'This Is Disturbing, Where Is The Line?': Pete Sessions Decries Discrimination Suits Over Pronouns

3 months ago

During a House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) spoke about discrimination suits over pronouns.

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00:00Chair recognizes Mr. Grofman from Wisconsin.

00:06Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Sessions from Texas. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

00:12The discussions have been very important today, and I think the issue is laid out

00:20where the American people know what they think is right and wrong.

00:23Discrimination, I think, defines itself in the existence of law over and over and over.

00:31And it tries to give a balance, not just to the importance of it,

00:36but also about how it would be looked at by conduct.

00:41Not just the law, but really how we ought to move as a society.

00:45Attorney General Rokita, you and I have intellectually disadvantaged, disabled

00:56children. We had to fight lots of battles and still do, but we asked for accommodation.

01:04I don't think we asked for to overrule or move over. We asked for accommodation,

01:11the opportunity to participate. I note on page 10 of your brief that you gave us,

01:19Indiana State Attorney General Advisory Opinion Concerning Use of Preferred Pronouns in the

01:25Workforce. This is very interesting because it goes well beyond something that I think someone

01:35could see on its surface, something that someone could easily understand. We can see color. We can

01:44see sex. We can see things. We know discrimination when we see it, attitude and other things.

01:52I note in here that you find it's not against the law, and yet people are held accountable.

01:59There are federal rulings on this by government, EEOC perhaps most importantly. This disturbs me.

02:08Where is the line between discrimination defined in law and this overwhelming desire for people to

02:19push simple things like pronouns or competing against women? Thank you, Congressman. I mean,

02:26that's exactly it. You have painted the picture correctly. Title VII was very clear in the words

02:33that it used, and Bostock has taken it a very tiny step further, still connecting it to the word

02:40found in Title VII, particularly the word sex. But what the EEOC does and the reason that the

02:47legislator who asked for this opinion wanted it was to stop that creep, to stop that crawling

02:55by unelected bureaucrats. I think we all need to know where the line is. Right. And it would be

02:59inappropriate if I necessarily meaningfully discriminated against someone, but there's a lot

03:07of things we don't know about people that we can't see that we don't know. Right. Like whether it's

03:13our sons or in any context, and that's why the laws have to be clear. They have to be unambiguous,

03:18and that's why it's wrong for unelected bureaucrats to try to take those words, those laws that you

03:24are supposed to create, and make their own interpretations of them and then try to enforce

03:29them, which is exactly what was being done at the EEOC today and why it's important to have

03:33opinions like the one we did in Indiana. Mr. Stettman, I found your arguments

03:42most compelling because I believe that most Americans want to do the right thing,

03:50but they expect that the law will equally be balanced in that endeavor, and we tend to hear

03:57about how capitalism and corporations or businesses want all these things, but really what it gets

04:06down to is that I think we, deep down as Americans, want to be good to people. We really don't want

04:14to hold things against anybody, but we also recognize when that line is violated,

04:21when it didn't work for me or it didn't work for a group of people. Tell me more about how we fix

04:28this. Is it done in state laws? Does it have to be done in a federal law? Well, independent women's

04:36voice has been quite active. We basically are advancing a definition of sex, which we didn't

04:46used to have to do. This was something that was common sense. Everybody understood what a woman

04:51was, what a man was, but now we find that it's necessary to actually define that in state law

04:56in order, for example, to protect sports opportunities for young women. Unfortunately,

05:02this administration in 2021, for example, we had West Virginia pass exactly that kind of law

05:08defining the word woman and only permitting females to participate in public youth sports.

05:16Very reasonable thing for a state to do. We actually had the Biden administration come in

05:21and say, no, our interpretation, this is even before their regulatory drop of 1,500 pages,

05:28come in and say, no, we interpret federal law, Title IX, to basically say, no, the state of West

05:36Virginia cannot define the word woman. So I do think ultimately something will have to be done

05:41on the federal level. And the first thing that has to be done on the federal level is for agencies

05:45to stop going beyond their mandates and usurping the job that this body has. The so-called Equality

05:53Act was put forward in this body multiple times to add gender identity to Title VII and to our

05:59civil rights law generally. That law didn't pass. And so what we have are a series of agencies,

06:05whether it's the Department of Education or the EEOC, putting out either guidance or regulation

06:12that does what they weren't able to do politically. And I think they can't do it politically because

06:16of exactly what you said. Americans don't believe that the reality of biological sex is bigotry.

06:24Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Representative Tlaib from Michigan.

06:29Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I don't know, just hearing all this, it just feels like

'This Is Disturbing, Where Is The Line?': Pete Sessions Decries Discrimination Suits Over Pronouns

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