This week on Better for America, Rebecca welcomes Kimberly Hermann, Executive Director of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, to discuss how she and SLF are fighting for our children’s future and the upcoming March for Kids event in Washington, D.C. Hermann shares her legal perspective on Title IX and the Marxist practices infiltrating our schools that are ultimately driving a wedge between parents and children. That’s why both AMAC and the Southeastern Legal Foundation will be joining Moms for Liberty on August 31st in Washington, D.C., for the first March for Kids. This march aims to raise awareness about the decline of our educational system and the erosion of parental rights in our country.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Kimberly Hermann: Title IX is a mere 37 words. It’s a law that was passed by Congress in the 1970s. And it provides that all everyone, all girls, all boys have an equal opportunity to education. It just goes back to, it really, truly goes back to Marx, Marxist ideas. And they’re trying to separate parents from their children because if they can do that and they can grab hold of their minds and their hearts, then they can eventually influence the way that they.
They vote. This is a huge constitutional violation, not just at a higher level from a state perspective and infringing on state’s rights. This is at a granular level where it’s putting our kids at risk and it’s silencing them.
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Rebecca Weber: Hello everyone. I’m Rebecca Weber. You’re watching better for America.
Thank you so much for joining me today. And I’m thrilled to have with me and terrific guest. Her name is Kimberly Herman. She is the executive director of the Southeastern legal foundation. Now, Kimberly Herman advances. Liberty through litigation and through federal and state trials and appellate courts on the issues that really matter most to you.
These issues range from government overreach, free speech, property rights, and economic liberty. Kimberly, I’m really happy to have you with me. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me today. that’s terrific. Kimberly, you’ve been at the forefront of defending the rights of students and parents across the nation, and you are the executive director of the Southeastern Legal Foundation.
So you’re really leading an organization that is dedicated to protecting individual liberties and assuring that, our legal system upholds the principles of freedom and justice. You recently wrote a terrific article. I found it posted on the Daily Signal that was entitled Don’t Let the Department of Education Silence Our Children.
And you wrote that for 52 years, Title IX has protected women’s pursuit of their dreams, expanding their athletic, academic, and economic opportunities. And now the Biden administration and its education department Enthrall to radical gender ideology would erase that progress. Can you tell us about the Biden administration’s unconstitutional attempt to gut title nine’s guarantee that affords girls the same opportunities as boys?
And what you’re doing to stop it.
Kimberly Hermann: Absolutely. just for everyone that’s watching today, title nine is a mere 37 words. It’s a law that was passed by Congress in the 1970s. And it provides that. and like you mentioned for 50, some odd years, we’ve had the same exact law and the Biden administration has come in and said, we’re going to make sure that all girls, all boys have an equal opportunity to education.
A lot of people think of it as a sports law, but it really applies to all educational opportunities. back in the 70s, there were a lot of girls that couldn’t even go to graduate programs. and like you mentioned for 50, some odd years, we’ve had the same exact law and the Biden administration has come in And they couldn’t do this through Congress, right?
So they couldn’t change the law. Instead, they came in and had the department of education change the definition of sex. So Title IX says you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex in education. They go ahead and they change what sex means. So it no longer means a boy and a girl. It now means this concept of gender ideology.
And you can be whatever you want. And so they have fundamentally changed what Title IX does. It no longer protects our girls. It no longer ensures that they have equal opportunity to graduate programs, to sports programs, to anything. It no longer means they can protect themselves in locker rooms. They no longer have their own locker rooms or bathrooms.
Anyone can go into any space, depending on what gender ideology they are that day. It’s a very dangerous proposal.
Rebecca Weber: Yes. Thank you so much for giving us such a simple answer. straightforward explanation and there’s such common sense around what you’re saying and why this should not be allowed to happen.
girls should not be banned from sports competition or, from refusing to compete with, males. And of course, there’s safety. is compromised. so AMAC is very, proud to support, other groups that are really out there in the forefronts. Moms for Liberty, a terrific organization.
And, we support this March for Kids. We hope that this will take place in August. but we, as the American people, we must protect our children and we’ve got to encourage others to do the same, to step up and do something. in your view, what are some of the potential legal and societal implications of these changes?
in other words, do you think that the American public is really aware of what, as you just earlier explained, what the side effects are of these sweeping changes?
Kimberly Hermann: I would hope that they’re waking up to it, right? And I know that we’ve seen so many moms, especially in Moms for Liberty. we’re fortunate here at Southeastern Legal Foundation to represent Moms for Liberty in a federal lawsuit that we have filed against the Department of Education.
And I should say more than just filed, we are winning it. we have successfully, obtained an injunction. where the federal judge in Kansas said that the Department of Education cannot implement these Title IX changes in any school with a current or future member of Moms for Liberty, as long as we give the court that list of schools.
And we’re very actively working on obtaining that list of schools from all of the moms across the country, because they see what this actually does. When you talk about it, like you said, from a practical level, these changes, let’s say my daughter, I have a daughter, she plays softball. She is changing in the locker room for softball practice and a boy who decides that day they believe that they are a girl or they feel like a girl, wants to use the locker room.
If my daughter so dares as much as says you are making me uncomfortable, I do not want to change in front of a boy. She can then be brought up on title nine charges. Her free speech is completely infringed and the courts have acknowledged this. That is why we’re winning. And we’re stopping this because a girl or a boy on the other hand, my son doesn’t want to change in front of a girl at school either.
and he can’t speak up for himself. And so the courts are saying, Whoa, this is a huge constitutional violation, not just Eddie. At a higher level from a state perspective and infringing on states rights. This is at a granular level where it’s putting our kids at risk and it’s silencing them.
Rebecca Weber: Yes, we’ve all got to wake up.
This is a real threat. And I just, we’re seeing what’s happening in California. Governor Gavin Newsom, who is really supporting these transgender policies and taking it to such extreme, position, really essentially saying schools in California are banned. from notifying parents if their child approaches a teacher and says, I want to be a boy, I want to be a girl.
these are such insane proposals. What motivates these radical Democrats to support Such hurtful and really, I call it evil, proposals and legislation that hurts our children and pits our children against the parents.
Kimberly Hermann: That’s exactly why, right? And I don’t know what’s in these people’s hearts and what’s in their minds, but all that we can really see is this goes back to, it really, truly goes back to Marx Marxist ideas, and they’re trying to separate parents from their children because if they can do that, and they can grab hold of their minds and their hearts, then they can eventually influence the way that they vote.
They can eventually influence the way that they act in society. And that’s really what this does. It tears apart. Families. you are keeping massive secrets from parents. Yes. and now the law out in California is going to require teachers to keep these secrets. My, my best advice, and this isn’t legal advice, this is just parent to parent, is make sure.
That you are fighting every single day for your kids. And one way you can do that to fight against gender ideology is to make sure that your kid’s school is on the list that we’re submitting to the court. Because if your kid’s school is on the list that Moms4Liberty is going to give to this district court, then the Department of Education cannot enforce its changes.
So at least you get some layer of protection and it gives the good school board members Some ammunition. It gives those good school board members that you’ve all been working to get in place cover to say, whoa. A court said, we can’t do this. We’re not going to do it.
Rebecca Weber: Yes. The department of education, in my view, they need a total overhaul.
They’ve gone way too far. They’ve overstepped. and it is really an evil plot. I recently saw Elon Musk post out. because this impacted him personally, where his son, he believes, secrets were kept from him. He says today, my son is dead. this truly tears apart the fabric of, the most important, incubator of freedom, and that is the American family in the home.
so this is really, impacting all people and I’m just so glad to see more and more people are speaking out, stepping up and fighting, because when we look back, history will say that we are on the right side of history. We’ve got to protect our children. I want to talk a little bit about the, our first amendment and if you could share with our listeners, in what ways do you believe that these proposed changes, to Title IX, threaten, the First Amendment rights of students, teachers, and people as a whole.
Kimberly Hermann: They do it in a few ways. these regulations are so broad and they are so vague that even the Department of Education has acknowledged in court, in open court and oral [00:11:00] argument, that they don’t actually know how they’re going to enforce this. They can’t tell you that if you misgender somebody.
You’re going to be brought up on title nine charges. They can’t tell you that. If you say, I believe a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl, and there’s only two sexes that you’d be brought up on title nine charges. Now, we all know that those complaints are going to be filed. There’s no question about that.
And that’s why the judge has said, look, this is so broad. Nobody even knows how to enforce it. It is most certainly going to silence our Children. It is going to silence our parents and our teachers. They’re going to be terrified to speak their mind and their views, which ultimately, as we know, if you can’t speak your views and you can’t talk about it, eventually, you’re forced to change them.
And then your speech is compelled both violate the 1st amendment. Our 1st amendment protects our right to speak and our right to not speak. And it is our most [00:12:00] fundamental, right? That we have, and we must hold it very dear and protect it. And when you have an agency coming in and telling you what to think, what to believe, what to say, and what not to say.
There is a blatant constitutional violation, and that’s why Moms for Liberty stood up, and that’s why we hope that we see so many parents coming to the March for Kids, because you’re not just fighting for kids and against gender ideology, and for better education, you’re fighting for their First Amendment rights too.
Rebecca Weber: There you go. And it’s important for people to understand that when we see leadership, that turns a total blind eye to this and then says, embraces this kind of ideology. We have a Supreme Court justice, Jackson, who couldn’t even, give us a definition of what it is to be a woman.
we understand that, Gender is binary. We are made male or female, and we’ve got to get back to truth. And so my prayer is always that the light of truth will, put a light into the darkness, because it does seem that we are in a dark place right now. But I’m so grateful for the good work that you’re doing.
Tell us a little bit more about what the Legal Foundation is doing to defend parental rights and perhaps maybe some impact that those cases have had on the communities that have been involved.
Kimberly Hermann: No, I appreciate that. Southeastern Legal Foundation. We are a national organization. We’ve been around since 1976.and most recently, we really have been bringing a lot of cases to fight, things like mandatory segregation in our schools. We have a lawsuit up in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois, where a teacher is fighting back against racially discriminatory policies where. The school, everything is BLM, everything is racially loaded.
we have cases where we’re representing teachers who are challenging anti racist discrimination, trainings that they were required to take, where they have to attest and affirm to these ideas, that are hateful and that are honestly racist at their own core and that they just don’t believe in.
And so we’re doing that on the litigation side. And then we spend a lot of time with our moms, right? We spend a lot of time training parents on their constitutional rights and those of their children, because if you don’t understand your rights, you don’t understand where they come have come from. Then how are parents going to defend those rights?
And so we try to break it down at the most granular level. We have guidebooks out. We have webinars that we do, and really just try to work at the grassroots level to help parents get that agency to fight for themselves too.
Rebecca Weber: Kimberly, that’s terrific. How can our listeners get their hands on some of these resources?
Kimberly Hermann: Yeah, one of ’em I’ve got right here, actually, I didn’t even mean to have it here, but this is our guidebook . you can download it on our website, sf
Rebecca Weber: liberty.org. Oh, that’s terrific. thank you so much. It’s always an honor to have you here with us. I do hope to have you back and learn more about how your great efforts to protect our children and our society as a whole, how all of that works.
And we appreciate that you’re really upholding individual liberty and the rule of law and accountability in government. So God bless you and thanks again for being with me today. Thank you. And to all of you out there listening, don’t forget to join or renew your membership with AMAC. Tell more friends and family all about what we’re doing.
There is strength in numbers. Thanks again for being with me today. I’m Rebecca Weber. Have a blessed day, everyone.
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Your good work is appreciated Kimberly . Defending Liberty , bringing good sense to the education issue. It is very important to take a stand on matters that have to do with the National Character . The principles that make for rule of law , that give a sense of purpose to being a responsible citizen , having children understand what. the concepts of Honor ,Honesty, Integrity , Courage and Loyalty are all about — a noble endeavor for sure !
It is good to see, when I looked it up, that there are actually TWENTY SIX States which have joined the fight against the “NEW” Definition of ‘sex’, which are “enjoined from enforcing” the new Title lX rules until the litigation is satisfied.
This is nonsense, and must be reversed!