The Biden administration is poised to deny free school lunch funding from a Florida Christian school that refuses to comply with the administration's LGBT mandates, despite the school's qualification for a religious exemption.
Grant Park Christian Academy in Tampa, Fla., represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, is suing President Joe Biden and Florida agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried for enforcing the Biden administration requirement that schools comply with its LGBT mandates or lose federal school lunch funding.
In May, the Biden administration redefined the meaning of "sex" in Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity, forcing schools to permit transgender students to use male or female bathrooms and play sports with either sex in order to receive National School Lunch Program funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More than half of state attorneys general rejected the memorandum, with Florida attorney general Ashley Moody saying the Biden administration was "using hungry children to advance a political agenda," the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The Florida school refused to substitute gender identity for biological sex, costing them their ability to feed two meals and snacks daily to their 56 students when the fall semester starts. If Grant Park’s application is not approved by Aug. 10, the school will not be reimbursed for the meals it serves students. ADF legal counsel Erica Steinmiller-Perdomo said Fried should not block Grant Park’s school lunch funding, as Title IX provides a religious exemption.
"For five years, this Christian school has received funding to provide nutritious meals to dozens of low-income children in the community," Steinmiller-Perdomo said. "Commissioner Fried and the Biden administration are trying to rewrite the law and ignore the exemption in an attempt to force this school to choose between violating its religious beliefs or providing lunches to children."