US lawmakers have challenged a new Government policy requiring employees to endorse radical gender ideology.
Congresswoman Mary Miller, backed by nine fellow Republican colleagues, wrote to the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) stating that its “Inclusion Policy” violates free speech and religious liberty rights.
HHS instructs staff to use the ‘preferred pronouns’ of colleagues, backs gender self-id in the workplace, and denies women the right to female-only spaces.
Ideological bias
Launching its Gender Identity Non-Discrimination and Inclusion Policy in October, HSS Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm said it had been introduced to ensure staff could “show up every day as their whole selves”.
The guidelines define ‘gender identity’ as “an individual’s internal sense of self and gender, whether that is man, woman, neither, both, or something else.”
Employees are warned that although the “isolated and inadvertent use of an incorrect name or pronoun will generally not constitute unlawful harassment”, it would be viewed as unlawful if deemed to be “intentional and repeated”.
The policy also states: “If an employee feels uncomfortable sharing a common restroom facility with gender-diverse employees, the employee expressing discomfort should be advised they may use alternative facilities as available.”
‘Illegal and unconstitutional’
In November, Mary Miller announced: “I am leading the opposition to Biden’s new attempt to force HHS officials to violate their deeply held religious beliefs and free speech rights by mandating ‘they/them’ pronouns.”
In the letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, the signatories expressed their “strong opposition” to the policy, branding it “illegal and unconstitutional”.
The congress members asked what “opt-out procedure will be used for employees with deeply held scientific, philosophical, or religious beliefs”.
They also sought a commitment from the HSS not to fire an employee for “merely declining to use a person’s preferred pronoun that does not correspond to biological sex”.
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