The NY Daily News correctly identified the anti-LGBT legal organization behind the nationwide effort to deny transgender students equal access to school facilities, noting the group's history of defending laws that would criminalize homosexuality.
In a January 12 article laying out the debate over transgender student rights, NY Daily News reporter Sarah Goodyear identified Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) as the anti-LGBT legal organization behind the national movement to pass “bathroom bills” - policies that would deny transgender students access to facilities that align with their gender identity.
While other media outlets have failed to expose ADF's extremism when reporting on the organization's “religious freedom” work, Goodyear noted ADF's prior international work to defend laws that criminalized homosexuality:
Palatine, Gloucester and other districts around the country, those opposed to the policy of personal choice in accommodations for transgender kids have received their talking points from a deep-pocketed organization called the Alliance Defending Freedom, which describes itself as “an alliance-building legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.”
You may not have heard of ADF, but chances are you're familiar with some of its work, which includes litigation in several cases regarding the right to refuse services such as photography, wedding cakes and catering venues to same-sex couples who are getting married.
The Arizona-based ADF spent $39 million in 2013 -- and has been on the forefront of defending anti-sodomy laws in the United States as well as in nations such as Belize, where members of the LGBT community are routinely stigmatized and terrorized. The organization fought the Boy Scouts' decision to allow gay scouts, and has been a major force behind the efforts in states around the country to pass “religious freedom” acts that attempt to legitimize refusal of services to LGBT citizens.
In December 2014, ADF sent an email to districts around the country arguing that there was no legal basis for the OCR guidelines and advising that they should feel free not to comply. The group has offered its legal services pro bono to any school district that wants to fight the guidelines, and has followed up with specific communications to districts that are considering transgender accommodations policies or have adopted them, such as the Le Roy Central School District near Rochester, N.Y. The ADF's letters include the warning that “Granting Students Access to Opposite-Sex Changing Areas Could Subject Schools to Tort Liability” for violating students' and parents' rights.
Previously:
This Right-Wing Legal Powerhouse Wants To Make Gay Sex Illegal