Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) took issue Tuesday with a new school lunch resolution offered by fellow Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).
The resolution, initially introduced in July by a series of senators and placed on the calendar last week, disagrees with recent guidance by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in relation to sex discrimination.
The USDA had said it is updating its policies regarding discrimination based on sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity, in accordance with President Biden’s executive order on the matter in 2021.
Schools that receive funds from the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) will have to have policies that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and investigate any forms of alleged discrimination based on those factors or risk losing the funds.
Biden’s executive order has been controversial, especially in Republican states where lawmakers aim to ban transgender students from using the bathrooms or joining the sports teams that align with their gender identity.
The move by the USDA is opposed by 18 Republican senators who signed onto a resolution, led by Marshall, to stop its implementation.
“I can’t even believe that this resolution is even real. This makes it possible for some random lunch lady to deny lunch to a hungry child because she says her god tells her to. School lunch should be free, and certainly free of judgment,” Fetterman said in a statement.
“Don’t we have better things to do in the upper chamber than picking on kids because of who they are?” Fetterman continued.
Asked for comment, Marshall said in a statement that the “Biden Administration’s poisonous transgender agenda is putting children’s school lunch funding in the crosshairs.”
“To be abundantly clear, my resolution is about preventing the USDA from weaponizing funding and retaliating against schools that don’t allow biological boys in girls’ bathrooms, and biological boys in girls’ sports. Take politics out of the lunch line- and stop holding school lunches hostage,” Marshall said.
—Updated Wednesday at 10:54 a.m. Lexi Lonas contributed.