As AFN has reported, the public comment period concluded Sept. 12 with a record-breaking number pouring in to the U.S. Dept. of Education. But news website Politico reported, days before the deadline, that comments had been lost due to a “clerical error” that went unexplained in the story.
What kind of comments are being sent? An attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom told AFN this week that its attorneys wrote and sent five comments that argued the DOE lacks legal authority to rewrite federal law; the rule will undermine fairness in women’s sports, which was the purpose of the 1970s law; undermines parental rights; advocates for abortion; and violates free speech by censoring unwanted beliefs and by forcing people to state made-up gender pronouns or face punishment.
It is likely the transgender-crazed Biden administration will ignore the wave of complaints and objections in the name of “tolerance” and “equity,” and dismiss dissent as “transphobic,” but the U.S. Dept. of Education was required to hear from the “haters” before making changes.
Sarah Perry of The Heritage Foundation tells AFN the D.C.-based organization was watching the public comments pile up as the deadline loomed, then it noticed the sudden drop – the “clerical error” – in posted comments.
“So the suspicious disappearance of 160,000 American public comments, without explanation, other than something provided second hand to Politico,” Perry says, “we find to be definitely suspicious.”
In a related news story, Daily Signal reporter Douglas Blair points out the Regulations.gov website that is collecting public comments showed more comments (184,009) than a sister website, the Federal Register, which had logged 163,013 comments. Considering the Regulations.gov website curates and moderates comments, and the Federal Register posts every one, Blair asks, how is the latter show more comments than the former?
Daily Signal is a news division of The Heritage Foundation.
In that same story, which quotes Perry, the legal analyst says “alarm bells” should be going off from parents whose children will be impacted by redefining Title IX.
