyers?
These lawsuits the righties set SD taxpayers up for are quite the scam. Hunt, perverse or not, may be smarter than Bernie Madoff.
The republican right wing is very good at the divide and conquer approach to everything including the lawsuits. One has to ask the right wing zealots why they only have issues with children that are born a certain way and not adults who get caught cheating on their spouses in the Ashley Madison case. I will bet if we got a little industrious, we could find some of our “community leaders” in the exposed files, we need to examine that. Funny how the religious fakes are so selective in their outrages.
Cory . . . “wish I had a law degree . . . .” though recall that someone needs to fund your lawsuits or one can lose the house, car, and kids college fund – for the apparent heartless AG’s office has the unlimited coffers of the taxpayers.