Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson wants to roll back an Obama-era rule mandating that single-sex homeless shelters funded by his department admit residents based on their stated gender identity instead of their sex at birth, arguing that people could intentionally misrepresent their gender for malicious reasons.
In a new rule posted online on Wednesday, HUD said it wants to give the shelters it funds flexibility in devising their own policies for admissions at single-sex or sex-segregated shelters.
A senior HUD official told Fox News: “The federal government doesn’t need to be the bathroom police.”
HUD said the change is needed because the Equal Access Rule under the Obama administration “leaves no room for shelter providers to make decisions about potentially dangerous individuals who may misrepresent their gender to access gender-specific shelters.”