Victory Over the School Board

In case you haven’t heard the news, the Nebraska State Board of Education voted 5-1 on Friday to indefinitely postpone development of their new health education standards. Voting in favor of the proposal to halt the process were board members Robin Stevens, Lisa Fricke, Patti Gubbels, Maureen Nickels and Patsy Koch Johns. Voting against the proposal was Jacquelyn Morrison. Deborah Neary abstained from the vote and Patricia Timm was absent from the meeting.

This represents a huge victory for the people of Nebraska. Therefore, I would like to congratulate and thank every Nebraskan who weighed in on this issue. Many people testified in person at the public hearings and even more wrote letters, made phone calls, and sent emails to the Education Commissioner and to the members of the State Board of Education. Your voice has made a big difference.

I also want to thank the members of our local school boards for adopting resolutions against these new health education standards. I commend our local school board members for their bravery and fortitude. They stood up for what was right and held their ground against a forceful tide of political correctness which was pressuring them to go against their own convictions as well as the traditional family values they were raised with.

Nebraskans won an important battle last Friday, but the war is not yet over. Nebraska’s Attorney General, Doug Peterson, has joined 20 other states in a federal lawsuit to halt the Biden administration’s efforts to extend federal sex discrimination protections to LGBTQ students at school. In June the federal Department of Education made a policy change, claiming that discrimination based upon a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity violates Title IX of the 1972 federal law which protects against sex discrimination in school.

The federal lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Tennessee by that state’s own Attorney General, Herbert Slatery, argues that the federal Department of Education had no authority to make the change in policy. Such authority, the lawsuit says, “properly belongs to Congress, the States, and the people.” I share this with you today so that you may never forget that the power of American government resides ultimately in the people. As Abraham Lincoln said at the close of his Gettysburg Address, “…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Engraved over the north steps of the Capitol Building in Lincoln it says, “The Salvation of the State is Watchfulness in the Citizen.”

Finally, I would also like to extend a hand of gratitude to all of the volunteer fire fighters who fought to extinguish fires in the Panhandle this summer. This has been a remarkable year for wildfires in Western Nebraska and it took a mighty and capable fire fighting force to battle the fires around the Panhandle. Thank you for being so readily available, for risking your own health and wellbeing, and for keeping us all safe.