After the ACLU filed a complaint on August 10 requesting that the federal government intervene to allow biological males to join girls’ choirs in Texas schools, a leading advocacy group is pushing back.
Texas Values, an Austin-based activist organization, sent a response letter to the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, defending a Fort Worth school that enforces biological requirements for its award-winning boys and girls choirs.
As reported by The Dallas Express, the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts (FWAFA) was hit with a federal civil rights complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas for adopting policies that limited participation in the student choirs based on biological sex.
FWAFA is a charter school founded in 2001 by the Texas Boys Choir, Inc.
The ACLU, representing a biologically male student who identifies as female, alleged that the school board policy violated the student’s “right to be free from discrimination … by denying them the opportunity to join the Singing Girls of Texas.”
“Further, it is clear that the board’s policy was motivated by anti-LGBTQIA+ animus, as opposed to concerns about vocal range and quality,” the activist organization continued, adding that the process led to the “creation of a hostile educational environment,” which “evinces a discriminatory motive.”
Jonathan Covey, the policy director for Texas Values, denounced the ACLU’s actions. “This complaint is a politically motivated sham,” Covey charged in a statement received by The Dallas Express,
“Choirs separated by sex have always been recognized in law under Title IX, and there is good reason to do so,” he added. “Allowing someone to break longstanding tradition for the sake of ideology only hurts deserving students who work hard to be there.”
The letter to the Office for Civil Rights, dated August 31 and written by Texas Values president Jonathan Saenz, outlined the legal justification for adopting a biological rule for the choirs, pointing to Title IX protections.
In the letter, Saenz references a case from the previous year when FWAFA was “forced” to allow a female student to participate in the boys’ choir.
“The Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts (FWAFA) in Fort Worth, Texas, has been the focus of activist efforts over the past year to violate the ‘sex-separated’ protections provided in Title IX in regards to choruses by being forced to allow a female student to audition, sing, and compete in a historically all boys choir,” the letter explained.
“However, neither federal nor state law prohibits choirs separated by sex,” Texas Values claimed, walking through recent judicial precedent that supports the conclusion.
“Complainant’s desired outcomes would actually hurt students,” the group added. “Allowing a student to change their ‘sex’ to participate on any choir desired sets a dangerous precedent of allowing kids to gain an advantage in extracurricular activities based on how they ‘identify.'”
“Instituting a choir eligibility policy based on sex at birth is a completely nondiscriminatory and commonsense approach, in particular for a school renowned for its prestigious and rigorous choir experience,” Saenz continued.
“Pressure politics have no place in a productive learning environment,” he concluded. “We urge the Department to see through this complaint filed by agitators for the purpose of scoring political points.”
Meanwhile, the father of the biologically male student who sought to participate in the girls’ choir argued, “Inclusion into Singing Girls of Texas would have given our child the best chance to grow and learn.”
“Unfortunately, the discriminatory actions by the board derailed our child’s choir career before it even began,” he added. “This whole process has added anxiety, stress, and a level of fear into our daily lives since we spoke out against the board’s decision.”
