Shooting Their Citizen In The Feet.

In their haste in passing laws against diversity the are creating financial hardships to their citizens, they are passing laws against ESG. What is ESG you ask? They’re funds that consider environmental, social and governance issues. They are what the right-wing conservatives called “WOKE” so they are trying to ban their citizens from investing in funds that invest in ESGs.

Retirement funds for teachers and firefighters are caught in ESG crossfire

Business groups, labor unions and others are sounding off against state GOP efforts to bar public pensions from making environmentally and socially conscious investments.

NBC News

By Nidhi Sharma

March 26, 2023

A growing wave of public pension administrators, business groups and labor unions are sending a message to Republicans looking to curb so-called “woke” investing: our money, our choice.

Regulatory efforts to stop money from going to funds that consider environmental, social and governance issues, commonly known as ESG investing, have typically targeted big Wall Street asset managers. Now, public pensions are increasingly caught in the crosshairs and with them the retirement funds of teachers, librarians, firefighters and other public service employees.

But while opponents of the anti-ESG restrictions are getting louder, their dissent hasn’t yet stopped the tide.

[…]

At least seven red states have implemented or are considering regulations banning public entities from considering ESG factors when investing state resources, according to a Harvard University report. Eight states have advanced bills or directives that target companies or banks accused of boycotting investments in oil and gas or firearms.

So now the Republicans are telling you how to invest!

Now their citizens who have invested their retire accounts will have to sell them off maybe at a lost!

“These states talk about limited government, the free market, and now are using government regulations and legislation to actually curtail the responsibilities and the fiduciary obligations of retirement systems,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which boasts some 1.7 million members. “They are using the government to intrude upon and undermine the needs of retirees.”

[…]

“The anti-ESG movement is a political show because it’s creating an enemy when there isn’t one, in order to appear defensive of the fossil fuel industry,” she said.

The unions, state pension plans, employee retirement funds they will all have to sell off their investments foe a loss and create anarchy in the financial system. There are no guidelines; is a solar panel company ESG, what about a company that makes their window AC units more efficient, or a company that does diversity training, or for that matter suppose that their company business is only 25 or 30 diversity training and the rest of their business is payroll processing… does that qualify as an ESG company? How much of fund's investments in ESG will qualify for blacklisting the fund, 20%? 30%, 50%?

This is going to be a nightmare!

So much for getting the government off our backs. First they tell us what we can do with our bodies, then they tell us what we can and cannot say and what books we can read!

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Government buttinskies!

Experts: Guarding schools against litigation can produce unforeseen consequences

The Herald Bulletin

By Andy Knight

March 25, 2023

In addition to arousing passions about an issue fraught with political and moral overtones, South Madison Community Schools Corp.’s gender support plan presents a legal conundrum.

Specifically, when the gender identity choices of minor students collide with parents’ interests in knowing about issues affecting their children while they’re at school, which side should ultimately prevail?

“Schools are kind of on a tightrope here,” South Madison Superintendent Mark Hall said. “We have to protect student privacy. We also are trying to be cognizant of parents getting the information that’s important to them about their kids. So we are kind of in a really tight spot.”

[…]

As a public school system that receives millions of dollars in federal funding annually, South Madison is obligated to adhere to guidelines set forth by the federal Office of Civil Rights, Hall said.

He pointed to the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX. The DOE “interprets Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination to encompass discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

And let us not forget the Supreme Court decision on Title IX in the Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board case. After the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the ruling in favor of Gavin on August 26, 2020. But that goes in one ear and out the other, the Republicans don’t care what the law is they just want to win points from their base and even if it gets shot down by the courts the Republicans will be out their blaming the “liberal courts.”

In another decision in 2017, the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that Title IX, as a matter of law, requires public schools to permit transgender students to use restrooms corresponding to their gender identities. The school district in that case, Kenosha Unified School District in Wisconsin, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court before settling with the transgender student who brought the suit.

Hall and other local school officials believe it’s inevitable that the high court will be asked to rule on the issue.

Yup, they want it to go to the Supreme Court hoping that after being packed by McConnell and Trump with religious conservatives they will find in their favor.