PRESS RELEASE

LITTLE ROCK-- Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge joined 22 attorneys general in filing a lawsuit today against the Biden Administration for withholding school lunch program funding from schools that fail to adopt the Administration’s new guidance on gender identity and sexual orientation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture administers The National School Lunch Program under the Food and Nutrition Service to ensure that children do not attend school hungry.

“President Biden is the bully trying to take away our children’s lunch money” said Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. “It is unbelievable that President Biden would punish children in order to spread his radical gender ideology.”  

In June, Rutledge joined her colleagues in sending a letter to the Biden Administration explaining the Biden administration’s guidance is not consistent with federal law. That guidance puts Arkansas’s Title IX and SNAP school lunch funding at risk. More than 300,000 Arkansas students rely on National School Lunch Program each day for breakfast, lunch or both. Nearly 30 million rely on the program nationwide.

Joining Arkansas in the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.

To read the complaint, click here.