DV Journal

Beth Ann Rosica, a West Chester mother of two teenage sons, is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania, claiming an agency overstepped when it unilaterally changed how a person’s sex is defined.

With little notice, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) changed its guidance regarding what sex means, declaring that rather than the biological definition, “under the PHRA may refer to sex assigned at birth, sexual orientation, transgender identity, gender transition, gender identity, and/or gender expression depending on the individual facts of the case.”

Rosica told DV Journal she discovered the change when looking into the Moms for Liberty case where a federal judge ruled in favor of the mother’s group to block former President Joe Biden’s Title IX changes and to keep boys out of girls’ restrooms and off girls’ teams.

She found out many Pennsylvania school districts were following the PHRC guidance.

“They still had policies that required them to follow PHRC regulations,” said Rosica. When she began digging into the PHRC regulations, she found that the agency had enacted them in 2023 under Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and “nobody in the state legislature was involved. And they basically expanded the definition of sex to include gender identity.”

And even though President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning males from playing on women’s sports teams, Pennsylvania school districts were continuing to allow it. They also allowed men and boys to use women’s locker rooms and restrooms.

Rosica joined other concerned parents—Aaron Bernstine, Jason Saylor, Barbara Gleim, and Alexandra Pasternak—and filed a petition against the governor and the PHRC, alleging the new guidance is a violation of the state constitution and the non-delegation doctrine.  They’ve teamed up with the Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm, along with like-minded school districts South Side Area and Knoch.

Thomas King III of Dillon, McCandless, King, Coulter and Graham is a special counsel to the Thomas More Society in this case. He explained that while Trump’s order covers these schools, “we (also) have an underlying state regulation that is inconsistent with his order.”

“And that is being thrown in the face of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA), for example, that is being threatened with a lawsuit by the ACLU and others.” The PIAA, which governs school sports teams in Pennsylvania, had said it would follow Trump’s executive order.

“The particular state regulation was improperly adopted, should never have existed,” King told DV Journal. “When the Democrats in the legislature tried to amend Pennsylvania statutes — and over the past several years, they’ve tried on a number of occasions — every single time it failed. So, what’s happened here is they’ve circumvented the legislature, and they’ve tried to do it through administrative regulations from an unelected body appointed by the governor.”

And that is unconstitutional, said King, since “it’s the legislature that’s supposed to make the laws, not a group of unelected bureaucrats.”

Shapiro, answering a reporter’s question about this complaint at a press conference on Tuesday, said he hadn’t seen the suit, but mentioned that William Penn, “who founded this commonwealth as a place that would be warm and welcoming to all people. And I think it is my responsibility as someone who’s been passed down the torch of leadership from William Penn to make sure Pennsylvania remains a place that is warm and welcoming for all, including people in the LGBTQ+ community.  I understand there are those who want to score a cheap political point by bullying a trans kid, by making it harder for people to make it harder to marry who they want. That’s just not who I am, and I’m sure that’s not who the vast majority of Pennsylvanians are.”

There is no connection between banning biological males from women’s sports, and same-sex marriage.

“I’ve worked hard for women to have equal rights,” Rosica said.

“And when we’re allowing boys to compete against girls in sports or invade their private spaces, I just think that is wrong, and I think that we have a moral responsibility to point this out and get these regulations overturned,” she said. “I believe they’re unconstitutional. I don’t think they had the authority to change them. They did it very quietly. Nobody was talking about this in 2023 when the regulations (were adopted).”

Is your baby nonbinary? And if so, how would you know? Doesn’t matter. The inquiring minds at the Pennsylvania state Office of Child Development and Early Learning still want to know.

They require social workers fill to out a form that designates infants as male, female, or gender nonbinary. The form is part of a Department of Health and Human Services program that provides services to parents of newborns.

“Non-binary people feel their gender identity cannot be defined within the margins of gender binary,” according to the LGBT Foundation. “Instead, they understand their gender in a way that goes beyond simply identifying as either a man or woman.”

Setting aside the debate over whether sex is a fixed biological fact or a fluid cultural norm, critics say the question is ludicrous either way. How, they ask, does an infant “understand” its gender?

“The bureaucrats at the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning have adopted the radical ideology of the doctors and psychologists at the Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital who claimed that babies know their gender identity in the womb,” said Lower Merion resident Elana Fishbein, founder of No Left Turn in Education.

“These people have been watching too much ‘Family Guy,’ ‘Boss Baby’ or, ‘Look Who’s Talking’ and think babies can talk. This is government absurdity at its finest, but with ominous implications.”

The state DHS blamed federal requirements for the form because the program is paid for through federal grants.

“State programs and related forms must follow federal reporting requirements for demographics data collection for federally funded programs like these,” said spokesperson Ali Fogarty. “In 2021, the federal Health Resources and Services Administration updated gender identity reporting for the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program. Under the Wolf administration, Pennsylvania subsequently updated its forms in 2022 to align with the new reporting guidance.

“This is simply a field for data collection on the forms, in much the same way age or ethnicity are tracked. There is not a directive that parents be verbally or explicitly asked if their children are non-binary,” she added.

But why would the government ask the question if they don’t expect an answer, critics say?

“The fact that the option of ‘nonbinary’ appears on an official government form implies that it is actually a scientifically viable option at birth, the same as ‘male’ and ‘female.’ As a social worker specializing in child welfare services, I’m horrified at the thought of where this insanity could lead,” said Fishbein.

“We already witnessed cases around the country where Child Protective Services removed minors from parents who didn’t ‘affirm’ their child’s transgender identity. Will we witness infants taken away from their ‘birthing parent’ because the infant disagrees with their gender designation? Will obstetricians be sanctioned for revealing the sex of a fetus to its parents? The people behind this are radical ideologues who need mental health intervention,” said Fishbein.

The existence of these forms was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon. They quote an anonymous Pennsylvania social worker employed by the agency.

“I have to ask clients, ‘Is your 10-day-old male, female, or nonbinary?’” the worker said.

Bruce Chambers, former president of the Great Valley School Board, believes this policy is “just another parallel program to what the public schools are doing to minor children. It is a ‘recruitment’ tool … to groom parents to think this is all a normal process to assign a non-binary gender to a newborn.

“This quote explains what is currently happening in Pennsylvania: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Chambers said.

And Chalfont parent, Jamie Walker, wondered whether the form was real.

“ As a parent you can look at your child and determine the biological sex.  I am not sure why our tax money is being used for unnecessary forms for wasteful purposes.  I don’t understand what the government hopes to gain from these forms.”

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal