GREEN BAY, Wis.— The Green Bay Diocese made news earlier this summer when it announced a gender identity clause would be added to its education policy manual.

That clause has now put the diocese at risk of losing federal funding for its schools that use the National School Lunch Program.

“Essentially, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent out guidance related to their interpretation of Title IX — and Title IX is a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex,” said Todd Blahnik, superintendent of Catholic schools for the Green Bay Diocese.

“They said we now believe that Title IX includes the prohibition and discrimination against sex. But also, covers that sex, the definition, would cover gender identity and sexual orientation. And so, they put that into the language related to the federal hot lunch program.”

Currently, 26 Republican attorney generals have asked the Biden administration to withdraw its Department of Agriculture Title IX interpretation. That interpretation would take billions of dollars in National School Lunch Program funding away from schools.

“Which, basically, they’re holding kids hostage for their lunch programs related to that,’’ said Blahnik. “That really would be, or could be, the biggest impact for our Catholic schools. If a school participates in the federal hot lunch program, that could be an issue.”

On July 1, the diocese issued its gender policy that states students, employees and volunteers for the Diocese of Green Bay Catholic schools cannot use pronouns or wear clothes that do not match their sex assigned at birth.

“However, when you go back to the original Title IX legislation, it actually has an exemption in it for religious institutions,’’ said Blahnik. “So legally speaking, if they would come back to us as a Catholic school, we would litigate that. And right now, in the state of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is going to be litigating against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So, that’s kind of where that piece comes in.”

Blahnik said the other federal funding the diocese receives is through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. That includes funding for schools with a high percentage of students from low-income families, funding for school libraries for textbook acquisition, and things of that nature.

“Because the money goes from the federal government to the Department of Public Instruction,” said Blahnik, “and then from the Department of Public Instruction to the local school district, it doesn’t matter that we have this gender policy in place because it’s not considered direct federal financial aid."

“And that is where the (Biden) administration, going back to the hot lunch program, is saying, we consider this direct federal financial aid. So really, the impact on our schools at this point is not going to be that we’re going to be losing any federal funds as of this time.”

The Diocese of Green Bay has 54 schools across 16 counties that include roughly 9,000 students. Blahnik estimated the potential impact for the hot lunch program could be about 20% of those students.

If funding was lost, Blahnik said the diocese would look to replicate a self-supportive hot lunch model used by Green Bay Notre Dame High School.

“We just reach out to our community for support,” said Notre Dame president Tom Kiely.

Kiely said that community includes alumni and Notre Dame’s “support base.”

“We’ve always done it that way,’’ he said, “and as numbers rose, we just reached out a little bit wider.”

Blahnik said he is confident the diocese would have the same ability.

“We have a 2,000-year track record of serving the poor," he said. “So if we, as diocese, had to leave the federal hot lunch program, we would work together with the Catholic Foundation to find a way to continue that, servicing those students."

“We have donors that this is in their wheelhouse; they want to help students who are struggling, or families who are struggling. Our parishes already do that with the food pantries that they run, the homeless shelters that we run. This would be an extension of that. We would we would find a way.”

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