1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

I urge you to oppose HR 7661, the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act. This legislation threatens educational quality and constitutional protections while creating impossible compliance burdens for schools in our district. The bill prohibits federal funding for any educational program serving minors that includes materials involving gender dysphoria or transgenderism, alongside sexually explicit content as defined in federal criminal statutes. This sweeping restriction would force schools to choose between comprehensive health education and federal funding. By applying criminal law definitions designed for child exploitation cases to classroom instruction, the bill conflates pedagogical appropriateness with criminal conduct. The constitutional problems are severe. The prohibition on materials addressing gender identity constitutes viewpoint-based discrimination that violates First Amendment protections for educational speech and academic freedom. Courts apply strict scrutiny to such content-based restrictions, and this bill's approach of singling out specific topics for exclusion is unlikely to survive judicial review. The bill creates an arbitrary and inflexible educational canon by defining permissible classic works through reference to specific 1990s and 2019 publications. This excludes significant contemporary literature and limits teachers' ability to provide culturally diverse, relevant curricula. Schools would face substantial costs reviewing existing materials, training staff, and potentially defending against funding denials, yet the bill provides no cost estimates or implementation guidance. Most troubling is the complete absence of enforcement mechanisms. No federal agency is designated for oversight, no compliance procedures are established, and no judicial review provisions exist. This creates legal uncertainty that will chill legitimate instruction on human biology, health, and social issues while marginalizing LGBTQ students through content erasure. I ask you to oppose HR 7661 and instead support evidence-based approaches to education that respect constitutional protections, local control, and the diverse needs of students in our community.