diff --git "a/aclu_sentences.txt" "b/aclu_sentences.txt" new file mode 100644--- /dev/null +++ "b/aclu_sentences.txt" @@ -0,0 +1,6875 @@ +Donald Trump was re-elected president on a wave of attacks against women and transgender people. +Anti-transgender politicians spent more than $215 million on ads scapegoating trans people and promoting a Project 2025 agenda that threatens to rollback reproductive freedom and punish people for departing from archaic gender roles. +On his first day back in office, President Trump signed a far-reaching executive order requiring federal agencies to discriminate against transgender people by denying who they are and threatening the freedom of self-determination and self-expression for all. +In 2020, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County affirming that discrimination against someone because they are LGBTQ is sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. +Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said: “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” +Trump also withdrew an executive order issued by former President Joe Biden directing federal agencies to enforce this court ruling as applied to all laws prohibiting sex discrimination. +We all deserve the freedom to be ourselves, including the right to determine what’s right for our bodies and lives. +Trump’s sex discrimination mandate threatens to deny that freedom to transgender people across the country while forcing everyone else to sacrifice their own freedom and privacy, too. +What Does the Order Say? +Trump’s signed order states: “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.   +These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” +The order defines terms like “man” and “woman” based on whether a person “at conception” belongs “to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell” or that “produces the small reproductive cell.” +Trump’s order then directs federal agencies to “enforce laws governing sex-based rights, protections, opportunities, and accommodations” using his cramped definitions, including designating sex on passports and other federal identification documents, or determining where transgender people are confined in federal custody. +The order also includes a sweeping mandate to all agencies to “end the Federal funding of gender ideology.” +Of course, the order does not explain what that means or how agencies would accomplish such a task. +For decades, feminist legal scholars and women’s rights advocates have opposed efforts to define gender based strictly on biology. +Recent state laws that use these definitions to discriminate against transgender people have resulted in invasive and traumatizing efforts to determine who “counts” as a man or as a woman, targeting youth who are even suspected of being transgender because they do not conform to sex stereotypes. +This order likewise ignores the existence of intersex people and others with variations in sex characteristics beyond the overly-simplistic definitions Trump endorsed. +What Does the Order Do? +Very few executive orders change policy immediately, and they cannot change laws passed by Congress or protections guaranteed by the Constitution. +As of January 21, 2025 it is unclear how the Trump administration will enforce this order as applied to educational settings, health care access, housing, federally-funded programs, and many other areas where federal law or policy references “sex” or “gender.” +Some of the most immediate impacts will likely be felt by the more than 2,000 transgender people currently held in federal custody. +The order specifically calls on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to ignore the guidelines of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) and enforce a blanket policy forcing transgender women into men’s prisons and detention centers against their will. +This puts them at a severely heightened risk of sexual assault and abuse by other incarcerated persons and prison staff. +The order also mandates that BOP withdraw critical health care from trans people in federal prison. +We also expect to see immediate impacts on access to updated sex designations on U.S. passports. +Transgender people frequently update the sex designation on documents like birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and passports to reflect their gender identity rather than the sex they were assigned at birth. +Requiring transgender peoples’ passports to show the sex they were assigned at birth effectively outs them as transgender whenever they have to present the document. +Soon after the order was issued, a Trump administration official told a reporter that the policy impacting gender markers on U.S. passports would not apply retroactively for current passport holders. +Trump’s order will, however, prevent transgender and intersex people from obtaining new passports, visas, and trusted traveler documents that reflect who they are and how they are perceived in the world. +The State Department recently said that all applications for gender change are "suspended." +Because people have to provide their existing passport and other documents to update their passport, if people attempt to update the sex designation on their passport now, they run the risk of not having a valid passport at all while the passport is out of their possession. +What Happens Next? +We expect the order may be enforced in other contexts, such as in public schools and sex-separated spaces. +It may also be used to limit workplace protections and to limit federally-funded programs that provide access for gender-affirming health care. +If federal agencies and departments act to make those risks a reality, the ACLU and other LGBTQ rights organizations will fight them every step of the way. +If you have been impacted by this order, let us know. +After President Donald Trump issued an executive order restricting access to gender-affirming medical care for transgender people under 19, many hospitals nationwide abruptly cut off treatment for trans youth. +This sent thousands of families scrambling, with some even wondering if they needed to leave the country to protect their family’s future. +If enforced, President Trump’s order will deny transgender youth access to medically-necessary care, like puberty blockers and hormone therapy, even as these same treatments remain readily available to their cisgender peers. +The order also intends to cut or reduce federal funding for health care providers who refuse to prioritize the Trump administration’s political preferences over their patients’ medical needs. +"politics and partisanship have no place in patient care and we all deserve the freedom to be ourselves." +At the American Civil Liberties Union, we know that politics and partisanship have no place in patient care and we all deserve the freedom to be ourselves. +On February 4th, alongside Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Maryland, we sued the Trump administration to block its discriminatory efforts to limit needed health care. +We filed our suit on behalf of transgender young adults and their families, as well as PFLAG and GLMA, two of the nation’s largest organizations supporting LGBTQ+ people and healthcare professionals. +Since his first term, Trump and his administration have carried out a years-long effort to roll back protections for LGBTQ people. +Beginning in January, the Trump administration issued a series of executive orders that remove protections for trans people. +His directives include targeting transgender students, banning trans Americans from military service, and giving federal agencies the green light to openly discriminate against their trans employees. +These orders align with the extremist vision of Project 2025, a sweeping right-wing agenda that seeks to dismantle civil rights protections, consolidate presidential power, and dehumanize transgender people. +J Matt/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock President Trump “is determined to use every level of government to drive transgender people out of public life,” says Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project. +For Cameron, Gabe, and Robert, three of the five trans young people challenging the Trump administration’s anti-trans agenda, this fight goes beyond the courtroom. +It’s about their fundamental right to make deeply personal medical decisions without government interference. +For Cameron, words like “boy” or “girl” were never meaningful. +Being seen as nonbinary makes them feel “strong, happy, recognized, and loved.” +Before puberty, they worried about how others would treat them based on their clothes and pronouns. +Now, as their physical-self matures, Cameron worries about how they see their own body. +“The changes feel violating,” they say. +“It makes me depressed, stressed, and anxious.” +After seeing a therapist, Cameron’s parents consulted a doctor who first spoke to them about puberty blockers, a temporary pause that gives people time to decide whether to undergo male or female puberty. +Getting more time was a relief to Cameron who, after starting treatment at 12, remembers feeling "less stressed and a little more hopeful." +"I do not want to feel like a stranger in my body." +However, Cameron’s appointment for a puberty-blocking implant was abruptly canceled after the Trump administration issued its executive order. +Their anxieties came rushing back, resulting in stomach pain, restless sleep, and missed school. +Their parents fought to find a new doctor. +Though Cameron did finally receive their implant, they fear losing care again. +“I do not want to feel like a stranger in my body,” they told the ACLU. +For Gabe, a 14-year-old transgender boy, he hopes gender-affirming medical care will help him look and sound more like himself. +Often, when strangers see him in public, they address him using male pronouns. +Until he speaks. +His voice still does not reflect who he is and causes people to misgender him, which only adds to the anxiety and dysmorphia that began when he started puberty. +“Even when I wasn’t sure why the changes felt wrong, I just knew they were,” Gabe says, reflecting on his experience trying to navigate his changing body. +To treat his dysphoria, Gabe’s parents consulted a doctor who explained how testosterone could help him feel more comfortable in his body. +Gabe knew it was the right choice for him. +“I want to be in a grown-up male body when I’m older,” he says. +“I want the choice to tell people, not to be revealed by my voice.” +Gabe hoped to begin testosterone treatments in March 2025, but the administration’s actions put his plans at risk. +Like many trans youth, Gabe now fears that he won’t have the choice to present as he truly is. +Families of trans youth also feel the impact of Trump’s discriminatory order. +Rachel, a member of PFLAG, has always prioritized her son Robert’s health and well-being. +From a very early age, she knew that Robert was meant to be a boy and that “he would thrive in school and the rest of his life if we let him live that way.” +At nine, Robert was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. +Rachel made sure he received the care he needed. +Under medical guidance, he began puberty blockers to prevent changes that would conflict with his identity. +By 14, after years of therapy and careful consideration, he started testosterone. +“As his mother, I agreed with his doctors that Robert would benefit from going through puberty alongside his peers,” Rachel says. +Robert is 16 now and is “healthy, social, and thriving.” +But on January 29th, Rachel received a call: Robert’s appointment, a routine check-up for his hormone therapy, was canceled. +“I am devastated that the president has sought to prevent my child from accessing the health care that allows him to be his true self,” Rachel says. +Without testosterone, Rachel fears that Robert will face severe distress. +“This is a child who has told me since age two that he is a boy,” she says. +“He is now a young man. +It would be alarming for him to suddenly develop a woman’s body.” +Cameron, Robert, Gabe, and so many families like theirs see President Trump’s assault on their rights for what it is: an overreach of presidential power to deny them the health care that serves as the foundation of their lives and their future. +At the ACLU, we refuse to let politics dictate who can and cannot receive essential healthcare, but our fight is about more than policy. +Like all of us, trans youth deserve to grow up with the care and support they need. +We will not stop fighting until their rights are protected. +On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that excluding same-sex couples from civil marriage was unconstitutional. +I was outside the Supreme Court that day, celebrating the advocacy achievement that seemed impossible a decade prior when bans on marriage for same-sex couples passed by wide margins in state after state. +Couples, families, and advocates gathered on the steps outside the court, singing, crying, and embracing. +I thought about my younger self who could not have imagined a life and future as a queer adult, and about the generations of LGBTQ people who came before me and faced so many more obstacles to realizing their own queer adulthoods. +Though the fight for legal recognition of marriage for same-sex couples spanned decades, the final stages of progress seemed lightning fast for many people outside of the LGBTQ legal movement. +In June of 2013, the Supreme Court held in United States v. Windsor that the federal law defining marriage as between one man and one woman violated the Constitution's equal protection and due process guarantees. +That decision opened the door to immediate constitutional challenges to the remaining state-level bans on marriage for same-sex couples. +Two years later, in 2015, the Supreme Court held in Obergefell v. Hodges that excluding same-sex couples from marriage violated the Constitution. +The Obergefell ruling was a defining moment in our country’s legal history that came after decades of hard work and setbacks. +Today, my child’s generation cannot even fathom that same-sex couples could not marry in many states when they were born. +That transformation in law and culture has been met with fierce backlash from opponents of LGBTQ equality. +Immediately following the court’s decision in Obergefell, the aggressive movement to prevent marriage equality trained its financial resources and advocacy efforts on curtailing legal equality for LGBTQ people under local, state and federal civil rights statutes. +In November 2015, a ballot campaign in Houston, Texas became the testing ground for new anti-LGBT messaging. +Houston voters were voting on a repeal of a municipal non-discrimination ordinance, HERO, that would have extended local civil rights protections to fifteen classes of people, including veterans, people of color, disabled people, women and LGBTQ people. +The campaign in favor of repealing the ordinance focused its messaging entirely on the false claim that passing the ordinance would allow men to enter women’s bathrooms and harm women and girls. +Campaign ads depicted shadowy figures looming over young girls and the refrain “no men in women’s restrooms” became the tagline that ultimately drove voters to repeal the ordinance at the ballot that November. +Hoping to redirect voters towards the many groups the ordinance would protect, the pro-HERO campaign did not engage with the opposition’s messaging directly. +The strategy failed. +Whether we wanted to or not, LGBTQ advocates needed to face our opposition’s messaging head-on, particularly when, in the months that followed, dozens of bills were introduced across the country to ban transgender people from using restrooms that aligned with their gender identity. +We did not pick a fight over bathrooms, the fact that we exist and go to the bathroom became the focal point of efforts to undermine legal gains for all LGBTQ people. +Between 2016 and 2019, efforts to enact anti-trans legislation largely stalled. +Ballot measures seeking to roll back trans-inclusive laws or codify anti-trans ones also failed. +It was not until the introduction of the Equality Act in Congress, a bill that would add explicit protections for LGBT people into federal civil rights statutes, that a new anti-trans strategy gained momentum. +As with previous efforts to stall local non-discrimination ordinances in 2015 and 2016, efforts to kill the Equality Act claimed that protecting transgender people would threaten others. +This time, our opponents focused on sports. +Once again, transgender people did not pick the fight, we just existed and became the focal point of efforts to stop civil rights legislation. +Just as equality opponents were building momentum coalescing around sports, in June 2020 the Supreme Court issued a decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, confirming that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applied to LGBTQ people. +In a 6-3 opinion authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court found three LGBTQ workers fired because they were either gay or transgender – including American Civil Liberties Union client and transgender woman Aimee Stephens – were discriminated against on the basis of their sex in violation of the law. +The court concluded that it is inherently a form of sex discrimination to discriminate against someone because of their sexual orientation or transgender status. +This confirmed that LGBTQ workers were federally protected under our nation’s civil rights statutes. +Like Obergefell, Bostock sparked a fierce backlash from anti-equality advocates. +Limiting the decision’s scope immediately became a top priority for anti-LGBTQ legislators. +Between 2021 and 2023, lawmakers introduced hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ people, the majority of which sought to limit rights for transgender adolescents. +At first, these bills focused on the very small number of transgender students participating in school sports, but soon lawmakers escalated their attacks and began to introduce bills targeting medical care. +When the first categorical ban on medical care for transgender adolescents passed in Arkansas in 2021, then-Governor Asa Hutchinson vetoed the bill concerned that it allowed for vast government overreach into the private and vulnerable decisions of adolescents, their parents and their doctors. +That measured resistance to usurping the careful and aligned judgment of youth, their parents and their doctors quickly gave way to copycat legislation across the country that sought to categorically ban evidence-based medical care for transgender adolescents. +In February 2022, Texas even threatened to investigate families for child abuse for simply following the advice of medical providers to treat their adolescent transgender children with gender affirming medical care. +All of a sudden, families began to fear that they could lose custody of their children by following best practice medicine. +While transgender youth and their families desperately sought refuge from fights that kept arriving at their doorstep, the ACLU and other LGBTQ legal groups immediately went to court to try to stop the escalating harms of the health bans. +Our timing was critical; each day these bans were allowed to be enforced was another day transgender youth were going without needed care. +Thankfully, we were largely successful at first and, until July 2023, stopped every law from going into effect. +District court judges ruled that, because these bans discriminated against transgender people on the basis of their sex and transgender status, as well as infringed upon the rights of parents to direct the medical care of their minor children, they were likely unconstitutional. +These district court orders protected vulnerable adolescents from losing the medical care that had allowed them to thrive. +This protection changed when the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Tennessee’s ban to go into effect. +That decision set off a chain reaction in the appellate courts and soon nearly every medical care ban went into effect, forcing families to uproot their lives to try to preserve care for their adolescent children. +Compelled by the severity of harms facing our clients and transgender adolescents across the country, the ACLU and Lambda Legal asked the Supreme Court to review the Sixth Circuit’s harmful decision in November 2023. +Not only did the appellate court’s decision upend the state of health care for transgender youth, it also began to undermine critical constitutional protections for everyone. +For those of us who have dedicated our lives to fighting for our community, it was clear that the stakes were only getting higher and bringing our fight to the Supreme Court was a necessary step to slow catastrophic erosion of medical care and legal rights. +Ultimately, the LGBTQ movement did not pick a fight over restrooms or sports or health care for minors. +Rather, opponents of LGBTQ equality strategically positioned transgender people as a threat to others as part of their decades-long goal to undermine LGBTQ equality movements overall. +For the people who now tell transgender people that instead of fighting these bills targeting our health care, our education, our history, we should have waited for a more opportune time to defend our rights and survival, the question is: what should we have done? +Just accepted our wholesale exclusion from public life? +Who would that have helped? +Certainly not cisgender women in sports, or LGB people seeking to learn about their histories, or people hoping to form families with IVF. +We did not pick this fight, we simply existed. +But not fighting to exist was never an option. +Last week, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to trans youth, their families and the communities that support them. +In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Skrmetti v. U.S. that SB1— Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors —does not illegally discriminate against individuals on the basis of sex or transgender status. +This allows Tennessee, and any other states that may choose to follow its discriminatory lead, to ban medically-necessary health care for minors. +As one of the Tennessee parents challenging this ban put it, “the Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday will make it even harder for our daughter to get lifesaving health care. +It will harm the lawsuit’s unnamed families and those that come after us, with younger kids just starting to understand and express themselves.” +This is a blow for trans youth who simply want to grow up healthy, supported, and seen. +It is not, however, where the legal battle ends. +Importantly, the Supreme Court limited its ruling to just Tennessee’s law. +It did not decide on the broader questions about the legality of discrimination against transgender people in other areas. +Below, the American Civil Liberties Union breaks down what the court’s ruling means for trans youth across the nation, how we can all fight back, and how we can best support ourselves and our communities in this moment. +What Does the Court’s Ruling Mean For Trans Youth? +The Supreme Court’s ruling does not impact youth in states that have not passed gender-affirming care bans. +For young people in Tennessee and Kentucky, however, this ruling means that access to medical care that has been deemed essential by every major medical organization will be denied. +In states like Indiana, Alabama, and Florida, where courts have upheld similar bans, this ruling may embolden lawmakers and courts to let those bans stay in place. +Does Skrmetti Limit Care for Trans Adults? +No. +This case was specifically about minors in two states – Kentucky and Tennessee. +The ruling didn’t address an equally powerful claim raised in Skrmetti and other cases: that these bans violate the rights of parents to direct their children’s medical care. +In this case parents, who are legal adults, can challenge whether denying their minor child health care is a violation of their rights. +That fight continues in lower courts, including a major case in Arkansas where four transgender youth and their families are challenging a similar ban. +What Can State Courts Do to Protect Trans Rights? +Though the Supreme Court did not provide federal-level security for trans individuals to seek care, at the state-level, bans can still be challenged under state constitutions and laws, which in some cases offer stronger protections than federal law. +This work is already happening in states like Montana, where state courts have blocked gender-affirming care bans under state law, and medical care is still accessible. +Kansas and Ohio are also challenging bans on gender-affirming care in their court systems. +Does the Skrmetti Ruling Impact +Any of Trump's Anti-Trans Executive Orders? +No. U.S. v. Skrmetti does not resolve challenges to anti-trans executive orders from the Trump administration. +This case was about medical care for transgender minors in two states—it does not speak to broader attacks on transgender rights. +The ACLU, our nationwide affiliate network, and other LGBTQ rights organizations are challenging many of Trump’s attacks on transgender people’s rights and health care, including his orders restricting our ability to update passports and his order attempting to coerce doctors to drop their transgender patients. +How Can We Support the Trans Community Today? +Transgender youth deserve to be safe, loved, and respected—everywhere. +You can help by taking action: Connect with your state ACLU affiliate, PFLAG, or local LGBTQ organizations. +Support the Trans Youth Emergency Project, a nationwide effort by the Campaign for Southern Equality helping families access the care their children need. +Contact your members of Congress and demand they stand with transgender people and families—rejecting laws that let politicians dictate our personal health care decisions. +Every action, every voice, every ally matters. +The fight for trans lives isn’t over—and it needs you. +In 2023, Kansas enacted a law attempting to define “transgender” out of existence by restricting the definition of a “woman” to the biological function of producing ova. +Not only does this definition negate the experiences of trans women and girls, but it also excludes entire categories of women who are not transgender, such as post-menopausal women, women experiencing reproductive challenges, and intersex women. +Despite being passed under the dubious title “Women’s Bill of Rights,” this law has not been used to create any new protections for women, nor improve support for women’s initiatives or resources. +Instead, the law has been used to incite fear among transgender Kansans and limit their ability to live freely in our state. +Kansas v. Harper Five transgender Kansans are challenging an effort by Kansas Attorney General Kobach to require the state to issue driver’s licenses with a... +Source: American Civil Liberties Union Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has claimed the new law restricts trans Kansans from updating the gender marker on their state IDs. +For years, Kansas had allowed transgender residents and those born here to change the gender marker on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates. +Despite having these affirming policies without any identified administrative, public safety, or other concerns, the attorney general took to the courts to pressure state agencies into removing these policies. +In response, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced a policy change banning trans Kansans from updating the gender marker on their birth certificates. +The Kansas Department of Revenue, which issues driver’s licenses, declined to change its policy — prompting Kobach to sue KDOR to force a policy change in Kansas v. Harper. +The ACLU of Kansas, along with ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project and local partners, intervened in that lawsuit on behalf of five transgender Kansans to assert their right to a driver’s license that does not forcibly out them. +Unfortunately, three days after the suit was filed and prior to our intervention, the judge issued a temporary order blocking trans Kansans from changing their license’s gender marker. +The order, which remains in force, also requires a previously changed gender marker to revert back to the inaccurate marker when the license expires or is amended in the future. +This means trans people are not currently able to access accurate and affirming state identity documents in Kansas. +Having an ID that reflects a trans person’s lived identity is crucial to their safety, privacy, and bodily autonomy. +The research shows that lack of access to an affirming ID harms trans people, making them vulnerable to forced outing and increasing their chances of experiencing discrimination, harassment, and violence. +The ACLU of Kansas is going to keep fighting in Kansas v. Harper as long as necessary. +But we also understand that trans people cannot wait months (or years) for a ruling from the courts affirming their basic constitutional rights. +They must use their IDs in daily life for countless reasons, from picking up mail to purchasing items at the store. +That’s why we began to partner with local LGBTQ advocates to uplift an alternative option for trans Kansans — gender-affirming federal IDs, like passport cards and passport booklets. +Trans people can self-attest their gender when applying for a federal ID, meaning they do not need a state ID that verifies their selected gender. +For trans Kansans, this means they can still obtain a federal ID that reflects the gender they live as. +The ACLU of Kansas and our community partners are thrilled that despite legislative and political attacks on trans Kansans, we are still able to support our community and reduce the harm flowing from anti-trans policies in our state. +The ACLU of Kansas has hosted numerous Know +Your Rights events and Federal ID Clinics to provide resources and reassurance to trans Kansans. +People who come to these events have been relieved and overwhelmed by the community support they experience. +In the face of discriminatory laws trying to erase their existence, trans Kansans are coming together to share information and support each other. +The power of community persists. +In the wake of nationwide anti-trans legislation and rhetoric over the past few years, events where trans Kansans can come together are even more important. +In a rural state like Kansas where people can feel isolated, these events are not only an opportunity for people to access the assistance they need, but they also allow folks to connect and share in their pain and in their joy. +One mother I met at a virtual event was ecstatic to know she could get her child a gender-affirming federal ID before they started college. +She feared that her child would not be able to enroll for college with the correct name and gender marker because of the new anti-trans law. +Despite efforts by anti-trans extremists to try to deny our humanity, to isolate us, trans Kansans are not going anywhere. +Thousands of trans people call Kansas home, and we will remain. +We will continue to define our own lives, support each other, and build power. +These laws may have produced a wide unknown but the power of our community is deeply rooted. +Since 2021, 24 states have banned hormone therapy for transgender youth with gender dysphoria. +Leading medical experts and organizations — such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics — oppose these restrictions, which have already forced thousands of families across the country to travel to maintain access to medical care or watch their child suffer without it. +In July 2023, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected requests from families and medical providers to block laws in Tennessee and Kentucky banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. +At the same time, the Court elected to combine the requests, linking plaintiffs like a Nashville-based couple and their transgender teenage daughter, and a medical provider who supports trans youth with families in Kentucky. +Both states asked the United States Supreme Court to rule on whether these laws are unconstitutional. +What is gender-affirming care? +Your questions, answered. +This year, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, now listed as U.S. v. Skrmetti. +The plaintiffs in the Tennessee case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal, and Akin Gump. +Our legal challenge is limited to the provisions of Tennessee’s ban targeting hormone therapies — such as hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers — and does not implicate surgical care. +To understand what’s at stake, the ACLU breaks down the case and who it impacts. +We also share what we can all do to protect gender-affirming care and support trans rights. +How Could U.S. v. Skrmetti. +Impact Trans Health Care? +The question in this case is whether Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming hormone therapies for transgender minors violates the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. +Tennessee’s ban, like every other passed by politicians in recent years, specifically permits these same hormone medications when they are provided in a way that Tennessee considers “consistent” with a person’s sex designated at birth. +This means, for example, a doctor could prescribe estrogen to a cisgender teenage girl for any clinical diagnosis but could not do the same for a transgender girl diagnosed with gender dysphoria. +The ACLU argues that Tennessee’s ban is a clear example of discrimination on the basis of sex and transgender status making it a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. +We made a similar argument in 2020 when, alongside other legal advocates, we successfully argued in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of LGBTQ clients fired because of their sexual orientation and gender identity, including a transgender woman fired from her job at a Michigan funeral home. +In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of LGBTQ workers and found “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex” and therefore discrimination against LGBTQ workers was impermissible sex discrimination under Title VII, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in employment. +In recent years, district courts unanimously blocked bans in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but the Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals have allowed these bans to take effect. +The Supreme Court must now decide whether states can ban medical treatment for transgender youth with gender dysphoria, but not whether they must. +If the court finds Tennessee’s law constitutional, the immediate impact on access to these treatments will be limited to the two states where the bans are already in effect. +How Does this Case Impact Other Health Care, Like Birth Control? +When arguing against transgender people and their families, states with bans like Tennessee’s have relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s opinion Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to ban abortion. +U.S. v. Skrmetti will be a major test of how far the court is willing to stretch Dobbs to allow states to ban other health care. +The court’s ruling could serve as a stepping stone towards further limiting access to abortion, IVF, and birth control. +How Can We Support Access to Gender-Affirming Care? +Share Your Story: Because most people do not know a transgender person, they also have little experience with our health care and may not understand why it is so important for our lives and our freedom. +If you or a family member is trans, consider sharing your experience with gender-affirming medical care on social media, with elected officials, in op-eds and blog posts, and other public forums. +Consider writing to local reporters and news outlets about the case and the implications it could have for you and your family. +Some questions that help indicate why access to gender-affirming care is important include: Why is access to hormone therapy important for you/your family? +How have you been impacted by bans on this care? +What do you wish more people understood about gender-affirming medical care? +Most transgender people have answers to these questions, and our stories and experiences are of immeasurable value in the fight against these bans. +Before sharing online, make sure you are protecting yourself and your family from harassment. +PEN America’s Online Harassment Field Manual has some steps you can take to minimize your risks of harassment, doxxing, or other efforts to silence your story and voice. +Support Transgender Youth: From school boards to statehouses to Congress, there are countless opportunities to advocate for the rights of transgender people and their families. +Consider contacting your state ACLU affiliate, your local chapter of PFLAG, or other local and state organizations working to support LGBTQ people. +The Campaign for Southern Equality also operates the Trans Youth Emergency Project, a nationwide initiative to help support families with transgender youth fighting to maintain access to the health care they need. +Show Up at the Court: The Supreme Court scheduled oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti for December 4. +Supporters are encouraged to RSVP for a rally outside the Court that morning. +We need a joyful, peaceful, and loud show of support for transgender people and their families. +In the Spring of 1999, young people across the country began to prepare for that singular teenage right of passage: Prom. +For Diamond Stylz, this time included not just finding the right dress and corsage, but fighting for her right to attend prom at all. +School administrators had told the then 17-year-old Stylz just two days before prom that she could not attend the event wearing a dress, despite living as a woman for years. +“At that time,” Stylz reflects, her teachers were “really adamant about teaching me to be a boy” in deference to the cultural sensationalism that trans individuals were somehow wrong. +Stylz knew she wasn’t wrong — the school was. +She made the decision to fight this attempt to discriminate against her right to be who she is. +With the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, Stylz successfully sued her school, arguing that their actions violated her First Amendment rights. +“There was so much empowerment [in the decision to fight back],” Stylz explains. +But also a lot of shame that Stylz says she “didn’t need to own” at just 17. +After working through her shame, and anger, today she’s allowed her experience to inform her work as a trans rights advocate. +Stories like Stylz’ still resonate nearly three decades later because the right for trans individuals to live authentically is still under attack. +Right now, politicians across the country have proposed — and in some states passed — anti-trans laws that attempt to restrict access to gender-affirming care, deny people their right to self expression, bar young people from playing sports and much more. +These powerful politicians use their public platforms to spread anti-trans rhetoric that is discriminatory, often false and, most alarmingly, that endangers trans lives. +As the alleged “war on woke” attempts to manipulate trans rights into flashpoints in the larger political discourse, the truth remains unchanged: Attacks on trans rights is an attack on people — their lives, their rights and their freedom to be. +These partisan attempts to police bodies so they might adhere to one person’s belief system is not just wrong, it's unlawful. +The ACLU and our partners have spent more than 100 years defending our First Amendment right to live authentically and our 14th Amendment right to be free from unconstitutional discrimination. +Our work has not changed despite new attacks based on decade’s old prejudice. +But this fight isn’t won just in the courthouse or Congress, it’s won — and led — by the trans community. +Trans individuals, like Stylz, who risk their health to take a stand for their rights have won freedoms for their community for more than 40 years. +Most notably, Marsha P. Johnson, the Black trans woman and activist who led the Stonewall uprising in New York City in 1969, helped to establish a nationwide movement for trans rights that fought police brutality. +In particular, trans women of color, like Stylz and Johnson, or Imara Jones or Sylvia Riviera, face an outsized risk in their efforts to live authentically, battling both gender and racial discrimination, while fighting for their rights. +In addition to race, age can also exacerbate anti-trans discrimination. +New research from the ACLU has found that trans and nonbinary teens report devastating interruptions in medically-necessary health care when politicians attempt to ban gender-affirming care. +Groups like the Trans Youth Emergency Project, part of the Campaign for Southern Equality, work to help young people access the resources they need to live authentically no matter what laws exist in their state. +For some, this could mean acquiring a chest binder to help heal gender dysphoria. +For others, the Project helps young people living in states that have banned or restricted gender-affirming care to travel to find a provider or healthcare center that can support them. +The Trans Youth Emergency Project is but one way that the trans community has built its own safety net. +While for Lizette and Jose Trujillo, whose son Daniel is trans, building safety within their own home has been vital to Daniel’s ability to thrive. +The family lives in Arizona, which has advanced a series of anti-LGBTQ bills in recent years. +Lizette and Jose believe that parents should have the right to consent to and access medically necessary care for their child, including gender affirming medical care. +Daniel Trujillo (seated center) along with his parents, Lizette (standing, white t-shirt) and Jose (standing, black shirt) and the rest of his family. +“It was my responsibility to do whatever I needed to do to make the world safer for Daniel,” Lizette explains. +“My child should have the right to access medical care that is private, medically necessary, and improves his quality of life without government intervention.” +The Trujillo family joins trans individuals across the country who are fighting for their freedom to be. +The ACLU recently spotlighted their stories as a part of our ongoing efforts to showcase how, since people existed, the right to live authentically has been both vital and vulnerable. +In addition to supporting trans individuals as they tell their stories, this December the ACLU, the ACLU of Tennessee, and our legal partners will argue before the Supreme Court for the right to gender-affirming care for trans minors in Tennessee. +The case, US v. Skrmetti, is the first challenge to a ban on gender-affirming care to reach the Supreme Court. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement “The well-being of countless transgender youth in this and future generations rests on this court adhering to the facts, the Constitution, and its own precedent both recent and long-standing,” explains Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. +Strangio, who is leading the litigation, explains what has been true since Stylz’ First Amendment challenge in 1999 and since the Stonewall uprising in 1969, which is that trans individuals “will not find safety or justice in the courts alone. +Our national culture still encounters trans people as a question to be answered or a problem to be solved.” +The trans experience is not defined solely by the people who seek to erase them, but by the ongoing fight for freedom and moments of true liberation. +Twenty-four years after Stylz fought for the right to wear a dress to prom, Lizette and Jose watched their trans son +Daniel don a suit and bowtie to attend the first trans prom, organized by trans teens for trans teens. +For Daniel and Stylz, and so many trans teens, prom is but one battle in the never ending fight for their rights. +A battle we must all wage. +We must make “this world a safe place for us all and a free place for us all,” Stylz says. +“Pursuing liberty and happiness is at the cornerstone of our Constitution. +If you're not a part of that. +You are part of the problem.” +From a young age, I enjoyed playing around with gender roles, but it wasn’t until later in my adolescence that I started to have more complex thoughts about my gender identity. +What I discovered, both in my childhood and later in my development, was that a lot of trans folks have similarly nonlinear approaches, or nonlinear journeys, to their trans lives. +There were moments I was very attached to my femininity, and moments where I felt more masculine. +Getting to exist on either side of this gender binary – and explore the middle ground between them – was invaluable. +As a trans person and as a physician, I know just how important it is for young people and their families to be able to talk to trusted health care providers about the uncertainties they’re facing or the questions they have. +However, as I was navigating this complex development, I did not have adults in my life to whom I could turn for guidance and support with my gender. +When I was younger, I didn’t have access to the doctors or health care providers who could help me access gender affirming care – or just talk to me about my gender. +That’s why, as a trans person and as a physician, I know just how important it is for young people and their families to be able to talk to trusted health care providers about the uncertainties they’re facing or the questions they have. +In my work, I’ve found that speaking with young people about their gender leads to really fruitful conversations about concerns or curiosities that they may have. +But medical care, and health care more broadly, isn’t just about questions and answers. +It’s about making space for complex conversations that let young people and their families know we can go on this path of self discovery together. +As a physician, I am not looking to “diagnose” a gender, but to support young people, and their families, as they figure out their sense of self. +Adolescence is a time during which many start figuring out who they are, and it’s exciting to see young people question the structures of our society, including the structures of gender. +But too often we underestimate young people’s ability to introspect, and we question them when they tell us who they are. +As a physician, I am not looking to “diagnose” a gender, but to support young people, and their families, as they figure out their sense of self. +No one makes the decision to seek out gender-affirming care on a whim. +To those who consider gender-affirming care a drastic decision, I have seen that it is in fact something that is carefully considered by young people, their families, and their provider. +And that is who should get to make those decisions. +Governments should not be allowed to make decisions about our bodies, and the proliferation of gender-affirming care bans is not only deeply transphobic, but also sets a dangerous precedent. +Right now, this medically-necessary care is being maligned by pseudoscience, fear, and bigotry. +We know these treatments are safe. +We also know that young people can end up changing their minds. +That’s also something that’s safe to do. +We've been offering the same therapies for youth who are not transgender for a long time. +It only seemed to cause a political problem when it started affecting trans folks. +Every single patient that approaches care, both in a gender-affirming context and in all other medical contexts, has a very individual story, has very individual goals, and has a very specific context in which they might be seeking that care. +What I’m really hoping for is a world where trans adolescents have the autonomy and power to make decisions about their bodies without political interference and with the support of family and their health care providers. +For me, that is a world where we really celebrate transness for the beauty that I think it is. +As Pride month comes to a close, the ACLU is shining the spotlight on those who are often at the center of harmful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and discourse: transgender youth. +Unfortunately, trans youth continue to face malicious attacks on their safety and dignity as lawmakers actively seek to invalidate and infringe upon their right to live and express themselves as they choose. +With almost 500 anti-LGBTQ bills circulating across state legislatures nationwide, more than 25 percent of those bills attempt to restrict or ban gender-affirming care for trans kids, and nearly 50 percent prevent trans students from participating in sports or prohibit LGBTQ safe spaces or discussions of any kind in schools. +What trans kids need most as growing kids and adolescents is not more pressure to conform or change themselves, but endless support to continue to grow and thrive as they are. +In a recent episode of ACLU’s At Liberty podcast, we talk to three trans kids — Hobbes, Jayden, and Dylan — about their lives, their experiences, and their perspectives as part of the trans community. +Hobbes, a 16-year-old who’s passionate about advocacy and robotics, recently helped organize a trans prom in front of the U.S. Capitol, and has dreams of building a prosthetic in the next few years. +Jayden, a 15-year-old from Illinois, plans to pursue a computer science degree so she can combine her love for art and technology to share meaningful stories. +And Dylan, a 17-year-old who wants to be an educator, is a plaintiff in our Brandt v. Rutledge case, who fought and won the battle to protect transgender youth and their families’ right to access gender-affirming care in Arkansas. +These kids face challenging circumstances to live as who they truly are, and still, as At Liberty host Kendall Ciesemier puts it, “Trans kids are simply kids. +We should listen to and embrace them as such.” +Here, they share their stories in their own words. +This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. +Credit: Victor Velter / Shutterstock +On finding supportive peers and community Hobbes: “For me, my biggest supporter, my biggest advocate is my father. +He was there for me since day one. +You know, he's constantly educating himself about everything within the transgender community, which I find is very, very admirable. +A lot of people kind of just take whatever they’re given at face value and assume that how it is is fine and they'll just move on with whatever they're given. +But my father will actively search out more information, find out how he can better support not just me, but the community as a whole. +That's kind of why he's such a large advocate. +It inspires me to be like him. +He's one of my role models. +I just really love my dad.” +Jayden: “So typically when I go to school, I have a smaller support group of friends. +They're always there for me. +But when I was younger, like in middle school, around the time when I came out, it was really difficult for me because all the teachers and all the people that I was friends with didn't see me the way that I saw myself. +And it was really difficult for me to try to get, you know, for me to try to get better. +With everybody seeing me as the opposite gender, what I identified as, and I don't think that they were doing it to hurt me. +I think it was just difficult for them +and they didn't understand. +But when I got to high school, I was able to change like high school districts because I moved out of the state I was in at the time. +It was like a fresh start. +It was so much easier for me because I introduced myself the way that I saw myself, and it was way easier. +And the people who I am still friends with today are the ones that sort me out and were just there supporting each other. +“Last year, I think it was me and a bunch of friends. +I had them come over so we could, like, have dinner. +We were going to go to homecoming as a group together. +And so I had them bring all their makeup and we ate food at my house and we got ready. +And I didn't have any at the time because I'm like, I don't know how to use it. +So they let me use their makeup and they made sure that I felt pretty and they made sure that I was confident in the way that I looked because they just cared about me.” +Dylan: “I’d say I was friends with all the guys, you know? +Third or fourth grade, I grew up playing football outside at recess with them, and I was friends with most of those guys up until I came out. +And that was kind of the turning point for them that they didn't think that that was okay. +And so I lost all of them. +“But then I gained so many more people who loved me and supported me unconditionally. +And so I've got my group of friends, my best friend who just graduated has helped me through all these years of high school. +And I am absolutely in awe of her. +She grew up with a very different mindset until she met me and she's become one of my biggest supporters. +And I really look up to her for that because it takes a lot. +You know, growing up in the South and growing up with a mindset where maybe that’s not okay for a lot of people, I’ve just become very close with a small group of people. +But that’s fine with me, and they're all very supportive teachers at my school. +“I have my principal. +I love her with my entire heart. +From the moment that I came to her one day and was like, ‘Hey, this is going on,’ she made it a point to check in with me all the time. +If there was ever a situation that needed to be handled, she handled it right then and there.” +On seeking gender-affirming medical care in the face of legislative bans Dylan: “We have had many conversations within my family about this. +If for some reason I can’t get my hormones here in Arkansas, we would have to leave. +And that is not going to be easy. +My mom owns a small business here in town. +I have a job. +I’m going into my senior year, and my brother is going and starting his sophomore year. +He’s been doing care for the past four years and really enjoys it, is really in love with his team. +We have friends. +Our entire family is in this town. +And my mom is a single parent. +It would be really hard to leave, but we would have to do it because to me, not getting it isn’t an option. +“I don't think that that would end very well. +Just because I know how happy I am now and the thought of having to lose that, I feel it would be way worse than it was when I never started it.” +Jayden: “Hearing about the trans health care ban that passed in Idaho was shocking because I didn't know how a bill like this could come out in the first place.t +It’s blatantly attacking trans people, and I don't get how anybody could see it any other way. +It’s either people refuse to see it for how it is or just don't care. +It was shocking. +The moment that I saw that it was on the table in Idaho, I was really, really hoping that it wouldn’t happen. +But, you know, part of me realized that this is something that we’re going to have to fight hard. +It’s really harmful to think that the people who govern your state don’t have your best interest in mind, that they're out there for everybody else who is in the majority and are willing to attack people in the minority in order to appease those in the majority. +“In the event that, you know, I’m not able to get the medication I need to … I’ve been on estrogen since, like, February I think. +And I’ve talked to my doctor about this. +We’re trying to come up with a plan. +Worst case scenario … I can just go to Oregon to get that. +But that’s still going to be rough. +Because that means a whole, you know, changing of doctors and all those complications or whenever I need those refills, I need to go to Oregon to get them.” +Hobbes: “I’m fully aware of everything that’s happening in the country. +And I feel the main thing, the main emotion I have is somewhat being overwhelmed, of being upset and frustrated because while it’s not happening directly to me, it’s happening to people in my community. +You know, I connect to the both of you in the sense that when I started my hormone therapy, I felt a thousand times better than beforehand, right? +I felt like I was finally able to open the door and start my way. +Progress towards the person that I know I am and form that proper self. +So to imagine, even just fathom the fact that in certain places they’re trying to or are actively barring other people from it and inhibiting your ability to feel yourself. +It’s … it’s sort of malevolent. +It hurts me to even just hear, you know, my heart goes out. +“It does also move me to the advocacy that I’ve been trying to get into. +It moves me to know that when I helped to put on events like the trans prom, I’m not just doing it for the party guests, but I’m doing it for the message and the effect which it spreads, which will in turn help the entire community. +It helps me stay motivated. +It helps remind me exactly what I’m working for.” +On encouraging other trans kids in the community Dylan: “I think that something that I have said since I started advocating, something that I end most interviews or speeches with, is you are not alone. +I feel like people just need to hear that because for a while I thought that I was, until I realized I wasn't. +You are absolutely not alone. +There are so many people willing to fight for you and that are fighting for you. +So don’t for a second think that you’re alone.” +Hobbes: “Yeah. +I have to say, I completely second that notion, and I feel like to add on to that, with all these people who are fighting and all these people who are constantly supporting I hope that one day in the future we will have a society in which saying that you are transgender is no different from saying that you are just a person, right? +That one can identify themselves however they please without anyone casting a second glance.” +Jayden: “And I really hope that for those of you out there that are younger and you find yourself caught in the hurricane, that is the quote unquote “trans debate,” that you can find the eye of that hurricane and just learn to be yourself. +Because, you know, as the recurring theme here, you’re not alone. +And no matter how far you sink, there will always be someone there that is willing to lift you back up.” +You can listen to the full episode here. +Let Trans Kids Speak for Themselves Let Trans Kids Speak for Themselves As legislatures across the country enact anti-LGBTQ bills, one group has taken center stage in our national conversation: trans youth. +Of the 491 anti-LGBTQ bills that we are tracking in this legislative session, 118 are bills seeking to restrict ... +As legislatures across the country enact anti-LGBTQ bills, one group has taken center stage in our national conversation: trans youth. +Of the 491 anti-LGBTQ bills that we are tracking in this legislative session, 118 are bills seeking to restrict ... +Visit this episode +Back in 2021, Mastercard developed a new policy for adult content websites using its credit card or payment options. +The policy imposed requirements such as pre-approval of all content before publication, forbidding certain search terms, and keeping records of age and identity verification for all performers. +These restrictions not only restrict free speech and harm the livelihood of sex workers, but fail to make adult content platforms safer. +Over 16,000 of you joined us in calling for an end to this policy, telling Mastercard about the harm such practices pose for Black, immigrant, and transgender sex workers especially. +Mastercard: +Sex Work is Work. +End Your Unjust Policy. +Mastercard put into effect a new policy that makes it extremely hard for sex workers to earn a living online. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union Now, we’re taking the fight to the next level. +In a complaint filed to the Federal Trade Commission, we led a coalition of organizations and advocates opposing Mastercard’s policy and urging the FTC to open an investigation and put an end to these discriminatory and dangerous practices. +Adult content is constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment. +As our complaint explains, Mastercard’s vague and ambiguous policy requirements, coupled with the dangerous combination of platform over-compliance and inadequate automated tools, has led to the vast censorship of this entirely lawful category of speech. +In addition to the free speech and privacy implications of Mastercard’s adult content policy, we are fighting because of the harm this policy causes to sex workers. +Since its implementation, Mastercard’s payment policy has forced sex workers into arduous — and often impossible — mazes of verification and regulation, requiring multiple levels of identity verification and putting needless bureaucracy in the way of legal conduct and speech. +As a result, sex workers are losing income and stability. +Vanniall, a sex worker in New York City who relies on platforms like OnlyFans and Pornhub, described the new policy as a “whole different ball game.” +If Mastercard’s policy flags her content for noncompliance, it can result in the removal of entire accounts — even from websites whose explicit purpose is to host adult content. +And the impact on her life is catastrophic. +After Vanniall had her OnlyFans account flagged, she says, “I lost all of my rent for that month overnight because of a tagging system that they had just put in place.” +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement In an attempt to comply with the Mastercard policy, adult content websites are putting in place all sorts of burdensome and sometimes impossible barriers. +Many now require adult content producers to verify their identity through biometrics systems, a service that Mastercard now offers and benefits from financially. +And these biometrics services have a long record of racist implications. +“These biometrics have to be taken multiple, multiple times,” said Vanniall. +“I'm talking to multiple dark-skinned people who have had this same problem.” +When sex workers are pushed off of digital platforms, they’re forced into more dangerous and more onerous means of survival. +Since the 2018 passage of SESTA/FOSTA, many sex workers have been pushed offline and into street sex work, where they have to work in isolated areas to avoid arrest and deal with clients without background checks. +While working with our coalition of sex workers and impacted individuals, one thing remained clear: Every one of us is invested in keeping sex workers safe, preventing sex trafficking, and pursuing wrongdoing on the internet. +It is also clear that Mastercard missed the mark when they implemented this policy, and they are actively causing harm to the lives and livelihoods of sex workers. +The Mastercard policy is yet another barrier needlessly put between sex workers, their rights, and their safety. +But we see a future where that can change, and hope to help Mastercard improve their policies for the sex worker community. +“There can be no conversations about us without us,” says Vanniall. +“We have to be in the room … It has to come from a place of love or understanding or something other than straight-up hate.” +Holding up a pink and blue “Trans People Belong” poster, I marched alongside 150 fellow high school students in the heart of Washington D.C. this summer. +Angered by the direct attack on either themselves or their trans siblings, we linked our arms to protest the approximately 500 anti-LGBTQ bills that have been introduced across the nation. +As an intern and a participant in the ACLU National Advocacy Institute (NAI), I had spent the past week learning alongside other young activists about major ACLU issues. +The NAI is an annual program that engages high school students like me in grassroots organizing, professional advocacy, and legal activism. +To prepare for the rally, which took place on July 5, we learned the principles of organizing and about the bills at large. +Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, taught us how they harm or affect young people, whether by not allowing trans kids to use the bathroom and receive gender-affirming care, or by banning drag queens from reading to children in public libraries and schools. +After seven days of learning, I found myself chanting in front of Capitol Hill. +The first rumble of thunder resounded, and a steady drizzle fell upon us. +Despite the weather, the energy remained strong as we waited to hear our speakers. +Chloe McKeown, an intern with the ACLU LGBTQ+ Campaigns team, introduced the speakers who were as young as 17 and as wise as 73. +“If we had more intergenerational events and collaboration it would be phenomenal,” they said, reflecting on the experience. +“All forms of leadership come together that way.” +Some students came to the Institute as experienced advocates for trans rights back at home. +Others knew less. +Despite their previous knowledge, however, all the students listened to the speakers with an open mind — each speech was interrupted by bursts of claps and enthusiastic cheers. +The first speaker, 17-year-old Meeks Annillo from Texas, blew me away. +I had the privilege of speaking to them a week later, when I learned they were initially hesitant to go onstage. +In 2022, Anillo attended the NAI virtually, and heard Amber Hikes, deputy executive director for strategy and culture at the ACLU, speak at a panel. +“I was in tears. +It was the first time that I felt like I had a place in this world,” they said. +When Anillo returned to the NAI in 2023, they were able to meet Hikes in person. +“Talking to Amber is what gave me motivation to speak at the rally,” they added. +Another student speaker, 17-year-old Fynn Remhof from Illinois, came from a town with 3,000 people. +“I wanted to speak because we hear about gender- +affirming care in the big cities, but not a lot in the rural communities,” she said. +Since NAI, she has been working on creating a proposal to introduce a student advocate to serve on the school board in her hometown. +She is hoping that that youth advocate will be an ally for trans kids. +“I just want one gender neutral bathroom,” she said. +The final student speaker, Alia Cusolito, was a 17-year-old from Massachusetts and the co-president of Queer Youth Assemble, a nonprofit led by and for queer youth. +They helped organize marches across the country and spoke at the National March for Queer and Trans Youth Autonomy in the same exact place in March. +Cusolito shared an anecdote during that time. +“We were contacted by a mother in Kansas who had never organized a protest before, but she wanted to,” they shared. +“She had lost her son the year before to suicide. +She told me that she believes that it was because of how afraid he was of the threat of anti-trans violence and legislation. +The work we do every day is a step closer to a world that Kai would have stayed in.” +Annillo and Remhof also shared other people’s stories. +Annillo used their close friend’s experience of transitioning as a testament to the powers of gender-affirming care, saying that this was their source of “trans hope.” +Remhof told the story of her friend, Noah, who attempted to take his life and was institutionalized after, hoping to foster urgency and bring awareness to the fact that it is not an uncommon experience for trans kids, especially those from rural areas. +The older speakers captured me as well. +Rayceen Pendarvis and Diego Sanchez, who are both trailblazers in the queer and trans community, taught me how long the fight has been going on. +“We have to love those who do not understand us,” said Pendarvis. +“I was you, and you will be me,” said Sanchez. +Earlier in the week, the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project Director Ben Wizner and Senior Staff Attorney Emerson Sykes repeatedly told us during their Student Free Speech keynote, “Behind every brief is a story.” +It was the stories of the speakers and their loved ones that touched me the most and helped me understand the magnitude of the issue. +In turn, sharing those stories helped speakers feel seen. +“It was crazy to just be listened to and to be heard,” said Annillo. +Remhof agreed. +“There were people fighting for me [at the rally]. +I was not familiar with that.” +Like many transgender people, the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump was a deeply alarming and concerning turn for me in our country’s politics. +At the time, I was an active-duty air mechanic in my seventh year of service in the United States Air Force. +Unable to organize and protest in the streets — as millions did in the wake of that election and Trump’s disastrous presidency — and following the end of my service, I fought to organize on behalf of the 134,000 transgender veterans like myself with the Transgender American Veterans Association. +For years, transgender veterans have fought for the Department of Veterans Affairs to end its discriminatory restrictions on the forms of gender-affirming care that are provided by VA clinics and covered by VA insurance. +But now, political extremists in Congress threaten to undo that progress and defund health care not only for transgender veterans, but for hundreds of thousands of transgender people who benefit from federally-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid. +Transgender people in states across the country have had their health care threatened and their dignity denied by state-level restrictions targeting Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care, banning it for transgender people under 18, and using the power of the state to persecute providers that support transgender people. +Increasingly, however, these political attacks are going national, led by a bill introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that would bar any federal funds from going to gender-affirming care, censor information about this care from medical schools and research institutions, and make it a felony for any medical provider to support a transgender person under 18. +Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures In the last few years states have advanced a record number of bills that attack LGBTQ rights, especially transgender youth. +The ACLU is tracking... +Source: American Civil Liberties Union These same members of Congress have also latched onto the annual budget process as a new battlefield in this war against transgender people. +Members of the House of Representatives have shoehorned in amendments into the federal budget that would defund insurance coverage for transgender people of any age in programs like Medicaid and Medicare and, in July, the House passed a version of the budget for Veterans Affairs that would deny myself and transgender veterans like me any access to medical care treating gender dysphoria. +The results of these amendments would be emotionally devastating and physically life-threatening. +If cut off from this care, many transgender veterans will be forced to endure the disastrous effects of untreated gender dysphoria, including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation as a result of physical changes and effects we know run counter to our gender identity. +Support for this care spans the entire mainstream of the medical community, and I can personally attest to the importance of this care to my safety, my dignity, and my freedom to thrive in this world. +It is far from a coincidence these restrictions on my health care and bodily autonomy are being proposed right alongside restrictions on abortion access and support for active-duty recruits who need abortion care. +The repeal of Roe v. Wade was the beginning of a slippery slope of human rights violations for transgender people and cisgender people alike. +If we only fight issues in the identity we cling to most, we not only negate those parts of ourselves, but neglect the communities in need around us. +Our government is actively stripping its citizens of our rights and we are getting what we are due. +We are oppressed together; we fight back together. +To help us fight back, I’m urging you to send a message to your member of Congress — regardless of party — to stand up and fight back against these baseless and life-threatening attacks on transgender people’s safety, dignity, and autonomy. +I’m proud to organize with TAVA and am consistently amazed at the strength and tenacity of my fellow transgender veterans. +But none of us are as strong as all of us, and we need your help to defend equality and freedom for all. +The fiscal year 2024 appropriations process has been littered with anti-LGBTQ attacks. +Republican members of the House of Representatives have inserted anti-LGBTQ provisions into all 12 of the must-pass appropriations bills. +These riders include restrictions on gender-affirming care, allowances for discrimination against same-sex couples, prohibitions of drag performances, banning of pride flag displays, and restrictions on diversity and inclusion programs. +These harmful anti-LGBTQ provisions come at a time when legislative attacks against the LGBTQ community are at an all-time high. +As of this month, 506 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year alone. +Bills such as the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would prohibit transgender students from participating in sports teams that align with their gender identity, have been introduced in the House of Representatives at alarming rates. +In fact, the House has already passed other pieces of legislation that are considered to be must-pass bills, such as the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, with provisions that ban gender-affirming care, drag performances, and pride flag displays. +Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures In the last few years states have advanced a record number of bills that attack LGBTQ rights, especially transgender youth. +The ACLU is tracking... +Source: American Civil Liberties Union Out of all the appropriations bills, however, the Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for FY 2024 is arguably the most nefarious and dangerous for the transgender community. +The anti-LGBTQ riders in this bill seek to prohibit funds from being used for implementing anti-discrimination and equity programs, taking discriminatory action against anyone that speaks or acts in accordance with the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, or displaying pride flags. +Section 534 of this bill would also prohibit funds from being used for gender-affirming surgical procedures or hormone therapies. +If passed, this will have extensive, damaging effects. +The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, one of the departments funded by the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill. +CMS provides health coverage through Medicaid to about 84.5 million enrollees as of July 2023, including eligible low-income adults. +Currently, Medicaid is one the largest payers for health care in the United States. +Protect Trans Care Now +As wave after wave of extreme measures to criminalize and strip trans people of rights and safety continue, tell Congress to act. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union As of December 2022, about 276,000 transgender people in the United States are enrolled in Medicaid and about 60 percent of these beneficiaries reside in states or territories where Medicaid programs specifically include coverage for gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy, surgical procedures, and other gender-affirming treatments. +Another 27 percent of transgender Medicaid beneficiaries live in states where laws are silent or unclear on coverage for gender-affirming care. +In 14 states, laws do not include express statutes or policies addressing gender-affirming care under Medicaid. +In four additional states, policies explicitly exclude this care under state Medicaid programs, but actions by state legislatures, officials, and courts have indicated that these states have inconsistently enforced or may not be enforcing these policies. +Unfortunately, about 14 percent of transgender Medicaid beneficiaries reside in states that expressly ban access to gender-affirming care covered by Medicaid. +This 14 percent will grow drastically with the passage of the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill. +Without funding for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Medicaid programs will be unable to cover gender-affirming surgical programs or hormone therapies for thousands of transgender people, many of whom are low-income. +Not only will too many lack the sufficient funds to turn to private medical programs or services, but states are also increasingly introducing and passing restrictions on gender-affirming care across the country. +There are currently 135 state bills targeting health care for transgender people, many of which seek to ban gender-affirming care, establish criminal penalties for providing such care, or block funding to medical centers that offer this life-saving care. +When the lives of transgender people are at risk, what can you do? +You and your elected members of Congress are our last line of defense against this national threat. +All of us, collectively, must work to stop any effort to harm or criminalize our trans friends, families, and communities. +Tell your members of Congress that gender-affirming care is safe, medically necessary, evidence-based, and life-saving. +Tell your members of Congress that every leading medical organization in the country, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, all strongly oppose efforts to criminalize and deny gender-affirming care. +Tell your members of Congress that individual health care decisions should be made between a patient and their doctor —not with fear-mongering politicians who have little to no medical expertise. +Together, we can work to protect trans people and prevent more nefarious attacks on the trans community, and the greater LGBTQ community at large, from coming to fruition. +This year, the ACLU continued our defense against challenges to our civil rights and liberties — but we also enjoyed some heartening victories. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement This advocacy is hard-fought and lasts months, if not years. +But we persist in courts, legislatures, and communities, and this persistence pays off. +Here are a few of the many wins we saw this year during our enduring fight for our rights. +We empowered voters to protect abortion rights at the polls This year’s Election Day saw some critical wins for reproductive freedom, with a majority of individuals in Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania voting to protect abortion rights in their state. +The ACLU and affiliates helped play a key role in these victories by educating voters, equipping them with knowledge about the measures and candidates on their ballots. +We helped to remove children from the country’s largest maximum-security adult prison In 2022, Louisiana’s governor made the abhorrent decision to move children in the juvenile justice system to the former death row of the infamous maximum security prison Angola. +The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit in an attempt to stop the unconstitutional and dangerous transfer, and continued to advocate for the children’s removal. +In September, a judge ruled that the children detained at Angola had been subject to conditions that constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.” +The state moved the children to comply with the court order, but continues to fight for the right to use the prison for children again in the future. +Our work to prevent this from happening and ensure children in state custody receive the support they need is not over. +We defended an Indigenous student’s right to wear tribal regalia at her graduation As part of a continued effort to protect students’ rights to wear tribal regalia, the ACLU, our Mississippi affiliate, and the Native American Rights Fund sent a letter to a school board in Mississippi explaining that state law requires public schools to allow Native American students to wear tribal regalia and objects of cultural significance, such as eagle feathers, at graduation. +The school board reversed course, and the student was able to attend the ceremony with an eagle feather on her graduation cap. +We prevailed in a critical case for transgender youth Following a lengthy trial in 2022, and many more months of advocacy alongside our brave plaintiffs, the ACLU saw a favorable ruling in Brandt v. Rutledge, a case challenging an Arkansas law that would prohibit access to medically necessary health care. +In June, a federal judge overturned the law banning gender-affirming care in the state, saying it violated the rights of transgender youth, as well as their parents and medical providers. +We saw historic legislation protecting the rights of pregnant workers finally go into effect after years of advocacy The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which strengthens pregnant workers’ access to time off or job modifications, was passed by President Biden in 2022 and went into effect this summer. +This followed over a decade of advocacy by the ACLU and our partners, which included representing pregnant workers whose employers refused to accommodate them. +We advocated for tribal sovereignty in a battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court In June, the Supreme Court rejected constitutional challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act in Brackeen v. Haaland. +The federal law helps ensure that Native families stay together by creating a placement preference to promote the stability and security of Native American tribes and families.. +The ACLU filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to protect the act. +We celebrated a groundbreaking win against gendered uniform policies at Alaska Airlines +Following an ACLU complaint filed against the company in 2022 on behalf of a nonbinary flight attendant, Alaska Airlines agreed in May to adopt a gender inclusive uniform policy. +The legal agreement also requires additional training and education for Alaska Airlines’ more than 20,000 employees, setting an important precedent for other employers in the industry. +We challenged maps that weaken Black political power — and won Alongside our partners, we challenged Alabama’s racially discriminatory congressional map, which was redrawn strategically to dilute the voting power of Black communities. +This past June, the Supreme Court ruled in our favor, while also affirming that race can be used in the redistricting process to ensure voters of color are not being silenced. +This is just one example of our ongoing work to ensure that legislatures accurately reflect their constituencies and to obtain fair representation for Black voters. +One year ago, transgender people and our families reacted in horror as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state’s family policing agency, the Texas Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS), to begin investigating parents with transgender teens. +This directive threatened a vulnerable group of young people with being removed from their parent’s custody and put into the state’s overcrowded and deeply problematic foster care system. +The move by Abbott was a stark escalation in the ongoing fight to erase transgender people from public life and prompted outrage from across the state and the country. +District attorneys from across Texas said they would refuse to pursue prosecutions against these families, and educators, health care providers, and child welfare experts roundly condemned the directive. +DFPS, already facing thousands of resignations, saw another exodus of employees after the announcement. +Taking Greg Abbott to Court In the year since, the ACLU, the ACLU of Texas, and Lambda Legal filed two legal challenges against the directive and the investigations. +Those challenges sought to protect Texas families and transgender teens by blocking the state from enforcing the governor’s order against them. +The first, Doe v. Abbott, was filed on behalf of an employee at DFPS, her husband, and their transgender teen, as well as a psychologist who provides mental health services and support to transgender youth. +The state opened an investigation into Jane Doe and her family almost immediately after the governor issued his directive. +Jane was reported and investigated by her own employer and placed on administrative leave as her family feared their child being ripped away from them. +On March 11, 2022, a state court found the governor’s directive held no legal weight and blocked the state from investigating our plaintiffs. +The Texas Supreme Court later affirmed both points while narrowing the relief to the specific parties in the case. +Doe v. Abbott Source: American Civil Liberties Union A second lawsuit was filed in June 2022 on behalf of three additional families with transgender youth and PFLAG National, which provides peer support, education, and advocacy for LGBTQ+ people and their parents, guardians, and allies. +A Texas state court granted relief for all three families targeted by DFPS — and expanded that relief to cover PFLAG’s 17 chapters and 600 members statewide in September 2022. +Court orders blocking investigations into PFLAG members are still in effect while these cases continue on appeal with a trial scheduled for the fall. +Texas' War on Transgender Youth While both cases are ongoing, the state continues to persecute transgender youth and their families under Abbott’s directive. +Transgender students are being pulled from classrooms and interrogated about their health care and other personal information. +Teachers are stalking social media for evidence a student might be trans and turning their families into DFPS. +Many families are even making the difficult and arduous choice to relocate their lives outside of Texas altogether, finding new homes, jobs, and schools for themselves and their loved ones. +All of this comes at a time when Texas lawmakers have introduced a record number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills, with the vast majority targeted at transgender youth. +This targeting of supportive parents of transgender youth by an agency meant to protect children shocked many across the country. +But in truth, agencies like DFPS already threaten Black, immigrant, Indigenous, and low-income families across the country. +As a joint report by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch recently found, conditions of poverty, such as a family’s struggle to pay rent or maintain housing, are often misconstrued by these agencies as neglect and interpreted as evidence of an inability and lack of fitness to parent. +This results in over half of Black families becoming the target of a family policing investigation. +LGBTQ+ youth are already overrepresented in the nation’s foster care system, where they are more likely to experience abuse and be forced through conversion therapy that attempts to “make” them cisgender and heterosexual. +How to Help Abbott’s directive represented the expansion of both a political war on transgender youth and the mandate of a family policing system that already endangers families and youth alike. +The best way to avoid future attempts to weaponize these agencies for explicitly political purposes is to prevent their abuses altogether, including by fighting for fundamental changes to how states approach child welfare. +Our legal advocates will continue our challenge against this directive. +At the same time, we urge lawmakers to take immediate measures to strengthen and support families and communities to prevent child maltreatment without subjecting them to surveillance and regulation. +In Texas, the state legislature has introduced a slate of bills attempting to criminalize essential health care for transgender youth and the families and doctors who support them. +Texas residents can sign up to take action against these proposed bans and many more bills threatening the fundamental rights of transgender Texans. +If you or someone you know needs information and resources for transgender young people in Texas, please visit txtranskids.org to learn more about your rights, how to get legal help, and how to defend yourself against this lawless incursion into your family’s life. +In 2022, Alabama lawmakers passed anti-trans legislation that criminalized gender-affirming care and banned K-12 students from using restrooms consistent with their gender identity. +LGBTQ+ organizers from across the state rallied for many years against these harmful bills and are still fighting to this day. +Throughout this stressful time, national press discussed the tragedy of being trans in Alabama and told us that the future, for most queer folks, would be of suffering and sadness. +We also watched the media interview (mostly) white parents of trans youth, even though we know many Black trans folks are integral to community building in Alabama. +This gap in storytelling brought about Black Trans Futures, an exhibit and storytelling project. +In the wake of hate legislation, the ACLU of Alabama and the Knights & Orchids Society (one of the only Black, trans-led healthcare organizations in the country) came together to highlight the futures being built between Black, trans folks. +Queer youth and their mentors discussed what keeps us safe, who we show up for, and how we make a road to a Black Trans Future. +Here is what they shared: +Ro Ro Robinson Credit: Jose Vazquez “I love my journey. +I’m not a man, I’m a trans man and that holds so much power. +I can still nurse life and nurture life and at the same time, be masculine. +Like, you couldn't mix that together and duplicate that if you tried. +There’s only one Ro and that Ro is special.” +Ro TC TC Caldwell Credit: Jose Vazquez ”[Keeping each other safe] looks like communities showing up in the ways that we should and the ways that we need…from mental health services to fun parties to, simply asking ‘have you eaten today?’ to ‘what can I take off your plate?’” +TC Peyton Peyton Fullilove Credit: Jose Vazquez “I love everything about myself. +I have come to a point in my life where I can just accept myself for who I am, accept all my physical flaws, my emotional flaws, my mental flaws. +But I especially love my hair.” +Peyton Along with this storytelling project, we created the Black Trans Futures Organizing School — a month-long intensive program with Black, queer youth from across Alabama. +These 10 individuals met weekly to develop their practices of protest, resilience, storytelling, and rest. +For the culmination of this project, all the photographs and interviews were transformed into a one-night only art exhibit at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. +This was the first event of its kind at the museum. +Trans youth saw themselves on museum walls and shared excitement about the history they’re currently making and the futures they’re building while revering the elders that made it possible. +So what is a Black Trans Future? +It’s assuring that all needs are met for the community. +It’s helping trans youth step into their power. +It’s a liberated future free of harm, full of love, and forever beautiful. +Over the last few years, states across the country have advanced a record number of bills attacking LGBTQ rights and targeting transgender youth in particular. +In addition to restricting access to gender-affirming care, state lawmakers and school boards nationwide are trying to prevent trans students from participating in school activities like sports, censoring in-school discussions of LGBTQ people and issues, and preventing trans students from having an inclusive and safe learning environment. +Through advocacy, litigation, and lobbying, we’re working alongside our partners to push back against these discriminatory policies and all out attacks on transgender youth. +Here, three advocates discuss their experience working alongside the ACLU and community partners to fight back against a school board policy that discriminates against transgender students in Hanover County, Virginia, and why we must keep showing up to defend trans rights. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity. +Kelly Carter Merrill Activist and mom “My child came out four years ago as transgender. +And Hanover County has not been such a great place to raise a transgender child. +“It doesn’t take much to convince our loving family that loving your kid is the path. +I think what turned on the activist in me is realizing how my son was being treated in school, and it just isn’t okay. +“As soon as the school year started, every school district in Virginia was supposed to adopt model policies that would protect transgender kids at the schools, and Hanover did not. +The school board and their policies provide a real barrier for our child to be included at school. +Our child wasn’t allowed to use the appropriate restroom. +It’s been difficult to get him referred to by the appropriate name. +People often think that the only issue trans kids have in school is restrooms, and that is just the most visible one. +There’s lots of other things to attend to to make a trans kid’s day at school as dignified as possible — names, pronouns, activities, gendered activities, gendered instruction, even dress codes that are gendered. +All of that stuff impacts trans kids. +People often think that the only issue trans kids have in school is restrooms, and that is just the most visible one. +“The school board was explicitly resisting the law that was requiring them to support trans kids. +So we contacted the ACLU of Virginia and told our story. +And we knew we needed to be speaking up and showing up at the school board meetings. +“One of the first school board meetings I went to, I was sitting in the audience and looking around the room and wondering how many of these people are in support of trans kids. +There were about 15 speakers that day. +I was the only person who spoke about our experience of having a trans kid in the school. +“Making our story public to the community has inspired a lot of other community members with similar stories to come forward and do the same thing. +It’s been a domino effect in the community and has exploded into a movement in Hanover of people who are supporting trans kids. +More and more people are showing up to school board meetings and telling their stories, trans students are showing up and telling their stories. +Allies, our kids, best friends, parents are all showing up. +“I would love to see Hanover County and every other school district adopt model policies that are supportive of trans kids. +My son asked ‘Mom, am I really worth this?’ +And I was stunned. +My response was, ‘Of course, you are worth this. +All of the trans kids in Hanover are worth this.’” +Breanna Diaz (she/they) Legislative and policy counsel at the ACLU of Virginia “I came out at 13 years old when I was still living in Dallas, Texas. +At the time, I didn’t have a family or school that really supported who I am and provided me with an environment that had my best interests in mind. +I experienced a lot of harassment, discrimination, and stigma, and so I think that is what spurred my interest in advocacy and led me to the path where I am now in my role at the ACLU. +“In Virginia, we passed a law that requires all 131 public schools to adopt model policies on the treatment of transgender youth. +These model policies help create school environments that are safe, inclusive, and affirming of trans and nonbinary students. +They were crafted by parents, trans youth and students, and other stakeholders. +Unfortunately, Hanover County school board decided not to adopt these comprehensive model policies. +Instead, they chose to adopt a patchwork of policies that, for example, did not allow trans youth to access bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. +“We had five families in Hanover reach out to us and ask us to intervene to fight for their children’s legal rights. +And so the ACLU of Virginia entered into litigation against Hanover County school board representing those five families. +But we knew that litigation wasn’t enough to stem the tide of anti-trans policies, including those coming out of Hanover. +The Commonwealth told school boards to respect trans students. +Yet, some school boards decided meeting their legal and moral obligation to create safe school environments for all, including trans youth, was not a priority. +We knew we needed to organize directly with trans youth, supportive parents, and allies. +We knew we needed to provide training and strategize with community members, professional associations, and LGBTQ+ rights organizations on how best to oppose these horrendous, anti-trans policies. +We knew we needed to organize directly with trans youth, supportive parents, and allies. +“The ACLU of Virginia is working to build communities and pass policies at the school board level that create inclusive and affirming environments where people like me and kids today who are queer and trans don’t have to experience discrimination and harassment. +“The ACLU has a long history of fighting for LGBTQ rights, whether it's marriage equality to schools, to now fights at a school board level. +We have always shown up to fight for our basic rights and dignity.” +Pat Jordan President of the Hanover County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) +“Right now, one of our biggest battles is fighting in Hanover for our transgender students. +Our students spend most of their day in our schools. +It has to be a safe place for them, but right now we do not feel that it is. +“Our kids say, “I am transgender. +I simply want to be treated like anyone else.” +My grandson, Kaiden, has said to me, “Why don't they just leave them alone? +We don't have a problem with transgender kids. +Why do they?” +He’s 15 and has more wisdom than our school board. +“Our transgender kids just want to be accepted for who they are in our schools and they want to be treated equally in our schools like everyone else. +But the school board isn’t making this possible. +The school board says you must use the bathroom of your “birth status,” but the kids want to be able to use a bathroom that identifies with their current gender and with who they are. +Our kids say, “I am transgender. +I simply want to be treated like anyone else.” +“Our fight is to make sure that they have the same rights as anyone else attending school. +We have to attend school board meetings. +We have to pull together marches and protest and letter writing campaigns for our trans kids. +“We are blessed to have many parents who are supportive of their kids. +We have worked with Equality Virginia, the ACLU, and the Jewish Community Federation on this issue because working together is what we find works in Hanover County. +I love the fact that we as a people are coming together, working with an intersectionality of everybody coming together. +One group fighting alone is not the answer because we're all really fighting for the same things — the equity and equality of all people.” +“My mom and I wanted to fight this law not just to protect my health care, but also to ensure that transgender people like me can safely and fully live our truths,” said Dylan Brandt, one of our transgender youth clients in our challenge against Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming health care. +“Transgender kids across the country are having their own futures threatened by laws like this one, and it’s up to all of us to speak out, fight back, and give them hope.” +As we wrap up Pride month, hope is what we at the ACLU have for the fight for trans rights. +While we can be clear about the threats in front of us — from further restrictions on the rights of trans youth to increasing efforts to target the health care of trans adults — a string of early legal victories are highlighting how the ACLU, our nationwide affiliate network, and our allies across the LGBTQ rights movement are not only fighting back, but winning. +After a historic two-week trial in Little Rock last fall, a federal judge last week overturned the nation’s first categorical ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, finding the 2021 Arkansas law violated the rights of transgender youth under the Equal Protection Clause, their parents under the Due Process Clause, and the First Amendment rights of their medical providers. +“The evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that by prohibiting it,” wrote Judge James Moody, “the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing.” +The critical victory comes as judges are unanimously blocking similar bills passed in other states, finding legal challenges against them likely to succeed on the merits. +In challenges brought by the ACLU and our nationwide affiliate network, courts in Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky have blocked bans in those states, finding them openly discriminatory, unconstitutional, and dangerous to the very youth they claim to protect. +Judges in Alabama and Florida have blocked enforcement of bans targeting trans youth there, with the latter declaring “gender identity is real,” and denouncing the state for refusing to listen to parents of trans youth. +In Oklahoma, we’ve secured a binding non-enforcement agreement with the state’s attorney general, preserving the legality of gender-affirming care in the Sooner State until the court can address our motion to bar enforcement of the law prior to trial. +Judges have also turned a harsh eye towards restrictions on drag performances, a new category of anti-LGBTQ bill harkening back to the cross-dressing laws the ACLU defeated decades ago. +In a case brought by the ACLU and the ACLU of Utah, we successfully prevented officials in St. George, Utah from prohibiting drag performances from Southern Utah Drag Stars. +Legislation targeting drag shows in Tennessee and Florida have likewise been blocked in private legal challenges brought by venues threatened by this unconstitutional restriction on their speech. +And we’re far from done. +Well before their bans on gender-affirming care are set to take effect, we’re getting ready for hearings against laws passed this year in Idaho and Montana. +In Texas, we’ll soon be joining a coalition of organizations challenging that state’s ban targeting the health care of tens of thousands of trans youth across the state — the largest population targeted by these laws yet. +Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures The ACLU is tracking attacks on LGBTQ rights and working with our national network of affiliates to support LGBTQ people everywhere. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union Amid an onslaught of legislative attacks targeting their safety, their dignity, and their health care, transgender people are reasonably fearful about the direction of the country’s politics. +While trans people were never collectively doing great — enduring higher rates of poverty, homelessness, violence, and suicide — the concerted effort by extremists across state and federal governments to turn us into political scapegoats has only added to the dehumanization many of us face across our lives. +Last year, we told you that hope was most necessary when it’s the hardest to muster, that the light of your joy burns brightest in the dark. +While we recognize these legal victories are the earliest stages of a years-long effort to protect the rights of transgender people, they offer vital signs of hope for transgender people, our families, and our allies that the just world we all deserve is not only possible — it’s well within our reach. +I started working as a Flight Attendant for Alaska Airlines in July of 2014. +I grew up by the airport in Anchorage, with Alaska Airlines planes constantly flying overhead. +Every summer when visiting family, we flew on Alaska Airlines. +I wanted to work for the airline for as long as I can remember and was ecstatic when I got the position. +I always felt a sense of belonging — being part of a close-knit community with a huge impact on my home state. +For the past eight years, I’ve given a lot to the company. +I participated in many community events and promotional activities and was hired to be a flight attendant instructor. +Throughout this time, I felt a growing unease and discomfort with the company’s uniform policy, which required flight attendants to wear either “male” or “female” uniforms. +After a tough period of self-discovery, I came out as non-binary — to overwhelming support from family, friends, coworkers, and supervisors. +Around the same time, Alaska Airlines began creating a new uniform policy for frontline employees. +This was the perfect time to make much-needed updates, acknowledging the expansive reality of gender identity and gender expression. +Instead, the airline published a policy reaffirming an outdated binary gender by requiring flight attendants to wear a “male” or “female” uniform. +The airline’s binary uniform policy dictated every aspect of our dress and grooming — including whether we could wear neck scarves or ties, or dresses or skirts; whether we could wear facial hair or make-up; and even what color shoes or belts we could wear. +I sent my first email stating the policy was discriminatory to executive management in the fall of 2019, not realizing the three-year battle that was about to take place. +Justin Wetherell The illegal and discriminatory uniform policy maintained by Alaska Airlines forces employees like me to dress and groom in a manner inconsistent with our gender identities and gender expressions. +There is no reason for the airline to continue to enforce this illegal policy — other than to maintain an outdated and discriminatory idea of gender. +An important value at Alaska Airlines is “Do the Right Thing.” +This value is advertised both on aircraft and in corporate facilities with the quote, “The time is always right to do what is right,” by Martin Luther King, Jr. +Unfortunately, in this case, Alaska Airlines clearly will not do the right thing until they are forced to by the state of Washington, or by a lawsuit. +In September of 2022, the Washington State Human Rights Commission validated three years of my own advocacy against Alaska Airline’s policy and found the dress code likely violates state protections against discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression. +I hope the decision by the commission will finally push Alaska Airlines to create a legal, non-discriminatory uniform policy. +I look forward to the day when all employees can show up at work and be valued and accepted for their whole selves. +It is time for executive management at Alaska Airlines to follow the law and stand behind their values. +Yet to this day, Alaska Airlines continues to purposefully misinterpret Washington state law. +The relevant law has been explained to executive management by the ACLU and the state of Washington. +The airline’s discriminatory actions are out of character for an airline claiming both to support the LGBTQ+ community and to foster an inclusive work environment where all employees feel valued and accepted. +While teaching new flight attendants, I am able to dress and groom in a manner befitting my gender identity and expression. +Supervisors, coworkers, and students constantly share their happiness in seeing me show up as my full self. +However, while working as a flight attendant, I am forced into an outdated ideal of masculinity and femininity. +Alaska Airlines wants to portray stereotypical genders to the public, which actively harms employees and creates an exclusionary work environment. +It is time for Alaska Airlines to do the right thing. +Among the many responsibilities that come with raising a child, standing in a federal courtroom and defending your child’s constitutional rights isn’t likely what most parents plan for. +But in a federal courthouse in Little Rock this week, a historic trial against Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care brought four families together to defend the rights and well-being of their transgender adolescent children. +The first in a two-part trial, the week-long hearing in Brandt v. Rutledge focused first on the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming health care: an individualized, evidence-based approach to reducing gender dysphoria that can include counseling, hormone therapy, and, in some more exceptional cases for adolescents, top surgery. +Experts with decades of research and practice told the court about widely accepted treatment protocols that are supported across the medical community — including by endocrinologists, pediatricians, general practitioners, and bioethicists, among others. +Brandt et al v. Rutledge et al Doctors and families of transgender youth are fighting an Arkansas law that would prevent them from getting medically necessary care. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union The court also heard from two providers who’ve worked with transgender youth in Arkansas: +Dr. Michele Hutchison and Dr. Kathleen Stambough, the former and current medical directors of the Gender Spectrum Clinic at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. +In the language of professionals quite used to describing complex medical concepts to children, the doctors explained to the court the careful balance they and families strike when making decisions about a child’s medical needs related to gender dysphoria, weighing carefully the risks and benefits of treatment for each individual child’s current and future well-being. +They also spoke about the impact of the law banning this widely accepted treatment. +Dr. Hutchison — who testified against the bill in the Arkansas General Assembly — noted four of her own patients were hospitalized for suicide attempts shortly after the bill was introduced, and anxiety scores of patients being seen at the clinic climbed from 40 percent to 60 percent in the wake of the bill’s introduction. +Even after the law was blocked by a preliminary injunction, Dr. Stambough explained that the clinic was forced to decline medically-necessary care like puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in anticipation of the law potentially going into effect at some point in the future. +Fundamentally, however, this trial was about the constitutional and civil rights of the parents and transgender youth impacted by Act 626, an Arkansas law banning this evidence-based medicine passed in 2021 and currently blocked by a federal injunction. +Four parents — Donnie Ray Saxton, Aaron Jennen, Amanda Dennis, and Joanna Brandt — took the stand to share their experience of watching their children suffer from dysphoria, come out as transgender, and flourish with the help of medical providers who prescribed treatment the state they are proud to call home now seeks to ban. +Donnie Ray Saxton, who operates a plumbing business while raising his five children, spoke about the confidence his 17-year-old transgender son Parker gained after starting testosterone treatment. +“We're a family, and we're not a family without Parker,” Donnie told the court. +“We'd have to pick up and leave if this took effect. +This is home. +Our small town transitioned with us.” +Asked what would happen if Parker could no longer access this care, Donnie replied tersely, “I'm not going to think about that.” +Aaron Jennen, a government attorney and father of 17-year-old Sabrina, described his transgender daughter as “smart, gifted, beautiful.. +[she] easily has the most envied hair in the courtroom.” +Sabrina, who has struggled with depression, anxiety, and a noted lack of confidence, now proudly shares selfies and “even put her name in the hat to be homecoming queen.” +Denying Sabrina this care is simply not an option, said Aaron. +Through tears, he stared across the courtroom at his daughter sitting in the gallery. +“I promise you,” he said emphatically, “that will not happen.” +Left to right: the Brandt, Jennen, and Saxton families. +Credit: Gillian Brandstetter Amanda Dennis, an advertising technology specialist and mother of 10-year-old Brooke, said her young transgender daughter “was one of the most incredible humans I know.” +While Brooke is too young for any endocrine treatments for her gender dysphoria, she is already wary of the coming effects of puberty; she sees her older brother growing taller and his Adam’s apple becoming more prominent, and is growing more and more anxious, leaving Amanda gravely distressed her daughter may be forced to undergo her endogenous puberty with the potential irreversible changes that come with it. +“I've always promised all of my children that we will care for you,” said Amanda. +“It fills me with so much sorrow that this would happen where I live.” +Joanna Brandt took the stand and spoke of her 17-year-old transgender son Dylan, who began testosterone in 2020. +“His capacity for empathy for others — but more importantly for himself — has been remarkable,” said Joanna. +“Dylan is the most emotionally intelligent person I know. +The kid that Dylan was [before transitioning] would not be in this courtroom today. +It is because of this care he is able to fight for himself.” +And fight he did. +Dylan Brandt took the stand as the lone transgender person to testify in any of the hearings. +Calmly and stoically, he told the court of his experiences with dysphoria, his family’s “right off the bat” acceptance when he came out, and the relief gender-affirming care has brought him. +“The thought of going back is just not an option,” said Dylan. +"We'd probably have to leave the state. +I have a job, my mom has a business. +I still have a year and a half of high school left. +Being pushed out of the place I've lived my entire life is hard.” +The last person called to the stand by the plaintiffs challenging this ban, Dylan was asked by ACLU attorney Chase Strangio how he would sum up the way his treatment made him feel. +Leaning into the mic, he said “hopeful.” +Learn more about the families involved in Brandt v. Rutledge below: This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement +Four families of transgender youth and two doctors have challenged an Arkansas law that would prohibit healthcare professionals from providing or even referring transgender young people for medically-necessary health care. +A trial began last week. +Here, one of our plaintiffs shares how the law would impact her daughter and family. +My husband, Aaron, and I are raising our three daughters in Arkansas. +Our entire family and community are here and we love our home state. +My oldest daughter, Sabrina, is transgender and the medical treatment she has received for her gender dysphoria has changed her life. +At one time, Sabrina shrank from the world. +She was anxious and unsure of herself and struggled with severe dysphoria. +Today, Sabrina is confident and has hopes for her future and a joy that we had not seen in her before she started this care. +We are fighting to ensure the medical treatment that has given her the life she has today. +Sabrina Jennen Credit: Rana Young When Sabrina was younger and before she started receiving medical treatment for her gender dysphoria, she expressed to us, the best she could at the time, that she couldn't see a future for herself and didn't know why. +As parents, we were in agony watching her struggle. +We saw her as a brilliant, gifted mind, with a very gentle soul. +It was heartbreaking that she didn’t see the beautiful person that we saw in her. +After she came out to us and began to receive medical treatment for her gender dysphoria, we began to notice her confidence. +She began to smile again and found joy in shopping and styling outfits for not only herself, but her two sisters. +They love to swap clothes and accessories, which is really fun to watch. +She is also a gifted artist who has created some pretty amazing self-portraits that emphasize her beautiful red curls. +Sabrina, who once was a very shy, reserved, and unhappy person, is now our confident social butterfly who loves a good selfie opportunity. +As a parent, I never imagined I’d have to fight for my daughter to be able to receive medically necessary health care. +I never imagined having to watch my child suffer and then get better only to have lawmakers take away the treatment she needs. +As a parent, I never imagined I’d have to fight for my daughter to be able to receive medically necessary health care. +The state of Arkansas has suggested that people are rushing into this care, but nothing could be further from the truth for us. +My husband and I are very careful and thoughtful people. +We had many long, serious discussions with each other, with Sabrina, and with her medical providers. +We prayed about the decisions we all had to make as a family. +Arkansas is our home. +We have lived here our entire lives, and our parents, siblings, grandparents, church, and entire support system are all here in Arkansas. +We do not want to have to leave our home simply to be able to provide necessary medical care for our daughter. +Sabrina is an amazing, smart, beautiful person and an incredible daughter. +I wish that those politicians who passed this law would take the time to listen to the experiences of trans youth and to get to know people like our daughter. +I can’t imagine anyone who truly got to know and understand how this care has impacted Sabrina could take action that would jeopardize her joy, her smile, and her sense of possibility for her future. +When you talk to transgender people who came of age before the internet, you’ll hear a common refrain: “I thought I was the only one.” +The experience of growing up transgender is most often a very lonely one, every childhood memory and familial relationship shaded by the pain of lacking the vocabulary to even ask for help, much less seek it out. +Transgender people often grow up with the sullen certainty that no one will ever understand us, a sense of social isolation that, combined with widespread poverty, homelessness, and harassment, can often prove deadly. +All of this makes safe places for transgender people to gather among ourselves of utmost importance to our own survival. +Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs where a gunman recently killed five people and injured dozens more, was one of these vital safe-havens. +Survivors of the shooting have described it as a rare gathering place for the queer community of the famously conservative small city, and the lives of those lost reveal the immensity of what was taken from them. +Kelly, Daniel, and transgender people across the country are bridges across this enforced silence, helping one another navigate a world that was never built for us. +Kelly Loving was described by her sister as a very giving person, “always trying to help the next person out … she was just a caring person.” +A friend of Kelly, also a transgender woman, said, “When I first started to transition, I wasn’t confident at all. +She reminded me that you are not doing the wrong thing by being trans, that it was okay to embrace it because you are a beautiful person. +Without her giving me the confidence, I don’t know where I would be today." +Daniel Aston, a 28-year-old transgender man and bartender at Club Q, was similarly described as a keystone of hope for the entire community. +“He had friends that would come by the carload just to come and see him bar tend or just to hang out and support,” said a coworker at the club. +As Daniel wrote on social media before his death, every time “I have even the slightest thought of leaving Club Q, someone comes up and tells me ‘you’re the reason I love this bar.’” +AP Photo/David Zalubowski Daniel and Kelly were far from alone — countless transgender people across the country serve as models of hope, strength, and joy for the people around them. +It’s a particular note of tragedy that this shooting happened in the first minutes of Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual commemoration of transgender people lost to violence — each one of them with the potential to be the kind of pillar for others Daniel and Kelly were. +Across the country, this sense of community and support for transgender people is in peril. +Even when not taking the form of violence or the threat of it, politicians are working overtime to further isolate and alienate transgender people from their communities and their families. +Whether it’s banning books by or about us, censoring teachers and doctors from sharing the truth of who we are, or even threatening parents who support their own transgender youth, the end goal of these restrictions is denying transgender people the words to describe our experience, the means to express it safely, and the community and support we all deserve. +Violence isn’t often described as a form of censorship, but what are LGBTQ people attacked for if not the way we express ourselves? +What is the impact of a shooting at Club Q on transgender people across the country if not instilling a sense of fear in our own ability to live our truth? +Kelly, Daniel, and transgender people across the country are bridges across this enforced silence, helping one another navigate a world that was never built for us. +While nothing can replace that immense loss, one thing we can do in response is help transgender people know none of us are alone and, in truth, we never were. +I have not always understood what it means to be transgender, and I did not always support transgender rights. +But, as I watched my son Parker suffer, I learned more, and I keep trying every day to understand what he goes through. +Seeing firsthand the benefits of gender-affirming healthcare for Parker has opened my eyes to see that this is definitely the right thing. +Show Up for Civil Liberties: Donate Now. +From free speech to reproductive freedom to immigrants' rights, the ACLU has shown up for over 100 years to protect civil liberties and civil rights for all — and we won't stop now. +Donate today to help fund critical litigation, advocacy, and grassroots efforts. +I wish I could say that my little dude has spent his entire life being comfortable in his own skin, but that is just not true for Parker. +Before he started his gender-affirming medical care, Parker was depressed, anxious, and withdrawn. +I worried for his safety. +He wore 5 sports bras to cover his body and couldn’t bear to see himself in the mirror after a shower. +Like all of us, he just wants to look in the mirror and see the person that he is on the inside staring back at him so he can go about his day. +We all want our kids to be happy and live their best, most productive lives, and this ban would really put up a roadblock for that to happen for Parker. +Like all of us, he just wants to look in the mirror and see the person that he is on the inside staring back at him so he can go about his day. +Gender-affirming health care has helped Parker become the happy, healthy, confident guy he is today. +Now he’s funny, outgoing, and always ready to face the day. +He loves being active in choir, with his friends, and volunteering in our community. +His transformation has been amazing to watch. +That’s what is so hard about other people trying to take away the medical care that has enabled him to be his best self. +I am worried all the progress Parker has made could be undone. +This law does not protect kids. +It is not what is best for teens, or for Arkansas. +In our amazing community we are very supported — this is our shelter. +If we are forced to leave our shelter for the unknown in another state, that’s the hardest part of this whole thing. +If we go somewhere else, he will lose the safety and support of the community that we have here. +This is Parker’s home. +Parker should not have to leave his home to get his health care. +Last year was a devastating one for our right and ability to make personal decisions about our own bodies and medical care. +We saw the end of the protections from Roe v. Wade, abortion banned in more than a dozen states, and four states restrict access to gender-affirming care for youth. +This year we’re sure to see more attacks that find even more extreme ways to control our bodies. +And we know that these attacks won’t stop with abortion and gender-affirming care; the same politicians seeking to control the bodies of pregnant people are coming for our right to access birth control, to marry whom we love, and even to vote. +The election in November was a victory for reproductive freedom: +In every state where abortion was on the ballot, voters showed up to send the message that they want legal, accessible abortion in their state. +Voters all over this country clearly believe that politicians shouldn’t be in control of our lives and our bodies — we should. +They also believe that it’s time for our laws and policies to reflect our values. +But anti-abortion politicians across the country haven’t gotten the message. +Politicians are threatening to pass more bans in states that still have abortion access, even if it’s already heavily restricted. +The fight for abortion access and access to gender affirming care are linked by a simple belief — you are the rightful author of your own life story. +In Nebraska, the same lawmaker who sponsored a failed abortion ban last year has announced she will introduce an abortion ban again this session that would push care out of reach at around six weeks of pregnancy, before many even know they’re pregnant. +Politicians in Florida and North Carolina already started to try and pass even more extreme bans in their states this year. +And even in South Carolina, where a ban failed to pass this summer, anti-abortion politicians immediately introduced a full abortion ban at the start of this legislative session. +These politicians don’t seem to care that forcing someone to carry a pregnancy against their will has life-altering consequences, including enduring serious health risks from continued pregnancy and childbirth, making it harder to escape poverty, more difficult to leave an abusive partner, and derailing education, career, and life plans. +The same lawmakers that don’t want people to be able to make decisions about their pregnancies also don’t want transgender people to be able to make decisions about their medical care. +Even before the start of state legislative sessions we’ve seen over 25 pre-filed bills that would strip away young transgender people’s ability to access necessary and life-saving health care, including several that make it a crime for parents or medical professionals to support their children in accessing the care they need. +Being a kid is hard enough. +We don’t need politicians making it even harder for kids who are transgender and singling them out for increased bullying and harassment. +The fight for abortion access and access to gender affirming care are linked by a simple belief — you are the rightful author of your own life story. +Both abortion and gender-affirming care give us the freedom to determine our own paths in life and to defy barriers that oppress and erase women and LGBTQ people. +The politicians who want to strip us of that freedom want to write your story for you, deciding who you are, what you do with your body, and if or when you start a family. +These efforts are designed to target people who are already marginalized in our country, particularly young people, those trying to make ends meet, and people of color. +These questions are deeply personal, and everyone must be able to make their own decisions about their bodies and their lives without government interference. +Here at the ACLU, we will never stop fighting for the freedom of all people to fully control our bodies, lives, and futures. +With teams in all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico, we are mobilizing a whole-of-organization response to these extreme attacks on essential health care in state legislatures across the country. +From working with partners and key legislators to defeat or minimize attacks on our rights to mobilizing supporters in the streets and statehouses, the ACLU is working to ensure that everyone has access to the essential care they need. +And if politicians ignore the clear will of the people, we’ll see them in court. +We won’t rest until that vision is a reality, but we need the full force of our dedicated community to speak out with us: Please sign up today to be part of this crucial work in 2023, and we will send you updates and ways to take action as this year’s legislative sessions continue to unfold. +2023 State Legislative Action Pledge: Sign Up Now Sign up now for updates and action alerts in the fight for trans rights, abortion access, and more during this year’s state legislative sessions. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union Paid for by American Civil Liberties Union, Inc. +Today is the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. +The ACLU represented Aimee Stephens and Don Zarda in their lawsuits, which were joined on appeal with Gerald Bostock’s, and we argued Bostock on their behalf to the nation’s high court. +Stephens, Zarda, and Bostock were each fired from their jobs solely because they were members of the LGBTQ community. +On June 15, 2020, we won: The court held that everyone in every state in the country who works at or applies for a job with an employer that has at least 15 employees is protected under federal law against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. +The LGBTQ community sought this achievement for more than 50 years. +Prior to this monumental win, workers in fewer than half the states had established legal protections against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in employment, and now workers in all 50 states, as well as federal territories, do. +Those who suffer such discrimination now have the right to file a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which will investigate the complaint, seek to resolve it, and either file suit on behalf of the complainant or authorize them to file suit. +Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images +In addition, numerous sexual orientation and gender identity employment discrimination lawsuits that had been dismissed prior to Bostock have since been revived. +Having such a clear and absolute federal ban on employment discrimination against LGBTQ people encourages employers to take steps to prevent such discrimination from occurring in the first place, and to remedy it quickly if it does. +Moreover, the ruling has had far-reaching effects beyond that long-sought breakthrough and its immediate impact on federal employment discrimination law, as evidenced by the more than 250 cases that have cited Bostock in the mere two years since the case was decided. +Numerous courts have since followed the Supreme Court’s compelling reasoning — which did not depend upon the particulars of the federal employment discrimination law — to hold that other federal laws barring sex discrimination in other settings also protect against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. +That’s because the Supreme Court recognized in Bostock that, as a matter of simple logic, “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” +Among the federal decisions that have relied on Bostock’s reasoning was a ruling in the ACLU’s long litigated Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board case. +In the final appeal in that litigation, the federal U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that, after Bostock, there is no question that adverse, unequal treatment of transgender students — including barring them from using restrooms corresponding to their gender identity — discriminates based on sex in violation of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination by federally funded schools. +Similarly, in Doe v. Snyder, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concluded that Bostock’s reasoning requires that the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination by federally funded health care providers be understood to prohibit unequal treatment of transgender patients. +Bostock’s impact also extends to the federal agencies that enforce these laws. +On his first day in office, President Biden issued an executive order directing all federal agencies to recognize that existing federal bans on sex discrimination protect against LGBTQ discrimination as well. +The order was a welcome balm after four years under an administration that did not acknowledge Bostock and would not enforce the legal protections that LGBTQ people enjoy under federal law. +Establishing clear federal protections against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination was a major milestone in the quest for LGBTQ rights. +Court rulings and agency statements concluding that federal prohibitions on discrimination in housing, schools, health care, and other areas also extend to sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination have amplified the impact of that victory several times over. +But Bostock changed more than just how our federal laws are understood. +Courts, administrative agencies that enforce state nondiscrimination laws, and state government officials in 10 states that have express statutory prohibitions on sex discrimination likewise already have recognized that those laws prohibit sexual orientation and/or gender identity discrimination in at least some contexts. +Such state protections often go further than federal laws, prohibiting sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination by businesses serving the general public and by smaller employers than are regulated by federal law. +The result is that, in addition to federal protections, LGBTQ people now have protections under the law of more than 60 percent of the states. +As we experience great threats to civil liberties across our nation and unprecedented legislative assaults on the rights of transgender young people, keeping our triumphs in mind is important to sustain and build resiliency and hope. +Don Zarda passed away before his case reached the Supreme Court, and Aimee Stephens watched the Supreme Court argument but did not live to see the outcome. +Their legacy lives on, however, in the protections that now exist not only in federal employment law, but under numerous other federal and state nondiscrimination laws and rules. +Especially during Pride month, remembering and commemorating the impact of their victory in Bostock makes us very proud, and gives us the strength to keep fighting. +Like 4.5 million other TikTok users, I’ve recently become enamored with Dylan Mulvaney, a spritely Los Angeles-based performer who came out earlier this year as a transgender woman. +In her “Days of Girlhood” video series, Dylan charts her own gender exploration with some typical milestones — getting her nails done, trying new makeup styles — and some less typical ones — talking hair with Jonathan Van Ness, appearing in ads for Kate Spade. +What makes Dylan such a joy to watch, however, is her joy. +With unbridled and endless optimism, she seems to have a permanent smile, an endless wardrobe of pastels, and a sense that anything is possible. +Switching from her videos to the latest headlines about trans rights can feel like switching between alternate universes. +How, after all, can any trans person greet the world with so much energy and aplomb while lawmakers enact increasingly-cruel attacks on trans rights? +From worsening rates of mental health crises among trans youth to violent attacks against trans women of color to the emboldened attitude of anti-trans extremists, Dylan’s bright demeanor can feel impossible for the rest of us to replicate. +Trans joy, in particular, can be revolutionary in and of itself. +But it’s precisely the joy she musters that each of us need to fight back. +There is a stark difference between naive optimism and conscious, purposeful joy. +A blind trust that everything will turn out fine is a deadening stance for any movement to take — particularly the fight for transgender equality, whose gains are recent, shallow, and fragile. +But so, too, does cynicism and pessimism kill motivation to action. +Neither progress nor defeat is inevitable, and buying into either myth can mute the motivation needed to fight for real, lasting change. +Trans joy, in particular, can be revolutionary in and of itself. +Before and after leaving the closet, many trans people are surrounded by alarms about the dangers we may face — some real, some imagined, and some more telling about cisgender people’s anxieties than they are of actual risks we face. +Countless headlines about violence, suicide, and discrimination combine with the false narratives of anti-trans activists to suggest our lives outside the closet will be little more than misery, subjugation, and regret. +Even when grounded in a desire to address the material harms transgender people face, however, these one-sided narratives about the trans experience can end up reinforcing a status quo which is hostile to our existence. +By transgressing or breaking the gendered boxes so much of our society treats as sacrosanct, the misery of trans people can feel like a fable about the ills that befall people who question gender norms and expectations. +This mythology is then weaponized against our progress, suggesting it is too costly, too difficult, or altogether impossible. +But the suffering of transgender people is a policy choice disguised as an inevitability. +This is why our joy — your joy — is so indispensable as a fuel for action. +Particularly when the news of the world only seems to grow dimmer and darker, it’s more critical than ever to prove transgender joy is a reality within our grasp. +To prove that with the right material and social support, our lives can be as fulfilling and meaningful as anyone else’s. +That even when forces larger than us try to break our spirit, we can respond as forcefully and effectively with joy as we can with anger, defiance, and protest. +This is hardly a lesson many transgender people need to learn. +Even amid an unparalleled assault on our rights, the number of trans people comfortable enough to live openly continues to grow. +The future of transgender rights is absolutely uncertain — we must be clear-eyed about the many growing threats we face to our safety, dignity, and liberty. +But within uncertainty is also a chance for hope. +Like Dylan’s vibrant appeal to optimism and celebration, darkness is an opportunity for your own light to shine brighter. +As classroom censorship bills sweep state legislatures, schools are removing books by and about LGBTQ people, BIPOC, and other marginalized groups from curriculums and libraries at an unprecedented rate. +This year, more than 111 bills aiming to limit discussions about race and gender in the classroom have been passed or introduced in state legislatures. +These efforts effectively erase voices, histories and lived experiences from students’ K-12 education. +In honor of Pride month, three LGBTQ rights advocates share how the recent surge of book bans and classroom censorship bills impact their work, and how they affect the students and teachers whose identities are under attack. +Credit: Maddie McGarvey Jared Fox (he/him) Director, Strategic Projects at Cleveland School District in Ohio and Founder at Iris Solutions Books are incredibly powerful, and the fact that people are trying to ban them just speaks to that. +Through books, we can see ourselves and the world around us — as Rudine Sims Bishop mentions, as a mirror, a window, or a sliding glass door allowing us to step into a different world. +As an English teacher, I tried to find books for the classroom that reflected the lived experiences of my students, whether they’re queer or not. +I want them to see that they matter, not just in my eyes but in the words on the page. +There’s something meaningful about seeing your experience published and bound in a spine. +There’s a fear that reading books with LGBTQ characters will make students gay. +But I grew up reading about straight characters, with heterosexual parents, and somehow I ended up gay in this world. +So if reading books is supposed to determine your sexual orientation, that woefully failed in my case. +Reading books with LGBTQ characters is important for everybody. +Students are going to be better off in the world because of it. +Books can expose readers to identities beyond the scope of people they know in their immediate lives — queer people with disabilities, queer people who are immigrants, queer people who wear a hijab — thereby building empathy and understanding of experiences different from their own. +When queer students are denied access to these stories, they lose a piece of their humanity. +For queer students, it validates their existence. +When a community says a book is being banned from the library because of its LGBTQ themes, it’s telling students “there’s something wrong with you, there’s something that needs to be legislated or challenged, there’s something about you that is up for debate, that shouldn’t even be in a book.” +It tells LGBTQ students they don’t even deserve to be on the shelf — literally and metaphorically. +That can be very harmful to students' self-esteem and the way they see themselves in the world. +When queer students are denied access to these stories, they lose a piece of their humanity. +It’s also important to note that many of the books that are banned are also by authors of color, which shows our desire as a society to silence the voices of people of color. +It’s yet another example of white supremacy at work. +We cannot separate the work of LGBTQ equality from the work of anti-racism because the struggles are so closely intertwined. +When we are working towards a better future for LGBTQ folks, we’re working towards a better future for people of color, too. +And I think that's important. +Credit: Maddie McGarvey Credit: Hannah Yoon Tiffany Wright (she/her) Graduate Program Coordinator, Leadership for Teaching and Learning & Interim Chair of the Department of Educational Foundations at Millersville University in Pennsylvania As a mother to a seventh-grader and a member of university faculty, I’ve seen firsthand how classroom censorship affects students and educators alike, particularly those who are LGBTQ. +Teachers are worried they could lose their jobs if they teach books about race and gender, which shortcuts their efficacy as educators as well as their sense of personal well-being. +And I can’t imagine it’s easy for young people to witness their own identity and existence being erased from school curricula. +Representation is so, so important. +I know what it’s like to grow up unable to see yourself reflected in books or other parts of society and culture. +During my childhood in the 1980s, I never saw a book reflecting experiences and identities like my own. +It wasn’t until college that I found LGBTQ voices in literature — and even then, I had to seek it out. +I think I would have had a very different experience growing up if I had been exposed to LGBTQ voices earlier in my education. +For example, maybe I wouldn’t have had to go through adolescence twice — before and after coming out. +I’ve seen firsthand how classroom censorship affects students and educators alike, particularly those who are LGBTQ. +Exposure to diverse perspectives sets students up for success as future leaders in the world. +It shows them how to treat and interact with people whose experiences are different from their own. +It’s especially important at the elementary age. +Kids should be able to read books that portray LGBTQ people and families as part of the fabric of our communities, not marginalized or erased. +Today, I’m amazed at how well LGBTQ kids are learning to navigate the world at such an early age — far younger than I was when I finally started figuring it out. +I have a 14-year-old nephew who recently transitioned, and another child in the family came out as non-binary at age 12. +Increasing representation of diverse voices in our books and classrooms helps build students’ confidence as they discover who they are. +As educators and students confront a continuing spate of classroom and library censorship efforts, it’s important to remain open and be kind to one another — even as parents keep showing up at school board meetings to yell about books. +Instead of attacking others and pointing fingers, we should approach this issue from the base assumption that everybody wants the best for their kids. +We must come together and try to find a middle ground that doesn’t shortchange a student’s education or harm LGBTQ students and educators. +Credit: Hannah Yoon Credit: Will Martinez Ricardo Martinez (he/him) Chief Executive Officer, Equality Texas +The reason that I do the work that I do is because of what I learned in school. +I grew up in New York and I was fortunate enough to have a program in junior high school called Council for Unity. +It was a group of civically engaged young people learning about racism, conflict resolution, how to be vulnerable and share their life experience with their peers. +We had a school field trip to the GMHC, an organization that taught me about the work of ACT UP — an activist group that was started in the 1980s to address the AIDS crisis. +And I just fell in love with the idea that someone could use their individual power to change society. +It was a profound realization for me — a moment of light that inspired me to continue a career in advocacy and volunteer work helping the LGBTQ community. +That’s what led me to Equality Texas. +It’s not surprising that the majority of the books lawmakers are trying to ban and remove from libraries are books that center the voices of LGBTQ people or Black and Brown people. +Over the course of the 2021 legislative year, we had the most anti-LGBTQ pieces of legislation filed in Texas in the history of the United States. +Although only one of those bills passed, the harmful narratives and manufactured moral panics that came with them are living on in school board meetings, where LGBTQ students are seeing their very humanity up for debate by those who are charged with their safety and education and in schools where books and symbols of support are being removed from classrooms — creating hostile school climates for young people. +As a direct result, we started getting calls from all over Texas about escalating bullying, increased harassment and violence, and even the removal of safe space stickers and flags or posters. +Since January 1, 2021, the Trevor Project has received close to 25,000 calls, texts or emails from young Texans in crisis. +Credit: Will Martinez Over the course of the 2021 legislative year, we had the most anti-LGBTQ pieces of legislation filed in Texas in the history of the United States. +It’s not surprising that the majority of the books lawmakers are trying to ban and remove from libraries are books that center the voices of LGBTQ people or Black and Brown people. +I remember what it’s like to not see people like you in your textbooks, and to see homophobia from teachers, administrators, and peers. +It added to a sense of fear about coming out, even though I already knew who I was by junior high. +Going to the library was a joyous experience because I could find those stories I didn’t always have access to in the classroom — stories of LGBTQ people, of first or second generation immigrants like myself and my family. +Seeing positive representations of people who looked like me thriving and creating families let me know that there was hope. +Inclusivity in the classroom is good for all students. +It allows students to put themselves in the shoes of somebody with a different experience, fostering empathy and compassion. +It gives LGBTQ students a sense of power and worthiness. +Most importantly, it tells them that their stories matter. +Read more about students and teachers fighting classroom censorship. +School is For Learning — Including Learning About Race and Gender | News & Commentary A student and two teachers in Oklahoma share how a new censorship bill has curtailed important discussions about race and gender in the classroom. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union +In 2018, Congress passed a law that aimed to address sex trafficking on online platforms. +That’s a laudable goal, but the way Congress went about it has led to dangerous and disproportionate online censorship — particularly of the communities the law was trying to protect. +The law, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act/Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (FOSTA), hasn’t meaningfully addressed sex trafficking. +Instead, it has chilled speech, shut down online spaces, and made sex work more dangerous. +Now, courts are poised to interpret it in a way that could make these harms even worse — by imposing liability on online platforms that don’t even know their services are being used for sex trafficking. +Along with the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), we recently filed three friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of ourselves, CDT, and a number of LGBTQ+, sex worker, and startup advocacy organizations arguing that courts should not interpret the law in this way, because doing so would incentivize online intermediaries to censor more online speech — especially materials about sex, youth health, LGBTQ+ identity, and other important concerns. +A study of FOSTA's effects on sex workers showed that it increased economic instability for about 72% of the study’s participants and nearly 34% reported an increase of violence from clients. +The criminal provisions of FOSTA have already chilled online speech. +Those provisions created a carve-out to platform immunity under Section 230 for certain crimes related to sex trafficking. +Just as the ACLU warned it would, that carve-out has caused online platforms to remove information that sex workers rely on to keep safe, and to shut down conversations about sex education and sex work, particularly by and for LGBTQ+ people. +Instagram, for example, has deleted accounts that post about sex; meanwhile, some niche, free, and queer websites have shut down entirely. +Online intermediaries have largely shut down “bad johns” lists compiled by sex workers to identify abusive clients, and many affordable ways to advertise sex work. +This has pushed people in the sex trades, who work in legal, semi-legal, and criminalized industries, off of online platforms and into dangerous and potentially life-threatening scenarios. +Some sex workers have had to return to outdoor work or to in-person client-seeking in bars and clubs, where screening is more rushed than it is online, and where workers are more vulnerable to violence, police harassment, and HIV. +In one study of FOSTA’s effects on sex workers, researchers found that the law had increased economic instability for roughly 72 percent of the study’s participants, and nearly 34 percent reported an increase of violence from clients. +Against this backdrop of harm, FOSTA has not led to more prosecutions of sex trafficking. +Despite the expanded definition of sex crimes under FOSTA, a June 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office showed that federal prosecutors had not used the additional criminal penalties established by FOSTA. +At that time — more than three years after the passage of the law — the DOJ had prosecuted only one case using FOSTA. +Indeed, it appears FOSTA made it more difficult to gather evidence and prosecute those who use platforms for sex trafficking purposes, in part because platforms relocated overseas. +Now, courts may be poised to impose liability on online platforms that don’t even know their services are being used for sex trafficking. +As if FOSTA hasn’t already caused enough harm, courts are now poised to make things worse by interpreting the law in a way that would open platforms like Twitter, Omegle, craigslist, and Reddit to liability for sex trafficking activities that occur on their services, even if the platforms have no actual knowledge of such activities. +If the courts decide that platforms can face liability merely because they “should have known” that sex trafficking was occurring on their websites, many online platforms will inevitably respond by policing their users and taking an even more aggressive approach to content moderation. +In particular, they will likely remove and censor more lawful content related to sex and sexual health, including by using blunt automated tools that tend to perpetuate real-world biases and are unable to understand context. +Imposing liability without actual knowledge would not only exacerbate real-world harms, but it would also raise serious First Amendment questions. +As the Supreme Court recognized more than 60 years ago, when considering whether to impose liability on booksellers for the contents of the books they sell without requiring some level of knowledge, distributors “will tend to restrict the books +[they] sell +[] to those [they have] inspected,” and, as a result, “the contents of bookshops and periodical stands . . +. +might be depleted.” +Because online intermediaries — from Google to Twitter to WhatsApp to Amazon Web Services, and other providers who will be governed by the outcome of this case — facilitate the publication and spread of billions of pieces of content every day, this concern is even more serious when it comes to online speech. +We urge the courts to avoid imposing liability on platforms when they do not actually know that particular crimes are occurring on their websites. +Doing so will help ensure that all people, especially the LGBTQ+ community, sex workers, and sex health educators, can freely and safely express themselves online. +Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a shameful ruling that decimated access to abortion. +Adding insult to injury, this unprecedented assault on our fundamental rights and bodily autonomy took place during Pride month. +Abortion access should concern everyone, and this ruling directly impacts everyone who can become pregnant. +That’s why so many LGBTQ+ people are deeply invested in the fight for abortion access. +Who gets abortions? +There is, of course, the obvious answer: women. +Cisgender women have abortions more than any other group of people. +There is plenty of data to back this up. +Abortion among women who can become pregnant is extremely common and nearly one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime. +The vast majority of data available about abortions and abortion access surveys women. +That data tells us that the average person who gets an abortion is a woman of color who is already a mother and who lives at or below the federal poverty level. +The more expansive and more accurate answer is anyone who can become pregnant needs to be able to get an abortion if they need or want one, including many cisgender women, some non-binary people, some intersex people, some Two Spirit people, and some trans men. +Yes, people other than women need access to abortion care. +As a bisexual transgender non-binary person, I can become pregnant. +I am not a woman — and yet, I could need access to abortion care. +I also know that I never want to be pregnant. +For me, access to abortion would be a matter of lifesaving health care. +When trans people articulate the need for access to abortion services, or that we have accessed abortion care in the past, these experiences are often dismissed by those who want to deny that more people than just cisgender women need abortion. +But we’re here, we’ve been here, and we’re not going anywhere. +The fight for abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights go hand in hand because they are both ultimately about protecting our bodily autonomy. +But they’re also intertwined because lesbians, bisexuals, trans people, queer people and yes, some trans gay men, can experience pregnancy and deserve control over if, when, and how we become pregnant, and whether or not we stay pregnant. +AC Facci/ACLU +Yes, men and other people who can’t become pregnant can, and should, care about abortion access. +When conversations about abortion reduce it to a “women’s issue” or an issue only for people who can carry pregnancies, we exclude a wide swath of people. +There is a tendency to exclude men, without an acknowledgment that some trans men can become pregnant and despite the fact that cisgender men are not the only people who can’t become pregnant. +Trans women, cisgender women who struggle with infertilty, some intersex people, some trans men, some non-binary people, and some Two Spirit people all cannot become pregnant. +Protest signs and messages often use the framing of “no uterus, no opinion,” ignoring that there are many cisgender women who have and have not carried pregnancies who have had hysterectomies and no longer have a uterus. +Hysterectomies are, in fact, the second most common surgery for cisgender women. +Centering who gets to have opinions about abortion around whether or not people are currently able to become pregnant excludes people from our understanding of abortion rights, rather than expanding it. +Restrictions on trans rights and abortion rights come from the same playbook. +In the same breath, we must acknowledge that the systems and structures involved in banning abortion are focused on restricting the rights of women and the rights of trans people. +Over 300 anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed in state legislatures just in 2022, and over 20 new anti-trans bills have become law over the past three years. +In the same period of time, 541 of restrictions aimed at pushing abortion out of reach have been proposed and 38 have become law. +Nearly all of these bills politicize our bodily autonomy and access to essential, life-saving health care. +Trans affirming health care and abortion are both already hugely expensive medical procedures, often not covered by health insurance. +Both are often prohibited from being covered by insurance under state laws. +For trans people, laws in some states prohibit access to gender affirming care, particularly for youth, or worse, criminalize parents who allow their children to access this care. +For people who need abortion care, there are legal restrictions that prohibit insurance coverage, enforce long waiting periods for time-sensitive care, and other medically unnecessary barriers. +Any way you slice it, diving into the politics of both abortion access and trans rights requries people who may need an abortion and trans people to be ready to debate why we need access safe, common medical procedures that will save our lives. +It is, quite frankly, exhausting to repeatedly ask for acknowledgment of a shared experience, especially one that can be so medically life-altering. +Our bodies are our own. +Our health care choices are ours to make. +And abortion and gender-affirming care are our right. +The Respect for Marriage Act received bipartisan support in Congress and signals how far public conversations around marriage equality have evolved in recent years. +Here’s why that’s a big deal but why — contrary to much of the reporting on it — the measure is actually fairly limited. +Why did the House of Representatives first pass the Respect for Marriage Act? +The push behind the Respect for Marriage Act was Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court’s Mississippi abortion decision in which it overturned Roe v. Wade. +Justice Thomas urged the court to overturn its rulings establishing a fundamental constitutional right to use contraception, the right of same-sex couples to marry, and a right to form intimate sexual relationships with other consenting adults. +With the right to marry potentially at risk, our friends in Congress wanted to do something. +The law garnered the most support ever for a pro-LGBTQ bill in Congress. +The bill passed the House in July with a large, bipartisan vote of 267-157, making it the most pro-LGBTQ vote in Congressional history. +Forty-seven House Republicans voted yes, even in this supremely partisan and bitterly divided Congress, where conservatives are vigorously pushing anti-LGBTQ measures and rhetoric. +In contrast, the Equality Act, the LGBTQ movement���s highest priority bill in Congress, which would expressly add LGBTQ people to the Civil Rights Act, passed the House a year ago with a vote of just 224-206, with only three Republicans voting in support. +The much larger bipartisan support for the Respect for Marriage Act is a hopeful sign of potential progress to come. +While the bill and bipartisan vote are important, the bill is quite limited. +Here’s why: The Respect for Marriage Act repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which in turn did two things: DOMA barred the federal government from respecting the marriages of same-sex couples who were married under state law, excluding them from federal recognition in over 1,000 contexts, from Social Security survivor benefits to the ability to sponsor a spouse for citizenship to equitable tax treatment. +It also said that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution doesn’t require states to respect the marriages of same-sex couples performed by other states. +The Supreme Court struck down the federal recognition portion of DOMA in the 2013 United States v. Windsor decision. +After Dobbs, people fear that Windsor could be overturned, so the Respect for Marriage Act fully repeals the federal respect portion of DOMA and replaces it with a requirement of respect by the federal government. +It also repeals the Full Faith and Credit portion of DOMA, replacing it with a statement that Full Faith and Credit requires inter-state recognition. +Those would both be significant advances that would backstop the Supreme Court’s ruling in Windsor and the inter-state recognition portion of its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges should they be overturned. +The Respect for Marriage Act would not require any state to allow same-sex couples to marry. +If the Supreme Court overturns Obergefell v. Hodges, which established that the fundamental right to marry covers same-sex couples, the Respect for Marriage Act would not stop any state from once again refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. +The federal government would still be required to respect same-sex couples’ already-existing marriages, as would other states in many circumstances. +But a state that wanted to get out of the business of issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples would not violate the Respect for Marriage Act. +The second reason that the landmark vote on the Respect for Marriage Act is limited in effect is that it’s not clear that the bill will actually make it out of the Senate given the 60-vote requirement. +That would require 10 Republican senators to join all 50 Democratic senators in agreeing to let the bill get to a vote, and then a majority of senators to vote yes. +Despite the significant bipartisan support in the House, progress like that in the Senate is still a very steep hill to climb. +The Respect for Marriage Act is important, but Congress and the President need to do much more. +Despite the bill's passage, the LGBTQ community remains under intense attack in the states. +A record number of anti-trans and anti-LGBQ bills were introduced and passed in state legislatures over the past two years. +These measures bar trans and non-binary people from access to health care, from updating their identity documents, and from full participation in daily life. +They seek to erase trans people from society and to ban schools from talking about the mere existence of LGBTQ people. +Our freedom to marry indeed needs protection from Congress. +But we also need to fight against these broader attacks on the LGBTQ community, especially trans and non-binary people. +Passing the Equality Act would be a good start. +Congress needs to fight as though trans lives depend on its actions, because they do. +On Friday, August 5, the Florida Board of Medicine ignored the warnings of medical experts and parents with transgender children and voted to adopt a “standard of care” that opposes gender-affirming care for trans youth — a move that would put the licenses of medical professionals at risk for providing life-saving care. +This vote does not immediately impose restrictions on gender-affirming care, but does begin a regulatory process to do just that. +This is the latest in a coordinated attack on the health care needs of transgender youth and adolescents. +Below you'll find an explanation of what is happening in Florida, what may happen next, and steps Florida residents can take to protect trans kids, their families, and their medical providers. +What did the Florida State Board of Medicine vote to do? +The Florida state Board of Medicine (BOM) is responsible for setting standards of care for all medical providers in Florida, and for enforcing their compliance with licensing and disciplinary review. +Changing the standards of care requires (at a minimum) a formal rulemaking process under the Florida Administrative Procedure Act. +On Friday, August 5, the board officially began the formal rulemaking process, which lasts up to 180 days and usually requires at least 90 days to complete, to consider proposed regulations that would restrict medically-necessary care for transgender youth. +The proposed changes to state standards of care would do two things: Threaten medical providers with penalties or fines if they provide gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 18 as treatment for gender dysphoria. +Impose waiting periods on adults seeking gender-affirming care and require adults to sign an informed consent form that includes disinformation about the risks of gender-affirming care. +What is gender-affirming care? +According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Gender-affirming care is a supportive form of health care. +It consists of an array of services that may include medical, surgical, mental health, and non-medical services for transgender and nonbinary people. +For transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, early gender-affirming care is crucial to overall health and well-being as it allows the child or adolescent to focus on social transitions and can increase their confidence while navigating the health care system.” +Gender-affirming care is a very individualized form of health care, and will look different for each person depending on their age, gender, and other physical and mental health needs. +For prepubescent transgender youth, this care typically involves a “social transition” (changing clothes, hair, name, etc.) and never involves surgery or other irreversible medical treatments. +During or after puberty, many transgender youth may receive reversible puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, or other medical interventions as overseen and prescribed by medical professionals. +Some older transgender adolescents can and do access surgical care on a case-by-case basis as recommended by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health. +Gender-affirming care is widely recognized as the only evidence-based approach to addressing the health care needs of transgender youth, including severe mental health risks. +For more: Health and Human Services: Gender-affirming Care and Young People The Endocrine Society: Transgender and Gender Diverse Adolescents American Academy of Pediatrics: Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Youth & Adolescents +The medical community has already been very critical of Florida’s ongoing effort to ban gender-affirming care. +In June, the Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees Florida’s Medicaid program, published a report claiming the national standards of care for gender dysphoria are at odds with nationally accepted standards for Medicaid coverage. +Medical and legal experts quickly condemned the proposed regulations as “thoroughly flawed and lacking scientific weight.” +In April, the Florida Department of Health (DOH) issued a memo recommending against gender-affirming care for children and adolescents. +Researchers cited in the memo by the surgeon general in an attempt to justify these restrictions accused him of misrepresenting their work, and denounced the proposed restrictions. +Three hundred Floridian health care providers who work with transgender youth then published an open letter in the Tampa Bay Times, condemning the proposed regulations. +The guidance from the governor and surgeon general, the experts wrote, “misrepresents the weight of the evidence, does not allow for personalized patient and family-centered care, and would, if followed, lead to higher rates of youth depression and suicidality.” +Similar bans signed into law in Arkansas and Alabama are both blocked by federal courts. +What happens next? +The Florida State Board of Medicine vote was triggered by a “petition to initiate rulemaking” submitted to the board by the DOH at the behest of Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who heads the DOH. +The move came at the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appoints the BOM’s members and has long pushed a broader extremist and anti-trans political agenda. +Now that the board has initiated rulemaking, they will work internally to draft a proposed regulation, submit it for formal review, comments, and public hearing, and eventually publish a final rule. +Once they publish their proposed regulation, they must accept public comments for 21 days, then hold a public hearing. +After the hearing, they must wait at least 14 days to publish the final version of the regulation. +Once the final regulation is published, it goes into effect 20 days later. +If the board does in fact make a final regulation to ban gender-affirming care for minors (or something even more expansive), it would likely go into effect in October or November of 2022. +What impact would this regulation have on providers of gender-affirming care in Florida? +If a final regulation is adopted and goes into effect (and is not enjoined by a court), that would mean any providers who continue to provide this care to minors would be subject to professional discipline by the BOM. +Disciplinary proceedings can be initiated by public complaint and by the surgeon general’s staff directly. +That discipline could lead to suspensions or revocations of medical licenses. +Most likely, that would mean all providers would voluntarily stop providing such care, health care insurance plans would proactively stop covering it, and malpractice insurers would impose higher premiums or drop coverage for gender-affirming providers even if they don’t treat minors or the population covered by the ban. +What can I do to stop it and ensure Floridians have access to gender-affirming care? +Once the BOM publishes its proposed rule to change the standard of care to ban gender-affirming care for minors, the board will be required to accept written comments from the public for 21 days starting on the day the proposed rule is published in the Florida Administrative Register. +When the 21 days have concluded, a public hearing will be held by the board. +Comments submitted by the public by email or written letter will be included in the official record of the BOM proceedings. +Members of the public can also attend the public hearing, although the number of individuals who can speak at the public hearing can be limited and will be controlled by the BOM. +During a public hearing in July 2022 concerning the Medicaid rule changes, the Agency for Health Care Administration filled their speaker slots predominately with speakers who were hostile to gender-affirming care. +If the BOM takes the same approach, it may be difficult or futile to attempt to make public comments at the hearing. +One of the most important things you can do is register to vote before the October 11 registration deadline and help elect lawmakers who will work to protect the rights of transgender youth, their families, and their health care providers. +In addition to engaging in the rulemaking process, you can make a difference by getting to know your neighbors and being a part of your local community. +Gender-affirming care is not well understood by the public, and hostile groups spread disinformation to scare and misinform people about gender-affirming care and the transgender community. +Being visible and participating in the local community may help the public recognize that gender-affirming care is not a danger to society and should be allowed like other medical care. +“Turn to the states.” +That has been the battle cry among many who seek to preserve the right to abortion since the Supreme Court’s shameful decision overturning Roe v. Wade. +In the immediate aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ACLU, with our affiliates and allies (especially Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights) won preliminary victories under state constitutions allowing abortion services to continue or resume, at least temporarily, in Kentucky and Utah, and are litigating similar claims in a number of state courts including Georgia, Florida, and Ohio. +At the ACLU, we have long been litigating for civil liberties and civil rights in state courts — on abortion and so much else. +In “Our New Federalism,” an ACLU report released today, we review a wide range of state constitutional victories over the past several years, a testament to our commitment to using state courts to protect and expand civil rights and civil liberties. +Our New Federalism As the federal judiciary has become increasingly hostile to rights protections, the ACLU has turned to state courts to advance civil liberties. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union State courts hold promise in the face of a hostile federal judiciary for three reasons. +First, although state constitutions cannot be less protective than the federal Constitution, state courts can interpret their own constitutions and laws to be more protective. +Second, state supreme courts have the final say on state law, so a civil rights victory under state law generally cannot be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. +And third, because so much of the day-to-day regulation of our lives is carried out by the states, the lion’s share of civil rights and civil liberties issues arise in the context of state enforcement; and that means state constitutional limitations apply as well as federal ones. +Roughly 90 percent of all criminal laws are state-based, for example, rather than federal. +In 2022 alone, the ACLU has won several important state court civil rights victories. +The ACLU and its Ohio affiliate won state supreme court rulings that Ohio’s redistricting maps violate a state constitution provision that bans partisan gerrymandering. +The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the reach of the federal courts, so this result would not have been possible under federal law. +In January, the New Jersey Supreme Court limited lengthy prison sentences for juvenile offenders in State v. Comer, an ACLU of New Jersey case. +This ruling likewised relied on a provision in the New Jersey Constitution that does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. +February, the ACLU of Montana, together with the Center for Reproductive Rights, blocked a state law that prevented qualified clinicians, including nurse practitioners and nurse midwives, from providing early abortion services. +In anticipation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs, we went to state court in Michigan, and together with Planned Parenthood, won a preliminary injunction in May barring the enforcement of Michigan’s 1931 felony abortion law under the Michigan Constitution. +Because both of these rulings rest on state law grounds, they are undisturbed by Dobbs In March and July, the ACLU and its Texas affiliate, together with allies Lambda Legal and PFLAG, turned to state court to challenge Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive that providing gender-affirming care should be investigated as child abuse. +In Doe v. Abbott and PFLAG v. Abbott, the state court blocked investigations of our clients under the directive until all issues in the lawsuits are fully resolved. +At the ACLU, this is nothing new. +We have defended civil liberties in state courts since our founding over 100 years ago. +In 1925, the ACLU argued in the trial of John T. Scopes (known as the Scopes “Monkey Trial”) that a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution violated the Tennessee Constitution. +Although Scopes was convicted, the media coverage of the case reached millions, and in just the next two years, bills prohibiting the teaching of evolution were defeated in 22 states. +In 1969, we filed an amicus brief supporting the very first challenge to the constitutionality of an anti-abortion statute in the Supreme Court of California. +In People v. Belous, the court invalidated California’s abortion restriction on state constitutional grounds. +And since then, we sued in various state courts to establish independent state law protections for abortion, to extend Medicaid coverage to abortion, and to protect teens seeking abortions (including in New Jersey and Alaska). +In the first two decades of this century, the ACLU partnered with our allies to argue in state court that the right to marry should extend to same-sex couples. +That claim had been summarily rejected in federal court, but marriage equality wins in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Iowa, New Mexico, and New Jersey laid the groundwork for the U.S. Supreme Court’s recognition of the federal right to marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges. +State laws have also made it possible to challenge racial discrimination in the administration of the death penalty, in circumstances that federal law does not reach. +The ACLU and its North Carolina affiliate successfully advocated for passage of a state Racial Justice Act, which allowed individuals facing capital punishment to have their sentence commuted to life imprisonment without parole if they could show that racial bias had affected their trial — a pivotal state law protection, given a prior U.S. Supreme Court ruling that such racial disparities did not violate the federal constitution. +We then brought the first case under this law, and showed that racial discrimination tainted the trial of Marcus Robinson, a Black man, the youngest person ever sentenced to death in North Carolina, for a crime committed when he was 18. +In 2015, the state court commuted Mr. Robinson’s sentence to life imprisonment. +These are just some of the many victories we have obtained in state courts. +In “Our New Federalism,” we detail more more than 125 civil liberties and civil rights cases that we have filed in the last five years or so that advance arguments, most often in state courts, based on state constitutional and statutory civil rights provisions, seeking protections above and beyond what federal law provides. +They span 24 states, and the whole range of issues that matter most to our members, including reproductive freedom, voting rights, workers’ rights, educational equity, free speech, privacy, freedom from discrimination, criminal defense, and the rights of incarcerated persons. +There are limits to what can be accomplished on the state level. +Some actions, including those of federal officials, often can be challenged only in federal court. +The states that are most likely to infringe on our rights often — though not always — have less hospitable state courts as well. +And even when we secure a favorable decision, state court decisions directly affect only that state. +Politics can also complicate matters. +Some state court judges must run for re-election, and to that extent may be less likely to protect civil rights and civil liberties where those claims are not likely to be popular. +Some state legislatures exercise control over state courts. +And many states make it fairly easy to amend their state constitutions through ballot measures, which have at times been used to overturn constitutional decisions. +(For example, California voters approved Proposition 8 in 2008, which reversed a prior marriage equality victory in the California Supreme Court.) +We still need to pursue litigation in federal courts. +But in the face of a U.S. Supreme Court that is increasingly hostile to rights protections, state court litigation has never been more important. +As these examples and the many others in our report illustrate, state courts can provide meaningful protection for civil rights and civil liberties when federal courts fail us. +We’ve been doing this work for a century. +We won’t stop now. +Special thanks to Duncan Hosie, Eva Stevenson, Cal Barnett-Mayotte, and Farzana Ali for their assistance on this blog and accompanying report. +Help us win pivotal court battles across the country by donating now. +Henry Seaton didn’t set out to become an activist. +In 2016, as a high school senior in a Nashville suburb, he just wanted to use bathrooms that corresponded with his gender identity. +After school administrators restricted him to using the often-locked bathroom in the nurse’s office, Seaton got involved in efforts to protect trans students, including testifying before a Tennessee state legislative committee and starting a petition against bathroom bills that garnered 67,000 signatures. +“The traumas of my life were about to become law and dictate the traumas for thousands of children,” he said. +“I had never thought about getting involved before, but I’m glad I did.” +After graduating from high school, Seaton spent a year working as an LGBTQ organizer at the ACLU of Tennessee, primarily fighting anti-trans bathroom bills and acting as a voice for trans youth. +Then, with a degree from the University of Denver, he came back to the Tennessee affiliate to serve as their first-ever trans justice advocate. +Credit: Houston Cofield +In this role, Henry focused on lobbying legislators about urgent trans issues, including access to school sports and gender-affirming health care. +He also focused on grassroots efforts, empowering trans communities across the state and educating rotary clubs and children’s organizations. +“I’m trying to change the narrative of transness in Tennessee from a negative one to a positive one,” he said. +As the fight for trans justice has shifted from bathroom bills to health care bans, Seaton saw his own role shift too. +At the ACLU, he worked to help young people share their own perspectives. +“I see my role now as empowering voices for the future, rather than always being that voice myself,” he said. +“The ladder that I climbed to testify is the ladder that I’m trying to build for other young people.” +The ACLU of Tennessee’s TRANScend program is funded by the TAWANI Foundation and Col. Jennifer Pritzker. +This article first appeared in the Fall 2022 edition of ACLU Magazine, a digital version of which can be found here. +It was updated on August 15, 2023. +In March, Gov. Bill Lee signed into law a bill (SB 228/HB 3) that bans trans students from participating in school sports. +Two federal courts have blocked similar laws in Idaho and West Virginia, while a federal court in Connecticut has dismissed a challenge to that state’s policies that supports participation for trans students. +Luc, along with his parents, have sued Tennessee because he is now denied the opportunity to try out for the boy’s golf team. +I was introduced to golf when I was about to turn 11. +My mom took me to a golf clinic for kids at a local driving range. +I got a free golf lesson from a coach and right away I was so hooked that my parents signed me up for weekly lessons. +At the time, all I knew was I had fun and wanted to have a sport to get better at and was having a hard time finding one. +I had tried soccer and basketball, but I was not interested in those sports and wanted to try and find something I liked better. +Over time, after getting better at hitting the ball and putting, it just got fun trying to work on my aim and technique. +When I was in 7th grade, I found out there was a golf team at my school +and I thought it would be good to have a team to play with. +I wanted to get tips and watch other people play and see what I would have to improve on or what I was doing right. +After playing with the girl’s golf team previously, it started to feel wrong because I did not feel like I fit in with them, even though they were all kind to me. +I felt out of place. +It wasn’t just that I wanted to wear pants when all the girls on the team wanted to wear skirts — I felt awkward and knew this wasn’t the team for me. +I am a boy, and I want to be on the boys’ golf team so I can play among other boys. +Luc aspires to play golf with other boys, freely. +He's pictured here with his mom, Shelley. +Shawn Poynter/ACLU +My favorite experience playing on the team was when we were in a competition against other schools. +We did not win the whole competition, but there were also prizes we could win on specific holes. +My best friend L. and I both won prizes that day. +I was so proud of myself and L., and our whole team! +Since Tennessee’s ban on trans kids in sports passed, the main reason I’m suing the state is because it bothers me a lot to think some kids won’t play sports at all and other kids could feel as out of place as I did, especially if they aren’t on a team with their best friend like I was. +It's depressing to imagine other kids feeling so out of place and without a friend. +I have a strong peace of mind when I think how my parents are there to help me with golf, the lawsuit, and life. +Filing this lawsuit lets me say that I feel disrespected and mistreated. +I can’t control the law that was passed, but just because it was passed, it doesn’t mean it was right. +I have standards for how I want to be treated. +I want to be respected. +That’s what my parents want, and it’s what I feel my peers would want. +What the state has done has not even come close to those standards. +To other trans youth: I want to tell you to fight for what you believe is right and to stand up for yourself. +Nothing gets done if you don’t do anything about it. +In December, the federal Bureau of Prisons was court ordered to provide ACLU client Cristina Iglesias with gender-affirming surgery following a lawsuit filed in September 2020. +The Bureau of Prisons failed to approve surgery by the court ordered deadline of January 26. +I’m an outgoing person, which makes me want to meet new people and learn about them. +I’m a caring person, too, which means I often want to find a way to make things better for others, if I can. +I’m also a transgender woman. +And as someone who is different, it’s easy for me to be patient with other people who are having problems and to sympathize with what they are going through. +For more than 27 years, I’ve lived in federal prisons across the country. +The Bureau of Prisons has known that I am a woman since 1994, though they housed me in men’s prisons for decades. +I have also had to spend years fighting to get the health care I need for my gender dysphoria. +Being denied the gender-affirming care I need has had a huge impact on me, because I’m unable to complete myself. +Not having a body that matches who I know myself to be affects me every moment of every day. +It is very difficult and hard to keep hope. +Last month, a federal court ordered the Bureau of Prisons — for the first time ever — to finally evaluate me for gender-affirming surgery. +When I heard about the ruling from my lawyers, I went back to my cell to process just how huge this is. +After being denied for so long, I cried — but it was tears of relief. +This week, however, I found out that the Bureau of Prisons has decided to recommend me for surgery on paper but delay actually referring me to a surgeon until mid-April 2022. +Getting medical care is necessary to allow me to finally live my life fully as the woman I am. +Living with gender dysphoria — and being denied the treatment I need — has caused me torture every day. +Gender-affirming surgery would help end that torture and remove one of the biggest obstacles facing me for decades. +Putting this barrier behind me would let me devote my time to living a productive life and advocating for others when I leave prison later this year. +Preparing for my lawsuit has been a long and difficult journey, but it has taught me how to advocate for myself. +I am fighting not just for me, but for other people like me, too. +I am fighting to make sure that transgender people in prison get the care we urgently need, just as other trans people have done before me. +Working with my legal team has also reminded me that there are people who care about transgender people and are willing to help us fight for what we need. +My message to people who want to do something to help is that you can be an advocate by encouraging your friends and family members to be more accepting of transgender people. +Everyone needs to understand that being trans is real and that our medical needs are real and serious. +I wish that prison officials and other people understood how hard it is to be transgender in prison because we have to fight not just for our basic rights, like medical care, but also for our safety. +I have faced violence and discrimination from staff and other prisoners just for being who I am, and it has not been easy. +I want the Bureau of Prisons to do the right thing and give me the surgery I need. +It shouldn’t take a court order for me and other transgender people to get adequate health care, as has happened in the past. +A federal judge has already ordered the Bureau of Prisons to evaluate me for surgery, but they are still dragging their feet. +I want them to stop creating barriers — and to understand that we are human, too. +In 2021, Arkansas passed a law banning gender-affirming healthcare for trans young people. +This discriminatory law would not only prohibit healthcare professionals from providing or referring trans young people under 18 for medically necessary health care, it would also allow private insurers to refuse to cover gender-affirming care for trans people of any age. +If it is allowed to go into effect, the law will undermine the mental, emotional, and physical health of transgender and non-binary people across the state. +Though the ACLU has won a temporary pause on Arkansas’ health care ban, the fight continues in federal appeals court and in statehouses around the country, which is why trans stories are so important. +While Arkansas is the first — and so far, only — state to pass such legislation, similar bills have been introduced in over 30 states around the country. +An amazing 58 transgender and non-binary adults including actor Elliot Page, activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracey, media personality Jazz Jennings, state senator Sarah McBride, and filmmaker Lilly Wachowski have stood up in defense of ACLU’s clients. +They shared their stories in a “friend of the court” amicus brief filed by the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in support of plaintiffs in the ACLU's case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Brandt v. Rutledge. +Read their stories below about how gender-affirming care has changed their lives for the better, the hardships of gender dysphoria, and the joys of transitioning. +Trans young people know who they are. +North Carolina-raised film producer Rhys Ernst remembers: “One of my earliest conscious memories, in which I felt the most alive and like myself, was at age 3, when I realized quite clearly that I was a boy. +I felt a strong jolt of purpose and belonging claiming that identity for myself.” +Jazz Jennings from Florida, now a 21-year-old student, started gender-affirming treatment when she began puberty and then went on to receive gender-affirming hormones. +She told the court how having a typical female puberty helped her: “I developed alongside my peers as a female teenager. +I was able to lead a happy childhood because I was able to live as the girl I knew I was.” +Noted transgender activist Major Griffin-Gracy, an Arkansas resident who is now over 70, first began receiving gender-affirming care in the form of hormones when she was 16 years old. +While the discrimination she has faced as a transgender woman has made her life challenging, she reflects that receiving hormone treatment as a teen “made life easier than it would have been.” +Miss Major joined the trans youth who are suing the state of Arkansas for the district court hearing in this case (credit: Sydney Rasch/ACLU of Arkansas). +Gender-affirming care helps trans people thrive Amici Dr. Gwendolyn Herzig of Alexander, Arkansas owns and operates an independent pharmacy. +She shared with TLDEF how much coming into her identity empowered her to take a leadership role in the community: “Living authentically has allowed me to better stand up and provide support for minority communities that need it the most. +Especially, being the only trans female pharmacy owner in Arkansas, and maybe the South, in the face of a pandemic, I have been able to provide immunizations, resources, and guidance. +Before, it was easier to hide away and to cope day by day. +Now I try to take each day by storm and help everyone I can!” +Gender-affirming care cemented Beck Witt Major’s relationship with his father. +“A gender-affirming therapist helped our whole family come to terms with what was happening, and I think helped my dad the most,” he told TLDEF. +“Before he passed, he loved and accepted me totally and would even send me cards saying things like Happy Birthday, Son.” +While his transition began in adulthood, Elliot Page agreed, sharing how his life completely changed once he was able to receive top surgery. +“I couldn’t believe the amount of energy I had, ideas, how my imagination flourished, because the constant discomfort and pain around that aspect of my body was gone,” Page told the court. +Team USA athlete Chris Mosier recalled his first triathlon race after top surgery as a moment of gender euphoria: “The feeling of being able to run freely in a body that more closely matched the way I’ve always seen myself was overwhelming.” +Trans young people know what they need Overall, the story told by this incredible array of transgender and non-binary supporters is that the treatment for gender dysphoria — gender affirmation — works. +Cecilia Gentili, a 49-year-old small business owner and transgender rights advocate, first received self-managed gender-affirming care at age 17, which she said was “great” and “changed her life,” but would have been even more beneficial if she had been able to obtain it through a doctor, rather than on her own. +Gentili told the court: “Transgender youth know who they are, and they know what they need. +Our job is to listen to them.” +Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund is committed to ending discrimination based upon gender identity and expression and to achieving equality for transgender people through public education, test-case litigation, direct legal services, and public policy efforts. +While everyone should be contacting lawmakers and expressing their support for trans youth, we know that these attacks aren’t limited to statehouses. +The lies about trans youth spread at the dinner table, PTA meetings, and many other places. +It takes all of us speaking out and speaking up. +Watch ACLU’s Ambassador for Trans Justice, Miss Peppermint, and LGBTQ & HIV Project Staff Attorney Taylor Brown tell us the truth about trans youth and then check out these resources, so you know how to respond the next time you hear a lie about trans youth. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement Using people’s names and pronouns is a matter of respect. +“It’s hard not to take it personally, but over the years I have grown numb to the discrimination. +Sometimes, these experiences made me want to give up. +But that’s not true happiness. +That’s not what I’m here for. +I’m here to identify myself accurately and get respect. +So, I have no choice but to keep pushing through.” +— Erica Aries We all want to be respected and seen for who we are. +When a young person’s name and pronouns are respected, they do better in school, have more confidence, and have lower rates of suicide. +People change their names for a variety of reasons. +If the only time you have difficulty using someone’s name and pronouns is when they are trans, ask yourself why. +It doesn’t hurt you to be kind and be respectful. +But it could be very meaningful to someone else. +There’s no reason not to try. +Trans women are women. +“Cisgender women should be concerned whenever an alleged concern for ‘protecting’ our well-being is invoked to justify exclusion.” +— Shayna Medley & Galen Sherwin Attempts to legislate who is or isn’t a woman are not new. +Lawmakers have often tried to exclude poor women, unmarried women, Black women, and others from legal protections. +Across time and cultures, trans women have often been not only accepted but revered. +There’s nothing wrong with saying “woman.” +Just ask yourself if that’s the most specific and inclusive language you can use. +Policing what it means to be a woman hurts everyone. +That’s why the ACLU fights against sexist dress code policies and practices that push women out of the workforce. +School sports are about participation and belonging. +It’s wrong to deny students the chance to try out for a team. +“The false rhetoric taking hold is a distraction to the real threats to girls and women in sports, such as lack of Title IX understanding and compliance; inequity in compensation, resources, sponsorship, and media attention; harassment and abuse of female athletes and women working in sports, the list goes on.” +— Women’s Sports Foundation Transgender people want to participate in school sports for the same reasons as their peers: to challenge themselves, improve fitness, and be part of a team. +Excluding trans youth from sports sends them the message that they are not worthy of the same kinds of opportunities as their classmates. +Professional women athletes and organizations fighting to end discrimination against girls in school sports are all speaking up to oppose these bills. +They are saying girls’ sports need more funding and resources. +We’re talking about kids. +Growing up is hard for all of us, but imagine if your ability to simply go to school and try out for a team was up for debate. +No young person should have to fight this hard just to be on a team. +Trans youth know who they are. +They should be able to ask questions and discuss their gender with their parents and medical professionals without inference from politicians. +“[After starting hormone therapy,] I now feel a level of confidence I never knew was possible. +I can easily and confidently interact with other people, whether I know them or not. +My body is finally beginning to match who I am.” +— Dylan Brandt What you won’t hear from many supporting these bills: None of the care being provided to transgender youth is new or provided only to trans youth. +We’re talking about care that has been given to youth with a wide range of diagnoses for decades. +These bills are ultimately about stopping trans youth from experiencing joy. +Denying medical care and support to transgender youth has been shown to contribute to depression, social isolation, self-hatred, risk of self-harm and suicidal behavior, and more. +In short: It’s life threatening. +Doctors and major medical associations have spoken out against these bills and in support of trans youth having access to gender affirming care. +Trans people have always been here. +“Trans people are not new. +We have always been here. +As long as there’s been recorded human history, we have always existed. +But we have been written out of the human story — and when you come from a community that is without a full range of possibility models, it raises the question, in yourself as well as others, of whether or not you deserve rights or a place in society.” +– Imara Jones +If you aren’t aware of any trans people you’ve met, then you might not be aware of how many trans people have existed throughout human history. +Just because something is new to you, it doesn’t mean it’s new to everyone. +It’s okay for you to learn about trans people on your own time — the ACLU’s Trans in America documentary series is a good start, and the ACLU’s advocacy on behalf of transgender people goes back decades. +You can speak up against these harmful attacks even if you have questions and are still learning. +You can take action by following your local ACLU affiliate, supporting grassroots organizations led by trans people, or sharing this resource with others. +And be sure to check out our Know Your Rights information +so you know how the law protects trans and non-binary people from discrimination. +Learn more: Transgender and Non-Binary Leaders Tell Federal Court Trans People Deserve Joy at Any Age The Coordinated Attack on Trans Student Athletes Doctors Agree: Gender-Affirming Care is Life-Saving Care Five Things to Know About Gender-Affirming Health Care Trans in America Documentary Series Trans in America A short documentary series about transgender civil rights in the United States that follows three families as they battle against discrimination. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union +Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton told trans youth in Texas last week that they considered their health care to be a form of child abuse. +This is dangerous, dehumanizing, and terrifying to trans youth and their supportive families. +The declaration will have devastating consequences — and we are already seeing them. +Abbott and Paxton, along with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, want to investigate families simply for following best practice medicine and supporting their trans kids through lifesaving, medically necessary health care. +Texas political leaders lack the legal authority to enforce this declaration and separate trans youth from their families. +But that hasn’t stopped investigations from starting. +That’s why we are in court asking for a temporary restraining order to prevent Texas from investigating families for supporting their trans kids and to prohibit requiring professionals who work with youth to report these families. +In addition to being outside of the scope of their authority and clearly motivated by partisan politics, this policy is wrong and is opposed by health care professionals and child welfare experts. +It also isn’t isolated — while particularly extreme and cruel, Texas politicians are part of a coordinated effort to shame, dehumanize, and attack trans kids. +The end result won’t be that fewer kids grow up to be trans, it will be that fewer kids grow up. +Gender-affirming care saves lives and brings joy. +Gender-affirming care saved my life. +And I’m not alone. +After Arkansas became the first state to pass a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth last year, our clients Dylan, Brooke, Sabrina, and Parker all told a federal court how important this care is for them. +That law was blocked by the courts, and over 50 transgender adults told a federal appeals court how gender-affirming care has brought joy to their lives. +While dozens of states have proposed laws similar to what became law in Arkansas — including some like Alabama that have proposed criminal penalties for providing gender-affirming care to youth — Texas is the only state saying that providing this lifesaving care could lead to a child being removed from their family and placed in the foster care system. +No one should have to fight this hard for lifesaving care. +Rather than making medical care more affordable and accessible to people who need it, Texas is adding yet another barrier, one that will land hardest on Black and Indigenous families. +These Texas families are already over-policed and surveilled by the so-called child welfare system, and other governmental policing apparatuses will have the most immediate impact on them. +The guidance from Texas policymakers doesn’t match what doctors or child welfare +professionals say. +Many trans youth and their families are already facing scrutiny. +They fear this move will lead to more calls to child protective services about parents who are simply trying to love and support their children and keep them alive and well. +There are many problems with how the child welfare system — or as some call it the family regulation system — works and this shouldn’t be added to those lists. +According to our clients, this has already begun. +At least one family had a child welfare investigator show up on their doorstep last week. +Reports are coming in from across the state that investigations are ramping up. +Doctors and medical and mental health associations have spoken out against these actions by Texas officials, as well as the many bills advancing across the country that would ban gender-affirming care. +Child welfare professionals are also speaking out, explaining that these actions from Abbott and Paxton do nothing to protect kids and strain the existing child welfare system. +Many trans kids and their parents already live in fear. +Many families in Texas already keep folders of their medical records and doctor recommendations with them out of concern of being reported to authorities for supporting their trans kids. +Families in Texas aren’t alone — with dozens of states attacking trans youth, including some which have proposed criminalizing medical care, it is an unfortunately common practice. +No one should have to pick up their family and move just to support their kid and access medical care. +And while families in Texas are considering this, they are all asking where is safe for them as 39 states have introduced legislation attacking trans youth this year. +Anytime a policymaker spreads the lies and misinformation about trans people and our medical care, it’s dangerous. +It tells trans people that our existence isn’t real, that we should be ashamed, and that we should be fearful. +It also tells our families and communities to reject us and report us to the state — only escalating the interpersonal violence that too many trans people face. +Trans youth need you to speak up across the country. +All of these reasons and more are why we have asked courts to immediately block Texas from investigating families simply for loving and supporting their trans kids. +But because these attacks aren’t limited to Texas, we need to take action around the country. +As attacks have escalated in recent years, and especially in these last few weeks, we are tired. +Trans youth need you to take the fury you have over what’s happening in Texas and share it with lawmakers in every state that is trying to make it harder for trans youth to live. +Around the country we see laws that aim to make being trans shameful by removing any mention of our existence in books and schools. +We see laws that try to push trans youth out of schools by banning us from bathrooms and sports teams. +And we see the laws trying to criminalize our medical care. +It’s not by chance that we are seeing these attacks on multiple fronts at the same time — this is a coordinated, dangerous effort that is leading to an increase in calls to suicide lines for youth. +If you don’t know what to say, check out this video with my friend Miss Peppermint and fellow ACLU attorney Taylor Brown. +Donate to local trans-led organizations and find your local ACLU affiliate for ways to take action in your state. +Share resources like TX Trans Kids so more people know their rights and how to provide support. +Ask those running for office what they are going to do to protect trans youth — and tell them their answer matters to you. +We cannot allow politicians to use trans youth to score political points. +We must speak up when lies and misinformation about trans youth are being spread. +We must show up for trans youth today and every day. +When Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in 1972, she recognized that laws that stereotype by gender hurt everyone — no matter your gender. +That’s why some of WRP’s early cases involved men who had been discriminated against — and it’s why many of our recent legal battles for the rights of trans and non-binary people are rooted in the same cases that pioneered women’s rights decades ago. +Today, WRP is headed by Director Ria Tabacco Mar. Below, she explains more about why women’s rights are inextricably linked to the broader fight for gender justice. +How has the ACLU’s women’s rights work evolved into a broader fight for gender justice? +The ACLU’s women's rights work has always had a broader gender justice focus. +Over the years I have worked closely with the LGBTQ project, and it’s through that work that I’ve learned precisely how interconnected our movements are — not just in the lived reality of people who are both women and LGBTQ, like myself, but even in the legal doctrine. +So many of the cases that we are litigating in the LGBTQ space were built on early victories in women's rights. +Those were cases that were initially fought by cisgender women who were considered to be the wrong kind of women, either because they were mothers of young children or because they were, “too macho” and didn't wear jewelry. +Being fired because you're a transgender woman is just another variation of the same problem. +Gender justice is really about ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to structure their lives and thrive, regardless of gender, unlimited by gender stereotypes. +Can you share an example of a seminal women’s rights case that laid the groundwork for broader gender justice? +The first Title VII case the Supreme Court ever heard involved Ida Phillips, a woman who was disqualified from a job because she was the mother of preschool children. +Though she was a white woman, she was represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, my old shop, because the lawyers rightly recognized that if Title VII — the law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire or fire someone based on their sex — failed to protect a white woman like Ida Phillips from discrimination based on sex, then employers would be able to evade discrimination protections based on race and other characteristics as well. +The unanimous victory in that case laid the foundation for what we think of as modern anti-discrimination law. +Which groups are getting left out of conversations about women’s rights? +Restrictions on abortion and reproductive health care are major constraints on women’s equality and the fight for gender justice. +They also impact trans men and nonbinary people who can also become pregnant and need abortion and reproductive health care. +It’s not a coincidence that efforts to limit access to abortion and reproductive health care are increasing at the same time we see escalating efforts to block gender-affirming health care. +There are more commonalities than differences in our struggles, and it’s important to be gender inclusive to reflect this reality. +Conversations about women’s rights also often fail to acknowledge the unique barriers faced by Black women and other women of color. +We saw early in the pandemic that “essential workers” were disproportionately women of color, which meant that more women of color were risking their lives every day to make a livelihood outside the home. +At the same time, women of color were more likely to be laid off from their jobs. +So women of color have faced the brunt of the pandemic’s impact from different angles. +I was hopeful that the racial and gender inequities exposed by the pandemic would help bring about a stronger drive for change. +Two years later, unfortunately, we are not seeing the level of urgency and action we hoped for. +We’ve watched the federal eviction moratorium expire, knowing that millions of families are on the brink of potentially losing their homes. +Many of those households are headed by Black women, who are not only facing destabilization of their families, but the potential lifelong consequences of having been evicted, which can make it harder to secure future housing, employment, and other essential needs and services. +What are some of the biggest challenges that the ACLU’s gender justice program is facing right now? +A major challenge is the lack of urgency that our community feels around some women’s rights issues. +We're facing so many entrenched disparities: equal pay, attacks on our reproductive freedom, lack of parity and caregiving work within the home, and underfunding women's work outside the home. +In some ways, these are the same problems that have plagued us for decades, certainly since the founding of the Women's Rights Project and arguably for centuries as well. +They're so omnipresent that we almost don't see them as vestiges of sexism and patriarchy. +They structure almost every aspect of our lives. +And yet, precisely because these inequities are everywhere, we don't feel that same urgency that we may feel for other civil rights crises in larger, rallying moments. +What do you think lies ahead in the fight for gender justice? +This is such a depressing question, because in some ways the fights of the future are the fights of the past. +We're still fighting for equal pay. +We're still fighting for safe and stable housing. +We're still fighting for the ability to dress the way we choose, free from the fear of being policed, assaulted, and sexually harassed. +These are all basic, but necessary struggles. +What does achieving gender justice look like to you? +When I think about gender justice, I think about waking up without the heavy burden of sexism following me around every day. +What would it feel like to choose my clothing based on the weather and not on how people would look at me or fear of being attacked? +What would it feel like to be able to walk home alone at night in the dark? +What would it feel like to know that I’m being paid fairly for my work and that my work inside the home is as valued as my work outside the home? +And that's what we're fighting for in the Women's Rights Project. +Watch a video of the interview below: This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement +Going through airport security is never fun, but it can be particularly difficult for transgender people. +In addition to universal annoyances (did you remember to take off your shoes?) +transgender people may not have identification documents that match who they are. +Many airlines require ticket holders to select “male” or “female” when purchasing a ticket, something that may conflict with identity documents from the growing number of states that allow an ‘X’ gender marker on things like driver's licenses. +Finally, the “advanced imaging technology” body scanners — the ones that require you to hold your arms above your head — require TSA agents to select either a “male” or “female” scan, something that regularly results in additional and invasive searches for transgender travelers. +Fortunately, to mark 2022’s Transgender Day of Visibility, the Department of Homeland Security has announced a number of changes to make traveling while trans a little bit easier. +These announcements are part of a larger push from the Biden administration to “advance equality and visibility for transgender Americans.” +Here are four key things to know about the TSA announcements: +1. +Full-body scans will no longer be based on gender. +The TSA will be replacing current “Advanced Imaging Technology” scanners — which require the operator to select a “male” or “female” scanning setting — with technology that will not be based on gender. +Here’s how transgender model, actor, and public speaker Rosalynne Montoya described the current scanners: “I definitely am not super comfortable going through TSA because I pretty much always set off the scanners as having some sort of ‘anomaly.’ +I don’t feel safe. +I don’t expect TSA agents to have my best interests at heart. +I’ve been sexually assaulted, groped, grabbed, forced to remove my clothing +[at TSA checkpoints]. +I remember those times every time I go through TSA.” +The TSA stated that the new scanning technology will “advance civil rights and improve the customer experience of travelers who previously have been required to undergo additional screening due to alarms in sensitive areas,” with a rollout coming later this year. +2. +TSA is working with airlines to promote “X” gender markers. +Many airlines require passengers to select “male” or “female” when purchasing tickets. +The TSA is working with airlines to expand the use of “X” gender markers, and to allow passengers to self-select the “X” gender marker when purchasing tickets. +Including an “X” gender marker on identity documents and records provides an accurate option for people who are non-binary, intersex, or another gender. +Every person should be able to select a marker, whether M, F, or X, that feels safest and most appropriate for them to move through the world. +3. +TSA is streamlining identity validation. +It can be a nightmare to get through airport security with an ID that doesn’t match your gender presentation. +At best, having an ID that doesn’t match your presentation can cause confusion and slow things down. +At worst, it can result in harassment and missed flights. +TSA is updating its policies and guidelines to “remove gender considerations” when verifying ID at an airport, which should reduce delays and make things easier for trans travelers. +4. +TSA PreCheck and U.S. passports will add an “X” gender marker. +TSA PreCheck, a voluntary program that people can enroll in to reduce time spent at airport security checkpoints, does not currently offer an “X” gender marker. +TSA is changing this, and will add an “X” gender marker to its Trusted Traveler and TSA PreCheck programs. +“X” gender markers will also be available on U.S. passports beginning on April 11, 2022. +While TSA’s new scanning technology is supposed to be less likely to flag transgender flyers as potential security threats, TSA PreCheck allows participants to go through a simple metal detector, rather than the full-body scanners. +As Rev. Yunus Coldman, an interfaith minister and a New York-based transgender man, said, “TSA PreCheck has saved so many trans people from bulls***. +You don't have to go through body scanners. +You don't have to take your shoes or belt off.” +These changes should make life easier for transgender travelers, but the devil is in the details. +Only time will tell if these changes live up to TSA’s promises. +In the meantime, TSA has updated its website for transgender passengers, with information about the changes listed above and how to contact TSA if you have any questions. +If you experience mistreatment by the TSA, you can fill out a complaint form online. +You can also let the ACLU know about your experiences. +Although they have never met one another, Jeff Walker and Jeff White have a lot in common. +Both have called Alabama home for decades and have built their lives around raising a family there. +Both were unsure about what to do when each of their daughters said, “I’m transgender.” +But both of them, along with their wives, Lisa Walker and Christa White, refused to give into fear. +They listened to their daughters, they learned from them and others, and above all else they continued to love and support their children. +Now, both dads fear they might have to leave their home state to do what’s best for their kids. +That’s because earlier this month, Alabama has made it a felony, punishable with up to 10 years in prison, to provide medically necessary care to trans youth. +But rather than be driven out, these families are choosing to courageously challenge this unjust and harmful law. +We recently sued in Alabama on behalf of the White and Walker families to stop this law from going into effect. +This is the seventh challenge to an anti-trans law we have brought since 2020, along with our lawsuit blocking Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to investigate families with trans kids for child abuse. +Even when a bill doesn’t pass or is blocked by courts, we know the consequences are grave. +A leading suicide prevention organization says “the escalation of state policies that are harmful to LGBTQ people will only heighten and intensify experiences of rejection and discrimination and could lead to an increase in suicidal ideation.” +Another organization reports increases in messages by LGBTQ+ youth to their crisis prevention hotline when anti-trans bills are introduced in the youth’s state. +Trans youth, their parents, their doctors, and their teachers around the country are living in fear of being forced out of their state or their job. +We will continue to fight in state legislatures and courts, but the true measure of our work must be preventing these laws from being introduced in the first place. +We want more people to learn what Jeff Walker and Jeff White learned: that the medical care their daughters are receiving has been prescribed to cisgender adolescents for decades; that providing this care to transgender youth is supported by every major medical association; that this medical care is safe and effective; and when transgender youth are denied this care, it is more likely they will experience depression, struggle in school, and consider suicide. +Ultimately, like so many parents, these families decided to love their children and ensure that they are able to thrive. +The families report that when their daughters started to work with doctors, the team of health care providers were respectful, informative, and supportive. +The providers assessed the girls to learn about their individual and unique needs. +They gave the families truthful and unbiased information about what research has shown to be safe and effective medical care for young trans people. +The families asked questions. +The healthcare teams patiently answered. +And, in the end, these two families decided on the best course of action to take for their kids. +Since accessing medical care, their daughters have grown more confident and are performing better in school. +They are still the same people that they have always been — H.W. continues to love politics, and C.W. continues to love video games. +But now, they are able to live more openly as their true selves and have become more connected with their families. +Jeff, Lisa, Jeff, and Christa are not alone. +Parents around the country have spoken up in support of their transgender kids in the wake of the political and legislative attacks. +If our litigation doesn’t succeed, some families with the means to do so will move out of state to protect their kids. +But many families with trans kids won’t have that option. +For them, this lawsuit will determine whether they can continue to get the care they need, or whether they will be barred from accessing that care until 19, the age of majority in Alabama. +Trans youth need adults to speak up and say these attacks must end. +If you want to speak up but don’t know what to say, we have a guide to talking about attacks on trans youth. +Passing bills that attack trans youth won’t stop youth from being trans, but they will stop trans youth from growing up at all. +Medical experts agree: Gender-affirming care is medically necessary care that can be life-saving for transgender youth. +Medical decisions belong to trans youth, their parents, and their doctors. +Yet politicians are trying come between trans youth and the care they need. +In 2020, 15 states introduced legislation that would ban — and in some instances criminalize — access to health care for transgender youth. +The Arkansas legislature passed such a bill into law on March 29 — though a federal court blocked the law from going into effect — and 19 other states introduced similar legislation this year. +Dr. Terrance Weeden (Alabama) +The “Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act” is a damaging bill that, if passed, will have tremendous and lasting negative effects on youth. +I urge other adults — doctors, nurses, teachers, principals, counselors, therapists, and parents and even adolescents to educate others and speak out on the negative impacts that this act will have on the health of adolescents who identify as transgender or have dysphoria. +If this bill were to become law, it would set a terrible precedent that could be replicated in other states. +It would go against the solemn promise that I made when I became a physician: “first do no harm.” +Pediatrician Dr. Michele Hutchison (Arkansas) +Dr. Nadia Dowshen (Pennsylvania) To me, these bills are intended to insinuate that the care I provide to trans youth is harmful and abusive, and they interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. +Let’s be clear; I provide lifesaving treatment that improves health, life, and well-being. +I approach decisions about treatment carefully over time, with input from an interdisciplinary team, together with youth and their caregivers, and by established guidelines. +Dr. Jack Turban (New York) +Our research team from Harvard Medical School and the Fenway Institute published a study showing that access to puberty blockers during adolescence is associated with lower odds of transgender young adults considering suicide. +Despite fearmongering, these are safe medications that doctors have been using for decades for cisgender children who go through puberty too early. +They also are reversible — if the medication is stopped, puberty will progress. +These doctors are not alone. +Major medical oppose efforts to block this critical care. +American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry +The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) supports the use of current evidence-based clinical care with minors. +AACAP strongly opposes any efforts — legal, legislative, and otherwise — to block access to these recognized interventions. +Blocking access to timely care has been shown to increase youths’ risk for suicidal ideation and other negative mental health outcomes. +American Academy of Pediatrics American Medical Association The American Medical Association views these bills as a dangerous legislative intrusion into the practice of medicine and has been working closely with state medical associations to vigorously oppose them. +In letters to legislators, the AMA has emphasized that it is “imperative that transgender minors be given the opportunity to explore their gender identity under the safe and supportive care of a physician.” +These three groups signed onto a statement opposing these bills along with the American Counseling Association, American Public Health Association, American School Counselor Association, American School Health Association, Child Welfare League of America, Mental Health America, National Association of School Nurses, National Association of School Psychologists, and the National Association of Social Workers: As organizations committed to serving the best interests of all youth, we are deeply alarmed at the torrent of bills introduced in state legislatures around the country this year that would directly harm transgender people, and particularly transgender youth. +These appalling proposals would compromise the safety and well-­being of the young people we all have the duty and obligation to support and protect. +All of our nation’s children deserve equal protection and treatment when accessing health care, and when attending school. +These anti-­transgender bills promote discrimination and do harm to students, their families, and their communities. +Organizations representing over half-a-million medical experts asked Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson to veto the anti-trans health bill, HB 1570. +Frontline Physicians Oppose Legislation That Interferes in or Penalizes Patient Care +Our organizations, which represent nearly 600,000 physicians and medical students, oppose any laws and regulations that discriminate against transgender and gender-diverse individuals or interfere in the confidential relationship between a patient and their physician. +That confidentiality is critical to allow patients to trust physicians to properly counsel, diagnose and treat. +Letter from Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Organizations To protect the lives of vulnerable youth, the 50 physician members of the Arkansas Council on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the nearly 10,000 members of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry write in strong opposition to HB1570, and we ask that you veto the legislation…Should HB1570 become law, the lives of some of our patients will be put at risk. +Gender diverse youth, as well as adults, who identify as transgender have high rates of mental health disorders including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicide in large part due to adverse experiences and stigma resulting from their gender identity. +Trans youth know who they are. +Multiple studies have shown that providing gender-affirming care is life-saving by dramatically reducing depression and suicidal ideation. +As Cash, a trans man in Arkansas, said to lawmakers before they passed a bill banning care for trans youth: “Trans people have always been here. +We will always be here, and you cannot erase us. +Please stop trying.” +Passing these bills won’t stop any trans youth from being trans. +They will prevent some trans youth from growing up at all. +Five Things to Know About Gender-Affirming Health Care Here’s what transgender youth, their parents, and doctors have said about Arkansas’ ban on gender affirming care. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union +If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, there is help available. +Please contact: Trevor Project: 866-488-7386 Trans Life Line: 877-565-8860 +Last week, the Arkansas legislature passed HB 1570, a bill that will ban gender-affirming health care for trans youth in the state. +This came just one day after Arkansas’ +Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed the bill, and amidst pleas from doctors, social workers, and parents of transgender youth to protect health care for trans youth. +Arkansas is the first state in the country to pass such a bill. +"This [bill] was based not on science, not on compassion, not on shared humanity, but on just this sheer desire to harm trans people, and that was so apparent from the start," ACLU’s Deputy Director for Transgender Justice Chase Strangio told us on At Liberty. +"What the state has done is essentially saying 'We're going to take away the single most helpful thing to to save lives in this community and not only make it difficult to access, make it prohibited.'" +Strangio helped us unpack this legislation in the context of a year in which more than 100 bills that target and harm trans people have been introduced in legislatures across the country. +Special Report: Chase Strangio on the Legislative Assault on Trans Youth Special Report: Chase Strangio on the Legislative Assault on Trans Youth The Arkansas legislature just passed HB 1570, a bill that would ban gender confirming health care for trans youth in the state. +This comes just one day after Arkansas’ Governor Asa Hutchinson, vetoed the bill amidst pleas from doctors, social work... +The Arkansas legislature just passed HB 1570, a bill that would ban gender confirming health care for trans youth in the state. +This comes just one day after Arkansas’ Governor Asa Hutchinson, vetoed the bill amidst pleas from doctors, social work... +Visit this episode +This year, more than 30 states introduced laws banning trans students from participating in school sports. +This is part of an ongoing assault on trans youth — particularly transgender girls — that has been brewing for years. +In 2020, Idaho became the first state to pass such a law and the ACLU quickly filed suit along with Legal Voice and Cooley LLP. +Yesterday, my colleague Chase Strangio argued in the first case about a law banning trans women and girls from sports to reach an appeals court. +The decision in this case will be pivotal as other states adopt similarly discriminatory laws. +Shortly after the law in Idaho passed, runner Lindsay Hecox, a student at Boise State University, and Jane Doe, a cisgender high school athlete, challenged Idaho’s law in federal court. +Last August, a federal judge barred the state from enforcing the law, ruling that the law discriminates against Lindsay based on her sex and transgender status and against both Lindsay and Jane because they are women. +The judge observed that women athletes like Lindsay, who have been on hormone therapy for a year, have no competitive advantage over other women, so it is discrimination to treat them differently from other women. +The NCAA, the International Olympic Committee, and World Athletics all recognize the same reality and allow women who are transgender to compete in women’s events. +The court’s injunction allowed Lindsay to try out for the Boise State women’s cross country team. +She didn’t make the team, but that’s the way athletics are supposed to work — she was simply asking to be evaluated based on her athletic abilities, not pre-judgments by a profoundly misguided legislature. +Yesterday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the ACLU defended that right. +While Idaho was the first state to pass a ban on trans athletes, it was not the last. +In 2021, the national ACLU and our state affiliate offices have fought sports bans in more than 30 state legislatures so far, with those bans becoming law in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia. +The Florida legislature passed its version of a ban just last week. +We are preparing court challenges to several of these new laws as well, building on the decision in Lindsay Hecox’s case. +ACLU/Joshua Roper Lindsay isn’t the only trans athlete to have had recent success in court. +Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller are two athletes who ran track in high school in Connecticut. +Several cisgender high school girls sued the state athletic conference for allowing Andraya and Terry, who are transgender, to compete on the girls’ team. +They argued that it is illegal to protect trans people from discrimination — an extreme claim that, if accepted by the courts, would have prevented states and schools from taking action to protect trans students from discrimination. +Andraya and Terry joined in the lawsuit so that they could help the athletic conference defend its trans-inclusive policy. +Just last week, a federal judge dismissed the cisgender girls’ lawsuit, leaving Connecticut’s affirming sports policy intact. +It was a great moment for inclusive education. +This year’s fight is just beginning, but we’ve seen these types of cruel and misguided attacks before. +The organizations leading these coordinated attacks on trans student athletes are the same ones that pushed false myths about trans people in restrooms a few years ago. +Just as those legislative efforts were not actually about restrooms, these laws are not about sports. +They are about excluding transgender people from public life and trying to prevent people from being transgender. +They are about creating “solutions” to “problems” that do not exist while harming some of the most marginalized youth in the country. +No matter how long it takes, the ACLU will work alongside trans people like Lindsay, Andraya, and Terry to ensure that everyone gets an equal opportunity to participate in all aspects of public life, including sports. +In a year that has seen many horrific attacks on transgender people, among the cruelest and most dangerous is Arkansas’ new law that bans gender-affirming care for trans youth. +If it goes into effect in July, this law will cause catastrophic harms to transgender youth. +To prevent any further harms, four families with transgender children, along with two doctors who provide this care, filed suit today challenging the constitutionality of this new Arkansas law. +The ACLU is proud to represent them. +Because of the shocking nature of the harms this law would impose, this is the first lawsuit we are filing against any of the anti-trans laws that state legislatures passed this year — and more will be coming soon. +Brooke Dennis is 9 years old and is finishing up the third grade. +She loves to read and write and wants to be a gymnast when she grows up. +She’s also transgender, which means she was assigned \ male at birth but is a girl. +As her mom put it, “Brooke has known exactly who she is since she was two years old.” +Brooke has the support of her parents and the family has consulted with doctors who can provide gender-affirming care when puberty begins. +But Arkansas’ first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming health care for minors means that Brooke won’t be able to get puberty-delaying treatment, which is care she will soon need. +If the law is not blocked, Brooke faces the prospect of going through a typical male puberty — growing facial hair, developing an Adam’s apple, seeing her body take on the fat and muscle distribution typical of boys, and hearing her voice deepen — all of which will cause her extreme distress. +Puberty delaying treatment, which pauses puberty so that young people can have time and space to confirm who they are without the permanent physical changes of puberty, is part of the well-established standards of care for treating many transgender youth. +Puberty-delaying treatments have been used for decades to treat cisgender children experiencing precocious puberty, and are completely safe and totally reversible. +are completely safe and totally reversable. +Brooke could start puberty at any time, and her parents plan to begin puberty-delaying treatment as soon as her puberty starts. +Brooke is already anxious about puberty and recently told her mom, through tears, that she didn’t want to get an Adam’s apple. +She has previously faced the anxiety, fear, and depression of not being seen and understood as who she is and fears going back. +While Arkansas’ new law prohibits the time-sensitive medical care that Brooke needs, the law allows cisgender youth to receive the same gender-affirming care, including both puberty blockers and hormone therapy, to help align their bodies with their gender, such as to address breast development in boys or facial hair in girls. +The law bans the care only when provided to affirm the gender of transgender youth. +Such brazen discrimination cannot be reconciled with the Constitution. +Every mainstream medical association — from the American Medical Association to the American Academy of Pediatrics — agrees that gender-affirming care is medically necessary and appropriate care for the transgender youth who need it. +And the effects of withholding this care from transgender youth are chilling — self-harm and suicidal ideation are many times more common among transgender youth than among cisgender youth, especially when they cannot get the care and support that they need. +Indeed, in just the week after the Arkansas House of Representatives passed this bill, Arkansas Children’s Hospital reported multiple suicide attempts by transgender youth distraught at what the new statute would mean for their future. +Arkansas’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, vetoed this bill because he saw it as inappropriately overriding “parents, patients, and health care experts,” who are the ones who should determine the appropriate care for children. +The state legislature overrode that veto, disregarding the consensus among the medical community and the harm to children like Brooke. +Transgender children in crisis shouldn’t have to turn to the courts to ensure that they can get the health care that their doctors and parents agree they need. +But that’s the reality that anti-LGBTQ forces have created as part of their campaign of attacks on transgender youth. +Transgender youth and advocates fought against the over 75 anti-trans bills introduced in state legislatures this year. +Whenever a bill was defeated, the voices of trans youth were instrumental in the victory. +Tens of thousands of ACLU supporters acted by showing up at protests, sending emails to elected officials, and filling up governors’ inboxes urging vetoes on these discriminatory and harmful bills. +We made a promise to take states that passed many of these bills to court, and today we are following through on that promise. +Brooke’s parents are anxious about what they will do if the law takes effect. +They could travel out of state to get Brooke the care she needs, but that’s expensive and they don’t think it will be sustainable for long. +The only other option is to move the family out of state, but Brooke’s grandparents live in Arkansas and need a lot of support, and Brooke’s parents help take care of them. +If this law goes into effect, the Dennises will be forced to leave their aging parents behind to get their daughter the medical care she will need. +To keep their family together during Brooke’s medical care, Brooke and her parents, along with three other Arkansas families and two doctors, are taking this fight to court. +The ACLU is proud to fight alongside transgender young people like Brooke, who are looking to protect not only themselves, but all youth who need this care. +As we enter Pride month, I am reflecting on the interconnectedness of our joy and our struggle. +I am struck by the fact that Pride and Immigrant Heritage month begin just as Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Jewish American Heritage Month end. +Though Pride should be about our intersectional struggle for freedom, it has not always felt that way. +As I think about all the communities gathering virtually and in-person to celebrate the power and resilience of our queer communities, it’s essential to name what our trans, Asian and Pacific Islander, Indigenous, Jewish, Muslim, and Black communities in the U.S. might also be carrying into this month. +Over the last year, anti-trans bills swept through the country, targeting trans youth and athletes and impacting trans and non-binary individuals everywhere. +As Chase Strangio reminds us, more anti-trans bills became law in 2021 than in the previous 10 years combined. +Throughout the last year and a half, our AAPI families and communities have experienced horrific acts of violence and harm, the most recent escalation of racism that has impacted AAPI communities across the United States. +In 2020 alone, Native Americans, Tribal, and Indigenous communities endured a devastating year highlighting the disparities and inequities that Native communities have experienced for centuries. +Yet another reminder of the original sin of the nation — colonization, white supremacy, and genocide that remain unaccounted for and unacknowledged to this day. +Over the last month, there has been a sharp rise in antisemitic rhetoric, desecration of sacred spaces and Jewish businesses, and assaults. +These attacks are not new and are part of a long and devastating history of violence against Jewish people in the United States. +Our Muslim families and communities continue to experience Islamophobia that impacts their safety, places of worship, freedom of movement, and livelihoods in the U.S. +Our Muslim communities experience this harm in every corner of our country — it is interpersonal, institutional, and systemic. +Our Black communities continue, daily, to experience state violence, institutional racism, and the impact of 400 years of white supremacy and anti-Black oppression. +These struggles, and so many more, are at the heart and purpose of Pride. +If Marsha and Sylvia taught us anything, it’s that if Pride doesn’t include all of us, it doesn’t hold meaning for any of us. +If we’re not marching for our collective liberation, we might as well not march at all. +Pride is our fight for racial justice. +Pride is the end of anti-Asian violence and racism. +Pride is speaking up against antisemitism, putting our bodies in front of xenophobia, and demanding justice and peace for our Muslim siblings. +Pride is denouncing colonization and honoring the original inhabitants of this land. +Pride is disability justice, fat liberation, and a love letter to Black femmes who continue to build movements of self-care and bodily autonomy. +Pride is decriminalizing sex work, stopping the war on drugs, and ending the over-policing of our communities. +Pride is an end to mass incarceration and a fight against institutionalizing our communities. +Pride is protecting trans youth and uplifting trans and non-binary leadership. +Pride is not just “love is love,” Pride is liberation is liberation. +This year, as our parties and celebrations reemerge, we have a chance to build on the sacred legacy with which we’ve been gifted. +Dance in the streets, march with joy, and never stop fighting. +Across the country, lawmakers have enacted sweeping attacks on transgender people — particularly transgender youth. +After initially focusing primarily on restroom restrictions, opponents of trans rights have switched their target to sports. +This year, Arkansas went even further, passing a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. +Four transgender youth and two doctors joined with the ACLU to sue the state. +Arkansas’s new health care ban, scheduled to go into effect at the end of July, would not only prohibit healthcare professionals from providing or referring transgender youth for medically necessary health care, it would also allow private insurers to refuse to cover gender-affirming care for transgender people of any age. +If it is allowed to go into effect, the law will have detrimental effects on the mental, emotional, and physical health of transgender people across the state. +The first court hearing addressing the constitutionality of a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth will take place on July 21. +Here are five things to know about the Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care, taken directly from the personal testimonies and briefs submitted to the court. +Trans youth know what is best for them. +“[After starting hormone therapy,] I now feel a level of confidence I never knew was possible. +I can easily and confidently interact with other people, whether I know them or not. +My body is finally beginning to match who I am.” +— Dylan Brandt 15-year-old Dylan Brandt and the three other transgender youth in our case know who they are. +“Hormone-therapy treatment has been life-changing. +Since starting hormone therapy, I have become genuinely happy and confident for the first time since I can remember. +I can finally see a future for myself. +My depression has subsided. +I have not engaged in self -harm. +I have become more engaged with my family and community.” +— Sabrina Jennen, another transgender youth relying on gender-affirming healthcare. +Parents see what gender-affirming care means to their kids. +“[After accepting Brooke’s new pronouns,] it was as if a cloud lifted and Brooke’s smile came back. +We had a happy, bright-eyed child again, and we were relieved to see our child flourishing once more.” +— Amanda and Shayne Dennis, parents of 9-year-old Brooke Dennis. +Amanda and Shayne Dennis are just two of the many parents of transgender children who have seen the positive impact that gender-affirming care has had on their children. +“Since starting hormone therapy…she has become more engaged with her family. +Treatment has made her happy, confident, and has helped her become the thriving child we love so dearly.” +— Aaron and Lacey Jennen, parents of 15-year-old Sabrina. +Many young people who are not trans access gender-affirming health care. +“If House Bill 1570 (the "Health Care Ban") takes effect, I will be prohibited from providing these treatments to my transgender patients because they relate to ‘gender transition’ but I will be able to continue providing the same treatments to my cisgender patients to help bring their bodies into alignment with their gender.” +— Dr. Michelle Hutchison, one of the doctors suing the state. +Across pediatric practices, cisgender youth rely on this critical care for a variety of reasons — including to treat precocious puberty and polycystic ovarian syndrome. +A Harvard Medical School and Fenway Institute study found that doctors have been using these safe medications for decades for cisgender children who go through puberty too early. +“There is nothing inherently harmful about undergoing hormone treatment to sustain one’s health and it is a common practice in many non-transgender patients for reasons unrelated to treatment of gender dysphoria. +I regularly treat cisgender patients with the same hormone therapy that is provided to transgender patients.” +— Dr. Deanna Adkins. +Doctors Agree: Gender-Affirming Care is Life-Saving Care Arkansas has become the first state to pass a bill banning health care for transgender youth and 16 other states have introduced similar legislation. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union Gender-affirming care saves lives. +“Gender-affirming care, including puberty suppression and hormone therapy, is potentially lifesaving.” +That’s what the Pediatric Endocrine Society made clear in their brief to the court. +“Proper gender-affirming care can mitigate a patient’s clinical distress and lead to significant improvements in the overall well-being of youth and adolescents who are at risk of or have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria … studies show that transgender adults who received appropriate treatment during adolescence had a lower incidence of lifetime suicidal ideation than those who wanted but could not obtain such treatment.” +— The American Academy of Pediatrics. +In light of this, it is not surprising that child and adolescent psychiatrists have attested that, should the Health Care Ban take effect, “the lives of some of our patients will be put at risk.” +Laws attacking trans youth will hurt the Arkansas economy. +“If the Health Care Ban takes effect, the backlash — from consumers and businesses alike — is likely to be fierce, causing a decline in economic activity within the state. +This will inflict substantial harm on amici, Arkansas businesses, and all Arkansans, because all benefit from a strong economy.” +— A group of businesses in a brief to the court. +This is in large part because many of the families who will be affected by the Health Care Ban are considering leaving their homes, their extended families, their communities, and even their jobs to ensure that their children are able to receive gender-affirming care. +The ban could also discourage other LGBTQ individuals and their families from moving to the state altogether, impairing: “the ability of [Arkansas businesses] to attract and retain a diverse, inclusive, and talented workforce. +As a result, it will place Arkansas’ businesses at a competitive disadvantage, both domestically and on the global stage.” +— Liveramp Holdings, Inc. and Additional Business Organizations. +Brandt et al v. Rutledge et al Families of transgender youth and doctors are fighting an Arkansas law that would prevent transgender youth from getting medically necessary care. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union +Mastercard’s new policy regulating adult content sellers goes into effect today. +This is bad news for many sex workers, whose safety and livelihoods depend on access to financial services and online platforms. +The policy makes it harder for sex workers to do business online and makes sex workers more vulnerable, especially those who are trans women of color. +Here’s what to know about financial discrimination against sex workers, how we’re fighting back, and what Mastercard must do now – and in the longrun – to protect sex workers’ rights. +Sex workers already face many forms of financial and tech-based discrimination. +Many banks and companies single out sex workers by forcing them to pay higher fees and interest rates because they consider them “high-risk.” +Public platforms like PayPal and Venmo, which should offer their services to all users without discrimination, continue to boot sex workers and other users off their platforms with little due process. +Bans on certain online content can also get adult websites shut-down and cost sex workers their livelihoods. +These practices amount to financial discrimination, which stigmatizes sex work and endangers the safety of sex workers by pushing the industry deeper into the shadows. +What does Mastercard’s adult content policy do? +Mastercard developed a new policy for adult content websites using its credit card or payment options, imposing requirements such as pre-approval of all content before publication, forbidding certain search terms, and keeping records of age and identity verification for all performers. +The stated intent of the policy is to prevent child sexual abuse material and other non-consensual content. +But in practice, these requirements are difficult – if not impossible – to comply with. +To take one example, a site like OnlyFans has one million content creators. +If each of them uploaded one video in a given day, under Mastercard’s policy, OnlyFans would have to review each video before it’s published to determine whether it complies. +Pre-publication review at that scale is almost impossible, and would likely be rife with errors considering the speed at which online platforms operate. +This policy will make it much harder for platforms to host adult content, which will destabilize the websites that sex workers use to make a living. +Additionally, this policy is not targeted to address Mastercard’s stated concerns. +The policy applies only to a small fraction of web sites – those that host adult content – but all available evidence indicates these problems proliferate across all kinds of websites. +Financial discrimination and sex work decriminalization is a civil liberties issue. +Everyone deserves access to financial services and everyone should be able to make a living and support themselves and their families. +Financial discrimination and other laws and policies that criminalize or stigmatize sex work disproportionately harm the safety and wellbeing of Black trans women, contribute to mass incarceration and racist policing, chill our right to free speech and invade our privacy. +If Mastercard is a true supporter of LGBTQ rights, as it claims on its Pride page, it should immediately reverse this discriminatory policy. +Sex work is work. +Sex workers’ livelihoods shouldn’t depend on the whims of politicians and corporations. +Using financial products and services like Mastercard and PayPal, and access to websites that use these payment processors, can make or break a sex worker’s ability to work and survive in our increasingly virtual society. +Economic freedom, healthcare, and other basic rights are inaccessible when politicians and corporations don’t treat sex work like they would any other job. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement Criminalizing and marginalizing sex work does not make sex workers safer. +Laws that criminalize sex work make sex workers more vulnerable to abuse by clients, law enforcement, and others who target and harass sex workers or those perceived as sex workers, such as many trans women of color. +Abusers know that sex workers often will not report out of fear of arrest. +Similarly, not allowing sex workers full access to web platforms and financial services makes it harder for sex workers to survive. +Sex workers became even more vulnerable to abuse from clients after the passage of SESTA/FOSTA in 2018. +The law had the effect of eliminating many online platforms for sex workers, including client screening services like Redbook, which allowed sex workers to share information about abusive and dangerous customers and build communities to protect themselves. +The law also pushed more sex workers offline and into the streets, where they have to work in isolated areas to avoid arrest, and deal with clients without background checks. +Sex worker reform advocates are making progress. +In June, the ACLU joined 22 other civil rights groups in demanding a stop to financial platforms’ practices that harm vulnerable communities by shutting people out without due process. +After facing months of pressure from sex workers’ rights activists, the online platform OnlyFans suspended a planned policy to ban pornography, which would have gone into effect on October 1. +These efforts prove that activism is working. +Financial services companies must ensure that sex workers have access to services. +Mastercard must end their policy unfairly targeting the adult content industry and ensure equitable access to financial services. +In addition to reversing discriminatory policies, Mastercard must sit down with stakeholders to develop solutions that create stability and reduce harm for sex workers. +We must discourage companies from passing similar policies or otherwise denying services to sex workers. +To join the fight, sign our petition to Mastercard. +Mastercard: +Sex Work is Work. +End Your Unjust Policy. +Mastercard's new policy unfairly targets the adult content industry, making sex workers more vulnerable, especially Black trans women. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union Are you a sex worker/adult content professional who has been affected by financial discrimination? +Let us know. +Please email me at lzannell@aclu.org. +Do you have a plan to cast your ballot on November 3rd or before during early voting? +We’re all are asking this question, but for many transgender people it invokes an extra layer of questions and anxiety. +Will I need to show ID? +If so, can I get my name and gender marker changed on my ID in time? +Did I change my name on my voter registration? +How should I dress? +Will a poll worker embarrass me, out me, or challenge my identity? +WIll I get harassed for being trans or some other reason? +Transgender voters encounter a number of barriers that make exercising our right to vote complicated, intimidating and unnecessarily difficult. +State ID laws have created a web of barriers for transgender residents to cast their ballot. +There are around 378,450 voting-eligible transgender people across the country who do not have accurate IDs. +And 81,000 transgender voters live in states with the strictest photo ID requirements. +Trans people have to jump through lots of hoops to get updated identification that reflects who we are. +Typically we have to submit a legal petition to state court and have a hearing in front of a judge. +In some states we need background checks and to publish the name change in a newspaper, which costs money. +We need to present documentation at all sorts of agencies to update our information, and changing gender markers can require a variety of burdensome medical certifications. +If that doesn’t sound complicated enough, this election has additional hurdles for transgender voters due to the coronavirus pandemic. +Many state courts, DMVs, and social security offices closed, meaning trans people could not start their necessary legal filings or got stuck somewhere in the process. +Now even with some offices reopening, huge backlogs and new protocols mean appointments are not available for months, leaving many trans people stuck in the lurch with mismatched documents heading into election day. +Partly because many of us do not have stable, long-term housing, it can be challenging to keep our registration updated even under ordinary circumstances. +Transgender people were twice as likely as the general U.S. population to report problems like not receiving an absentee ballot or being registered at the wrong address kept us from voting in the 2014 election. +These and other barriers do not impact all trans people equally. +A 2015 survey found that Black transgender people were 3.5 times as likely as white transgender people to not be registered to vote because they feared anti-transgender harassment. +IDs can cost money, and even if the ID is free the process of updating underlying documents can cost time and money which not all of us can afford to pay. +Black and Indigenous transgender women are also more likely than other trans people to have been incarcerated, which sometimes leads to loss of voting rights. +As intimidating as these challenges may seem, trans people who are eligible to vote often do vote — in fact, we may vote in higher numbers than the general U.S. population. +That may be because we know that our rights are on the line. +It is illegal for poll workers to turn us away from voting because we are transgender. +And the news is not all bad for transgender voters in this election. +Expanded vote by mail access across the country due to COVID-19 may alleviate some of the threat of in-person intimidation, harassment, and questioning. +If you plan to cast a vote by mail, make sure you check your voter registration status and fill out your ballot using the name you are registered under. +Request and return your ballot as far in advance as possible, to avoid any last-minute problems. +If you have questions about how to cast your ballot this election, check our voting resources or reach out for assistance. +Voting Rights In 2020, we won 28 victories in 21 states and Puerto Rico to safeguard the voting rights of millions of Americans in November. +We're not done yet. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union Here at the ACLU we will continue the fight to improve access to updated identification and remove barriers to exercising your right to vote. +In the meantime, we hope everyone who is eligible will vote! +We need all of our voices in this democracy to keep moving toward justice for all. +Checklist for Trans Voters Check your voter registration status to make sure you are registered and your name and address are up to date. +See our ACLU Let People Vote guide for info on whether your state allows vote by mail, early voting, and other important info on how to cast your vote. +If you are voting by mail, make sure you fill out your ballot and sign using the name listed on your voter registration. +If you are voting in person, consider going with a friend in case you encounter harassment or need to document discrimination. +You may want to plan extra time in case you encounter difficulties. +Call 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) if you encounter any problems while voting. +Intersex people make up as much as 1.7 percent of the population and are born with bodies that differ from what others might think of as “typically” male or female. +Although being intersex isn’t that rare, this population is widely misunderstood and underrepresented, much like the trans community. +Racist colonial erasure, late-stage capitalism, and the medical industrial complex have combined to create implicit assumptions (and often explicit recommendations) with which trans and intersex groups are all-too familiar. +We are told, usually by cis and non-intersex people, there’s only one right way to have a body — and that that body should be as normatively close to binary and cis as possible. +At interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, we are working hard with our partners at Patterson Belknap LLP to prepare our friend-of-the-court brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. +This follows the district court blocking an Idaho law that targeted trans student athletes and sought to exclude trans and intersex women and girls from school sports. +We’re hopeful the judges of the Ninth Circuit recognize why it is so important to stop this law from going into effect. +As we prepare our brief, we also approach Intersex Awareness Day on October 26. +It is particularly important on this day to recognize why intersex people continue to show up in support of the trans community and in opposition to the unrelenting efforts to deny trans people their rights. +Intersex groups and the advocates who work on their behalf joined the effort to oppose HB 500 — Idaho’s law attacking transgender student athletes — not only because many intersex people are also trans (and vice versa), and not only becase the proposed approach to sex testing in sports violates the rights of the intersex community as well. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement Intersex people are fighting this fight too because the community viscerally understands what’s at stake. +As the complaint filed by ACLU clients Lindsay Hecox and Jane Doe explains, “Often, children discovered to be intersex in infancy are subjected to nonconsensual, harmful, and irreversible ‘normalizing’ surgical interventions, including reducing the size of the clitoris, creating a vaginal opening, and removing hormone-producing gonads in an attempt to erase their intersex differences based on notions of what is ‘normal’ for boys’ or girls’ bodies.” +This is precisely the type of abuse (and it is abuse: this is deemed a form of torture by the United Nations) that flows from anti-trans bills like HB 500. +There are intersex students in every school district in Idaho who in infancy survived the trauma of these surgeries, only to still be considered not “female” enough to participate on women and girls’ teams. +No one should be told by a surgeon or a coach or anyone else that their clitoris is too big to be female, or that their chromosomes are more real than their gender, or that their hormones are too “masculine” to allow them to compete as who they are. +The plaintiffs in this case are women who were fortunate enough to have medical decision-making power over their own bodies, at least in the realm of trans-related care, and who rightfully deserve to engage in college sports without anyone scrutinizing their sex characteristics. +No one should be told by a surgeon or a coach or anyone else that their clitoris is too big to be female, or that their chromosomes are more real than their gender, or that their hormones are too “masculine” to allow them to compete as who they are. +Trans and intersex communities have allied together because we know these are false boundaries invented to exclude already oppressed communities, usually along racist and ableist lines. +Our bodies may transcend common conceptions of sex and gender, yet we exist within these systems (like sports, medicine, and institutional settings) every day and most often leave them better than when we found them. +Simplistic, bigoted approaches to trans and intersex people in these settings succeed because of intellectual and moral laziness. +The refusal by the cis community to creatively imagine solutions isn’t surprising because they operate everyday within systems that prioritize cis-ness. +But what’s especially egregious is when attempts are made to change the rules of the system with the specific intent of further harming groups that are already targeted in virtually all other areas, as in the case of HB 500. +The appropriate response when trans and intersex athletes try to work within an already flawed system is gracious celebration, rather than exclusion and derision. +It’s telling that the resources in support of HB 500 are funneled toward litigation to appeal to the far right rather than actually building up women’s sports. +These attacks are never about meaningfully protecting women. +The challenges faced by the plaintiffs in this case and those they represent are considerable already. +As we celebrate Intersex Awareness Day on the 26th, let’s remember that a lack of awareness about trans and intersex lived realities — and the fact that many of us are actually joyful about our trans and intersex bodies — has allowed a cloud of shame and stigma to conceal what no lawsuit can change. +Trans and intersex people are a part of the vast and diverse beauty of human existence. +We will continue to improve upon tired understandings of sex and gender for as long as these systems exist. +Alesdair H. Ittelson is the Legal Director at interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, the nation’s largest and oldest organization working to protect the rights of people born with variations in sex characteristics. +Each year on Nov. 20, Trans Day of Remembrance (TDOR) gives us an opportunity to remember and honor the trans and non-binary people who have been killed at the hands of transphobic and transmisogynistic violence. +In 2020, over 350 trans and non-binary people have been killed around the world, the large majority of whom were trans women and trans feminine people. +Within the United States, there have been at least 28 documented cases of trans and non-binary people who have been murdered this year, with Transrespect Versus Transphobia Worldwide (TvT) reporting that almost 80 percent were people of color. +While TDOR largely focuses on those we have lost to murder, it is also important to recognize trans and non-binary people who have died because of medical neglect, lack of access to shelter, suicide, and other preventable causes. +This increasing and alarming rate of death has been labeled a pandemic, and continues to impact trans and non-binary communities, especially Black trans and non-binary communities, in every corner of the United States. +In addition to high murder rates, trans and non-binary people also face widespread physical and sexual violence, especially from law enforcement. +There is a long history of trans and non-binary people being targeted by the police and the criminal legal system as a whole. +As maya finoh, a Black non-binary abolitionist and cultural worker, reminds us, “The [U.S. criminal legal system] was absolutely designed to warehouse us, to surveil us, to police us…specifically [those of] us who are Black…immigrants…queer, trans, et cetera.” +Research conducted by the NYC Anti-Violence Project concluded that trans and non-binary people are seven times more likely to experience physical police violence as compared to cisgender people. +Black trans and non-binary people continue to experience the highest rates of police brutality and incarceration in the LGBTQ community, and are even criminalized for defending themselves against anti-Black, transphobic, and transmisogynyistic attacks. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement Across trans and non-binary communities, law enforcement officers have often abused their power to violently enforce the gender binary and punish gender non-conformity. +This often leads to police criminalizing trans and non-binary people for non-illegal activity, such as using public restrooms or standing on street corners. +If trans and non-binary people are not killed or harmed by police officers, then they are arrested or incarcerated for “crimes” like false personation, suspicion of sex work, or disorderly conduct, simply for being who they are. +Once incarcerated, trans and non-binary people are often forced into facilities that do not align with their gender, denied access to gender-affirming health care, and sexually harassed and assaulted at disproportionate rates. +The ACLU’s legal and policy work on rights for trans and non-binary people and sex work decriminalization demonstrates how anti-trans violence can be fought at a structural level, and has resulted in tangible change for trans and non-binary people. +In the face of so much violence and death, trans and non-binary people on the ground continue to mobilize to support and protect their communities. +This includes actions such as rallies, like the March for Black Trans Lives held this past summer in Brooklyn, and the creation of mutual aid funds and networks, which assist trans and non-binary people in accessing necessary resources. +Trans and non-binary people also continue to be vocal about their needs and the conditions required to survive and thrive in a world filled with transphobic and transmisogynstic violence. +The Trans Agenda for Liberation’s “Black Trans Women and Black Trans Femmes: Leading & Living Fiercely,” envisions concrete solutions to combat the discrimination and violence that Black trans women and Black trans feminine people experience, and projects like Trans Day of Resilience provide space for community empowerment and connection among trans and non-binary people of color. +It is essential for us to celebrate, support, and care for the trans and non-binary people who are still living as we mourn and honor those who have passed. +Some concrete actions include: Policy: Educate yourself about the decriminalization of sex work, and how decriminalization would impact the lives of trans and non-binary people. +Get involved in decriminalization efforts in your area, or if there are none, work with local community organizers to bring this issue to their attention. +Know Your Rights: Research your rights for interacting with law enforcement, and learn ways to safely de-escalate situations in which police are verbally or physically harassing trans and non-binary people. +Mutual Aid: Find mutual aid networks in your city and state, and plug into the needs that trans and non-binary have named as priorities for their communities. +You can also contribute to mutual aid funds for trans and non-binary people to ensure that your money will directly benefit their survival, and donate to bail funds for trans and non-binary people who cannot afford cash bail. +On this Trans Day of Remembrance, we honor the following trans and non-binary people. +May they rest in power. +Aerrion Burnett, Independence, MO Aja Raquell Rhone-Spears, Portland, OR Alexa Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, Toa Baja, Puerto Rico Angel Haynes, Memphis, TN Ashley Moore, Newark, NJ Brayla Stone, Sherwood, AR Bree “Nuk” Black, Pompano Beach, FL Brian "Egypt" Powers, Akron, OH Dominique "Rem'mie" Fells, Philadelphia, PA Draya McCarty, Baton Rouge, LA Dustin Parker, McAlester, OK Felycya Harris, August, GA Helle Jae O’Regan, San Antonio, TX Jayne Thompson, Mesa County, CO Johanna Metzger, Baltimore, MD Kee Sam, Lafayette, LA Layla Pelaez Sánchez, Puerto Rico, Lexi, New York, NY Marilyn Cazares, Brawley, CA Merci Mack, Dallas, TX Mia Green, West Philadelphia, PA Michellyn Ramos Vargas, San Germán, Puerto Rico Monika Diamond, Charlotte, NC Nina Pop, Sikeston, MO Penélope Díaz Ramírez, Bayamon, Puerto Rico Queasha D. Hardy, Baton Rouge, LA Riah Milton, Liberty Township, OH Sara Blackwood, Indianapolis, IN Selena Reyes Hernandez, Chicago, IL Serena Angelique Velázquez Ramos, Puerto Rico, Shaki Peters, Amite City, LA Summer Taylor, Seattle, WA Tatiana Hall, Philadelphia, PA Tiffany Harris, The Bronx, NY Tony McDade, Tallahassee, FL Yampi Méndez Arocho, Moca, Puerto Rico Yunieski Carey Herrera, Miami, FL and the other 330 trans and non-binary people murdered around the world. +Source: Anti-Violence Project and news reports. +Like pretty much everything in 2020, Trans Day of Remembrance is going to be different this year. +It’s going virtual. +But one thing that hasn’t changed is that transgender people are still being murdered for who we are. +The list of names keeps growing. +This year is the deadliest ever, and it isn’t even over yet. +Thirty-seven trans people have been killed since January. +The real number is probably even higher. +Trans people are often misgendered by law enforcement or don’t report attacks, so we don’t even know about most of the violence that happens to our sisters. +Most of the deaths this year were of Black trans women. +Many were sex workers. +I am not surprised. +As a trans woman of color and a former sex worker myself, I know what it’s like to be targeted for who you are, and to not have anyone to call for help because your job is illegal. +I know what it’s like to be targeted for who you are, and to not have anyone to call for help because your job is illegal. +I’m lucky that I was never assaulted in my 12 years of doing sex work. +I’m in the minority. +But I have been robbed while working. +My experience showed me the difficult situation that sex workers face when it comes to reporting: I wanted to seek justice, but I was too afraid of being arrested to go to the police station. +Laws that criminalize sex work push the industry underground, which makes it more dangerous. +Sex workers face high rates of violence because clients assume they can assault or rob sex workers and get away with it. +They take advantage of the fact that so many of us are afraid of reporting for fear of what will happen to us. +If we call the police, we could be arrested for selling sex. +We could also be abused by law enforcement. +Being a sex worker is dangerous whether you’re trans, cis, LGBTQ, or straight. +But it’s especially dangerous if you are a trans woman of color. +Kaniya Walker Credit: Wilfredo Martinez Both police and civilians profile trans women of color as sex workers even when we are not engaging in sex work. +We’re seen as easy targets, especially if we are from a low-income community. +In Washington, D.C., where I live, 4 out of every 5 trans women report being verbally, physically, or sexually assaulted. +This violence exists across the country. +Nine in 10 trans sex workers or those suspected of being a sex worker reported being harassed, attacked, or assaulted by the police. +Trans women who are not sex workers also face violence. +I remember a case in New Orleans when a man drove around shooting trans women on the street. +They were simply walking — existing — while trans. +Anti-sex work laws like SESTA/FOSTA make sex workers, especially trans women of color, even more vulnerable to violence. +The law banned online platforms and screening tools that sex workers use to screen clients and share information to stay safe, making it harder for sex workers to protect themselves. +Banning online sex work platforms pushes sex workers out onto the street, which is more dangerous. +Client interactions are quick because we don’t want to be caught. +I know some girls who feel the need to get a gun license to protect themselves. +Others will carry knives or mace. +You never know when you will need it. +It’s two strangers meeting each other — there’s always a chance that something bad might happen. +Some girls feel the need to get a gun license to protect themselves. +Others carry knives or mace. +You never know when you will need it. +You might be wondering why anybody would want to be a sex worker. +A lot of us choose to get into sex work because the money is good and it is an environment where we can surround ourselves with other trans people. +But some of us just don’t have any other options because of discrimination in the legal job market. +Trans people are more likely to be unemployed compared to cisgender people. +Thirty-four percent of Black trans people live in poverty. +Trans people without a college degree and trans people who have experienced homelessness are even more likely to engage in sex work. +These are some of the reasons why sex workers are disproportionately Black or Latinx trans women. +It’s what we call survival sex. +Because trans women are more likely to engage in sex work, we’re also more likely to be incarcerated than the general population. +I’ve been to jail because I was arrested for being a sex worker. +I know it’s not something I or any other sex worker should have to experience, especially if they are trans. +Jails and prisons often misgender us and put us in men’s facilities, where we are at higher risk of being assaulted. +I’ve heard of trans women being taunted by staff and cellmates, such as asking whether their hair is detachable and making them take it off just to embarrass them. +The punishment doesn’t end there. +Once you get out of jail or prison, a past conviction can prevent you from getting a job, housing, health care, or other services. +We cannot survive and thrive if our lives are policed and criminalized. +I’m not a sex worker anymore. +I’ve moved on to a different career working with Heart to Hand and other trans and sex work advocacy organizations. +Now, I use my voice to advocate for the sex workers and trans women of color who feel they don’t have a voice living in a criminalized world. +Decriminalizing sex work would help sex workers to go out and make money safely, take care of themselves, and have the option to change careers — if they choose to do that one day. +When we think about a future where we are not grieving so many of our siblings on Trans Day of Remembrance, ending the criminalization of sex work will be a critical part. +We cannot survive and thrive if our lives are policed and criminalized. +For more information about the impact of sex work criminalization and evidence-based approaches to decriminalize, visit aclu.org/sexwork and download the ACLU research brief. +The federal government has not been kind to transgender people over the last four years. +Trans students were put at risk when the Department of Education withdrew critical guidance explaining how schools must protect transgender students. +Trans people facing housing instability were left in the cold when the Department of Housing and Urban Development rolled back rules protecting trans and gender non-conforming people from discrimination at homeless shelters and other housing services receiving federal funds. +Trans military members were devastated by a single tweet from the president that put their careers and livelihoods at stake. +And the list of attacks goes on. +The government is supposed to support and serve all of us, but trans folks have been intentionally and cruelly cut out these last four years, along with so many other communities. +Of course, we are still here, and will continue to take care of each other no matter who is in the White House. +We’ve heard Biden and Harris pledge to repeal the trans military ban and pass the Equality Act, and assure us that their administration will work to undo the harms of the last four years. +Now we must must hold this administration accountable and ensure that they make a meaningful difference in the day-to-day lives of trans and non-binary people around the country. +There’s one important action this administration can take right away to show transgender people that they respect and support us: give us identification that reflects who we are. +That’s why one of the ACLU’s top priorities for the Biden-Harris administration is an executive order updating the process by which federal agencies change gender markers on IDs. +This order will ensure that all transgender people have access to an accurate ID. +Currently, to update a gender marker in the social security system, on a passport, on immigration documents, or on any other federal ID or record, an applicant must submit a letter from a medical doctor attesting to appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition. +This executive order would remove those burdensome medical documentation requirements so that everyone has access to the appropriate gender marker, and add an “X” option so that non-binary, intersex, and other folks have an accurate designation. +Access to accurate IDs is personally meaningful for trans folks but also practical, ensuring we can travel, apply for jobs, and enter public establishments with less risk of harassment or harm. +But this update is not just about us, it’s a sensible solution for the federal government. +IDs are intended to identify people, and are useless when they don’t match the applicant. +Requiring trans folks to jump through hoops with doctor’s visits and medical letters to obtain updated IDs is costly, complicated, an invasion of privacy, and entirely unnecessary — and prevents many people from getting an updated ID to move through the world. +Accurate IDs are not possible without appropriate options for non-binary folks, intersex people, and anyone else for whom an “M” or “F” is not suitable. +An “X” designation is used throughout the world to indicate a sex or gender other than male or female, and must be available on our federal documents. +Nearly 20 states already have self-attestation and an “X” designation on driver’s licenses and state IDs, so this update is also important to ensure that people can have consistent state and federal documents. +The ACLU is excited to encourage this important step forward. +In 2021, we’ll be sharing stories from trans and non-binary folks about the importance of accurate IDs, meeting with White House officials, and pushing the administration to follow through on their promises to the trans community. +With one stroke of the pen, President-elect Biden can issue this order to not only provide a common-sense solution to access accurate IDs, but send a critical message to transgender people across the country: Our government sees you as exactly who you say you are, and we want you to be supported and included in this country. +Building trust between the government and trans communities is a long and hard process, but it starts with recognition. +My driver’s license is just like yours. +It has my photo, date of birth, and other standard descriptors. +Under gender, however, you’ll find not M or F, but X. In 2017, I became the first person in the country to obtain an official nonbinary, gender-neutral X-marker on my driver’s license. +I live in Washington D.C., which was among the first jurisdictions in the U.S. to officially offer an X marker to recognize nonbinary people as well as those who simply want a gender-neutral form of ID. +At the same time, D.C. also removed requirements for a medical or third-party certification of gender to correct a gender marker. +I’m proud to have joined LGBTQ+ activists in D.C. in making these policies happen. +The Biden administration has an opportunity to affirm trans and nonbinary rights by permitting X gender markers on all federal IDs. +Movements for trans and nonbinary equity have made significant progress since I got my nonbinary ID in 2017. +Across the country, more than 124 million people live in jurisdictions that are now issuing state IDs with X markers, and over 93 million live in jurisdictions that issue birth certificates with an X designation. +Still, only 11 percent of trans people nationwide have an accurate name and gender marker on all IDs and records. +Sixty-eight percent do not have any IDs displaying their accurate name and gender. +And at the federal level, the government still does not permit gender neutral or nonbinary markers on passports, social security records, and most other federal documents. +It’s time for our federal government to catch up. +The Biden administration has an opportunity to affirm trans and nonbinary rights by permitting X gender markers on all federal IDs. +The first time I used my nonbinary driver’s license was to pass through airport security, and I prepared for the worst. +I brought copies of the D.C. policy and newspaper articles about it, so if somebody were to question me or say I had a fraudulent ID, I would be able to show them that it’s real. +But nobody even seemed to notice or comment upon the X listed for gender. +I was glad. +I have flown many times since then without ever having someone question the gender on my ID. +I had a similar experience when I tried to use my first birth certificate with an X marker, which I got from Connecticut in 2019. +I decided to try it out on my way home from a cruise trip later that year. +Again, I planned for the worst. +I made an emergency plan, alerted some friends, and put a 24-hour legal hotline on speed dial in case I was detained. +And again, despite all my fears and all my preparation, the immigration officials did not seem to notice the X gender marker. +My X-marked ID means a lot to me, especially as a U.S. citizen of Japanese descent. +In Japan, the term x-gender (x-jendā) has existed since the 1990s to describe gender nonbinary people. +Other countries recognize X designations under international passport standards, and a growing number of countries include an X designation option on their passports. +But my U.S. passport still does not have an X marker. +Applying for My First Nonbinary Passport President Biden promised to support X-marker IDs when he was running for office, but I’m not going to wait around for that promise to officially materialize. +I believe I have a legal and human right to access accurate ID documents. +All my other documents say I am nonbinary. +So why shouldn’t my passport reflect the same? +Anything else would be a lie. +On Inauguration Day, I went to a passport acceptance facility to apply for an accurate, nonbinary passport in person. +To prepare, I assembled various documents to support my case, including my nonbinary birth certificate and driver’s license, as well as a court order that declares I am nonbinary. +I also provided medical certification, which is something that the Department of State currently requests of all transgender people applying for a corrected gender marker, but which presents massive barriers to accessing accurate ID. +Getting medical certification could mean finding and paying for unnecessary medical appointments just for a provider to fill out paperwork. +Even the American Medical Association says the gender on our IDs should be “as reported by the individual and without need for verification by a medical professional.” +Medical certification is a waste of time and money. +We are in the midst of a horrifying pandemic, and forcing healthcare providers to go through unnecessary appointments and paperwork is ridiculous. +It also forces trans people to make difficult decisions about potentially spending hundreds of dollars on medical appointments and having to come out to a physician, which is not always the safest and best choice, especially when many providers still have little to no training on trans and nonbinary issues. +When I first came out to my physician as nonbinary and asked for his support, I was terrified that he would say no, and that it would deteriorate the trust in our relationship, or even end it. +Fortunately, he gave me a fierce yes, and told me he agreed that the government’s requirement of medical certification for this matter is absurd. +In my doctor’s certification letter, he explained that my access to nonbinary ID is important for my health and wellbeing, which is his priority. +He also explained that it aligns with contemporary medical standards, and it’s important for the accurate counting of nonbinary people in government demographic data. +Whether it’s for the U.S. Census or for social research, we need to know the differences and disparities in our communities. +When trans or nonbinary people are not included in demographic data, it means our communities do not get the funding and support we deserve. +That’s one of the reasons why the federal government should ensure access to accurate gender markers not just for passports, but for Social Security and other records as well. +As a nonbinary person, I want to be counted. +Trans and nonbinary people should not have to endure cruel legal confrontations in order to access our human rights. +I have a lot of privilege that has allowed me to break barriers and move through the world: I have had access to higher education, a certain amount of time and resources, networks of activist friends, and lawyers who can help. +And yet, I’ve experienced street harassment and even physical assault because of being nonbinary. +I’ve also seen editorials written to demean me, and horrifying comments on news articles saying that nonbinary people should be sent to a “guillotine” or “gas chamber.” +All of these acts of violence seek to erase me. +I do not need the federal government erasing me, too. +It’s a depressing and degrading experience for your government to deny your existence. +I am lucky to have had a positive outcome with my physician and IDs, but for many trans or nonbinary people, being forced to get medical certification just to have an accurate passport can be devastating to their health and finances. +Nobody should be forced to present documents that tell lies about who you are, and trans and nonbinary people should not have to endure cruel legal confrontations in order to access our human rights. +The reality is that cisgender people are not forced to get these same medical certifications when they apply for passports. +It’s a discriminatory policy. +I have long said that gender markers should not be necessary on IDs, and there are human rights principles that agree. +We will keep working with the government to evaluate where they can remove gender markers, but the first steps are to ensure everyone has access to an accurate ID and remove unnecessary barriers such as medical certification requirements and other expenses. +The Biden administration must issue an executive order directing all federal agencies to add a nonbinary and gender-neutral X designation to all federal IDs and records, and to remove documentation requirements for updating gender markers. +We must make sure the administration follows through on ensuring our right to an accurate ID that represents who we are. +In the meantime, I’m not waiting around. +My ID is often the first thing people see about me. +I could be at the grocery store, the DMV, or working my last job as a commercial driver. +As a trans woman, if my gender marker doesn’t match my name, paperwork, or how I present, then it will determine the way I get treated — whether I get called “ma’am” and helped, or dismissed because they don’t want to deal with me. +Having an inaccurate gender marker has cost me a job, housing opportunities, and basic respect. +I worked as a commercial driver for 13 years. +When I started a job at a new company, everything was going smoothly until I had to provide my birth certificate for paperwork. +At the time, my birth certificate read “M” for gender. +After my new employers saw it, they found reasons to question my work and fired me. +I haven’t been able to find the same kind of steady job since. +I’m here to identify myself accurately and get respect. +It’s hard not to take it personally, but over the years I have grown numb to the discrimination. +Sometimes, these experiences made me want to give up. +But that's not true happiness. +That's not what I’m here for. +I’m here to identify myself accurately and get respect. +So I have no choice but to keep pushing through. +I wasn’t always able to get a gender marker that matched who I am. +When I lived in Maryland, I was able to get my legal name changed to Erica, but the requirements to get my gender marker changed on my Maryland ID back then were just too burdensome. +I was supposed to provide letters from two different doctors — a physician and a therapist. +This was impossible because I didn’t have a regular doctor or therapist. +So every time I showed my license I would just hope that they didn’t notice the marker and question or disrespect me. +Allison Shelley +When I moved to D.C. they made it a lot easier. +I didn’t have to get a medical examination, and the whole process seemed more open. +It just seemed like they were saying, “Okay, we understand your experience. +We understand that this will make life better for you.” +Ever since I got my IDs changed, there has been a noticeable difference in the way I get treated. +Today I feel very comfortable and confident when I show anybody my ID because it matches my true self. +For me, that meant getting an “F” as my gender marker. +For others, that might mean using a gender-neutral “X” marker, because some people don’t identify as male or female, so they shouldn’t be forced into a box they don’t fit into. +Having an accurate ID should be a right for everybody, whether you’re trans, cis, or nonbinary. +Having an accurate ID should be a right for everybody, whether you’re trans, cis, or nonbinary. +Unfortunately there are still a lot of people who don’t understand. +They might have a notion that everybody is the same and everybody makes the same choices, or that those of us who are trans and nonbinary are bad people who are up to no good. +But trans and nonbinary people are just trying to be happy and access the same rights as everybody else. +We are who we are. +Until more people realize that, we are going to keep being rejected and discriminated against just for living our truth. +I’m hopeful that with the new administration we will see real change. +President Biden has already repealed the trans military ban and both he and Vice President Harris have pledged to support the Equality Act. +We need to hold our leaders accountable. +One way to make a meaningful difference in the lives of trans and nonbinary people is to give us identification that reflects who we are. +I have never had an ID that accurately reflects my gender. +The closest I have come to achieving this was when I received my New York City municipal ID (IDNYC). +Unlike my state ID, my city ID does not have any gender listed. +When applying for my city ID there were four options: M, F, X, and not designated. +I was given the autonomy to choose the gender marker that was best for me, and I did not have to provide a reason or any medical documentation for my choice. +As a non-binary person, being able to remove gender entirely from an ID gave me a sense of safety and comfort that I hadn’t previously experienced with other identification documents. +I felt relief that when showing my city ID, it wouldn’t “confirm” anyone’s assumptions or prompt any questions about my gender. +As a non-binary person, being able to remove gender entirely from an ID gave me a sense of safety and comfort +However, I cannot use my city ID as proof of identity outside of New York City, and even within the city, there are many circumstances in which I must show my state ID instead, such as checking into an airport or making an age-restricted purchase. +Whenever I present my state ID, I have to prepare myself for someone to look at my gender marker and make assumptions about who I am and how to refer to me, and when this happens, my gender is never respected, affirmed, or even seen. +The anxiety I feel in these situations is not uncommon among trans and non-binary people. +The National Center for Transgender Equality reported that 40 percent of trans people who presented identification that did not match their perceived gender experienced harassment, 15 percent were asked to leave the premesis, and 3 percent were assaulted. +The reality is that trans or non-binary people often experience discrimination related to our identification documents, which leads to us avoiding situations in which we need to show someone an ID for fear of violence. +The reality is that trans or non-binary people often experience discrimination related to our identification documents, which leads to us avoiding situations in which we need to show someone an ID for fear of violence. +In recognition of the barriers that trans and non-binary people face related to identitifcation documents, cities and states across the country are recognizing the need for more expansive ID options. +Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have an option for an “X” gender marker on their IDs, and many allow for self-attestation of one’s gender without documentation from a medical provider. +On the local level, some municipalities include a non-binary designation as an option, and others have an option to not list any gender on their IDs. +Notably, municipal IDs offered in Oakland, Richmond, and San Francisco, California; Little Rock, Arkansas; Poughkeepsie, New York; and Detroit, Michigan do not ask applicants for their gender at all. +These cities and states have demonstrated that IDs can function without issue with an X gender marker or without any gender designation. +But I shouldn’t feel limited in where I can live as a non-binary person. +I should be able to easily access identification documents that affirm my gender and safety anywhere in the United States. +The ACLU is asking the Biden-Harris administration to issue an executive order that allows for self-attestation of gender when applying for federal identification documents and creates an “X” designation for those who do not want an “M” or “F” gender marker or do not wish to disclose their gender. +In addition to the executive order, the ACLU also encourages federal agencies to re-evaluate which identification documents must require gender markers due to national or international standards, and to remove gender markers from being displayed on IDs whenever possible. +The proposed executive order would help more trans and non-binary people gain access to IDs that affirm their gender, and would strengthen advocacy for the removal of gender designations on identification documents altogether. +Trans and non-binary people know what is safest for us and our individual situations, and should be able to determine if we want to include a gender marker on our IDs at all. +Trans and non-binary people aren’t the only ones who will benefit from these changes. +Many gender non-conforming people experience violence if the gender listed on their ID does not match their percieved gender, and some intersex people do not have access to affirming or accurate identification documents. +Additionally, Black women are often masculinized and questioned about their gender due to anti-Black and misogynistic stereotypes, and are at a higher risk of harassment if their IDs are perceived as inaccurate. +We must keep in mind that more expansive gender designation options on IDs, including those that forgo gender markers entirely, will have positive implications beyond trans and non-binary communities. +We all have a stake in protecting each other from the violence that can result from identification documents, and in changing the policies and practices that harm those who are most marginalized in our communities. +We should advocate for gender designation options that grant people as much autonomy, privacy, and safety as possible, and recognize that sometimes the best option is no gender marker at all. +Transgender athletes want to participate in school sports for the same reason as anybody else: to find a sense of belonging and social engagement, to be a part of a team, and to challenge themselves. +But states and schools across the country are trying to exclude trans people from enjoying the benefits of sports on equal terms with their cisgender peers. +Not only do these proposed laws discriminate against trans youth in ways that compromise their health, social and emotional development, and safety, they also raise a host of privacy concerns. +The organizations leading these attacks on trans athletes’ rights are the same organizations that pushed false myths about trans people in restrooms. +Just like it was never about restrooms, today’s fight is not about sports. +It’s about erasing and excluding trans people from participation in all aspects of public life. +It’s about creating “solutions” to “problems” that don’t exist and, in the process, harming some of the most vulnerable young people in the country. +Meanwhile, leading advocates for women’s sports support inclusion of women and girls who are transgender and warn that these efforts will ultimately harm all athletes in women’s sports. +"I Just Want to Run" Lindsay Hecox Lindsay is a college student at Boise State University. +She wants to run on the track team because she loves to run, and loves the experience of building friendships and solidarity with her teammates. +As a girl, Lindsay’s only option is to run on the girls’ team, but a new law in Idaho would ban her from doing so because she is transgender. +Lindsay sued in 2020 and is represented by the ACLU and the ACLU of Idaho, Legal Voice, and Cooley LLP. +For updates on Lindsay’s case, visit the Hecox v. Little case page. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement Andraya Yearwood Andraya is a recent high school graduate who ran on her school’s girls’ track team. +A lawsuit was filed against her school and the state of Connecticut by cisgender students who did not want to run with transgender students. +The ACLU and ACLU of Connecticut joined the lawsuit on behalf of Andraya and Terry Miller, another student. +Both Terry and Andraya have graduated from high school and no longer compete in track, but anti-trans groups are suing to take away any record of their past achievements. +For updates on Andraya’s case, visit the Soule et al v. CT Association of Schools et al case page. +Trans athletes — particularly Black trans women — face systemic barriers to participation in athletics and all aspects of public life. +This exclusion contributes to the high rates of homelessness, suicidality, and violence that Black trans women and girls face. +Debunking Myths About Trans Athletes +The attacks on trans student-athletes are rooted in the same kind of gender discrimination and stereotyping that has held back cisgender women athletes for centuries. +Transgender girls are often told that they are not girls (and conversely transgender boys are told they are not really boys) based on inaccurate stereotypes about biology, athleticism, and gender. +In reality, trans women and girls have been competing in women’s sports at all levels around the world. +Despite the hundreds if not thousands of trans women competing, only a handful have had any success at the high school and collegiate level. +And women’s sports have continued to grow and thrive in states with policies that allow trans student athletes to compete. +Everything we know from major medical and mental health associations is that affirming trans youth in their gender is a critical part of improving physical and mental health outcomes for this population. +Four Myths About Trans Athletes, Debunked Upholding trans athletes' rights requires rooting out the inaccurate beliefs underlying harmful policies sweeping through state legislatures. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union State Bills In 2020, 18 states introduced legislation that would ban transgender student athletes from participating in school sports. +In 2021, 31 states introduced similar legislation. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement Idaho was the first and only state to pass such a ban. +In August 2020, a federal judge blocked Idaho’s law targeting transgender student athletes, recognizing that “it is not just the constitutional rights of transgender girls and women athletes at issue but … the constitutional rights of every girl and woman athlete in Idaho.” +The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to hear arguments in May in the appeal of the lower court’s decision and could rule any time after that. +Briefs in opposition to this law and in support of transgender student athletes have been filed by women’s rights groups, medical experts, athletes, and coaches. +Federal courts in Connecticut and West Virginia have also ruled in favor of trans students who want to participate in school sports. +Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures in 2024 Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in America continue to face discrimination in their daily lives. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union Federal Policies On Jan. 20, the Biden administration issued an executive order aimed at addressing discrimination against LGBTQ people. +Recent polls indicate this order is the most popular policy enacted by the administration in its first week. +Biden’s order restored protections — it did not introduce new ones. +Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s deputy director for trans justice, explains: Contrary to a trending hashtag on social media and the polemics of a few loud voices, President Biden most certainly did not “erase women” — whatever that means. +By stating the administration’s intention to follow Supreme Court precedent and federal law, at core all the newly-elected president did was lay out what the law is and agree, unlike his predecessor, to follow it. +That includes, as the order makes clear, ensuring that “[c]hildren should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.” +Before Biden’s executive action, the Obama administration issued guidance regarding protections for transgender students under Title IX, and before that, multiple courts had already ruled that existing federal law protects transgender students from discrimination in schools. +Since then, the Supreme Court has twice rejected cases challenging school policies that support transgender students (Doe v. Boyertown Area School District and Parents for Privacy v. Dallas School District No. 2). +Similarly, passing the Equality Act would not introduce new rights for transgender students, including women and girls who are transgender and wish to participate in school sports. +Trans People Belong in Sports Here’s what organizations that have fought for women athletes have to say: Women’s Sports Foundation +The false rhetoric taking hold is a distraction to the real threats to girls and women in sports, such as lack of Title IX understanding and compliance; inequity in compensation, resources, sponsorship, and media attention; harassment and abuse of female athletes and women working in sports, the list goes on. +National Women’s Law Center Additionally, history and modern experiences show how [Idaho’s anti-trans law] will disproportionately harm Black and Brown women and girls. +Black and Brown women and girls are routinely targeted, shamed, and dehumanized for not conforming to society’s expectations of femininity … +By allowing coaches, administrators, and other athletes to become the arbiters of who “looks like” a girl or a woman, [this law] will rely on and perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes. +National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education NCWGE supports the right of transgender and nonbinary students to learn in a safe, nondiscriminatory environment; to use names, pronouns, and identification documents consistent with their gender identity; to have full and equal access to sex-separated activities and facilities consistent with their gender identity, including athletics teams, bathrooms, and locker rooms; and to have their privacy protected in all education records, in accordance with Title IX, the reasoning in the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision, and President Biden’s Jan. 20, 2021 executive order. +Statement of 23 Women’s Rights and Gender Justice Organizations Equal participation in athletics for transgender people does not mean an end to women’s sports. +The idea that allowing girls who are transgender to compete in girls’ sports leads to male domination of female sports is based on a flawed understanding of what it means to be transgender and a misrepresentation of nondiscrimination laws. +Billie Jean King There is no place in any sport for discrimination of any kind. +I’m proud to support all transgender athletes who simply want the access and opportunity to compete in the sport they love. +The global athletic community grows stronger when we welcome and champion all athletes — including LGBTQ Megan Rapinoe +On Wednesday, yet another federal appeals court ruled that allowing a transgender boy to use the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms does not violate the rights of cisgender students or parents. +The decision is a resounding victory for trans youth and all who care about gender justice in schools and beyond. +At this point, two federal appeals courts have rejected the arguments from those who want to keep transgender people out of public life – including schools. +They argued that protecting trans students violates Title IX, the law that protects all of us from sex discrimination in education. +And in each case, courts rejected these arguments. +One of the most awful parts of these cases, for me, is the other side’s argument that just using the restroom becomes an act of sexual harassment if the person using it is trans. +Given how often trans people face actual sexual harassment and violence, it is galling when our opponents attempt to pervert the law and use it as a weapon to drive us out of public space. +They say that our very presence in public facilities is so offensive that schools have an obligationto kick us out. +The court roundly rejected that argument, stating that the “use of facilities for their intended purpose, without more, does not constitute an act of harassment simply because a person is transgender.” +This Oregon school district did the right thing when it chose not to discriminate against a transgender young person by giving him equal access to facilities, and reminding teachers and staff of their duty to prevent bullying. +As the court said, the school had “the legitimate purpose of protecting student safety and well-being, and eliminating discrimination on the basis of sex and transgender status.” +What’s more, “nowhere does the statute explicitly state, or even suggest, that schools may not allow transgender students to use the facilities that are most consistent with their gender identity.” +Throughout this case, trans youth and allies from Oregon and around the country have rallied to insist on fairness and decency. +Tyler Warner, a transgender high school student from Sutherlin, Oregon who was targeted in a similar suit, says, “I want every trans kid in Oregon to know that they have rights. +Being segregated into a single-user bathroom isn’t ok.” +Trans students also spoke out in an amicus brief, including K.E., a transgender boy in Idaho who had to give up cross country because he wasn’t allowed to use the boys’ locker room. +He heard about a transgender wrestler in Texas and all the “challenges he dealt with,” and “did not even want to try it.” +“I want every trans kid in Oregon to know that they have rights. +Being segregated into a single-user bathroom isn’t ok.” +Tyler Warner, high school student from Oregon targeted for being trans As exciting as this victory is, it comes at a moment when trans youth are under renewed attack. +After failing in their attempts to push trans people out by focusing on restrooms and locker rooms, our opponents have shifted gears to target trans people by trying to keep us from getting the healthcare many of us need, and keeping us out of sports. +Dozens of states have introduced bills targeting trans youth. +The same day that this federal court ruled that protecting trans students doesn’t violate Title IX, a lawsuit was filed attacking trans student athletes in Connecticut, in yet another misuse of this federal law. +As Terry Miller, one of the trans girls targeted in this new law suit says, “There is a long history of excluding Black girls from sports and policing our bodies. +I am a runner and I will keep running and keep fighting for my existence, my community, and my rights.” +“There is a long history of excluding Black girls from sports and policing our bodies. +I am a runner and I will keep running and keep fighting for my existence, my community, and my rights.” +Terry Miller, student athlete targeted for being trans +We need to make sure trans youth like Tyler, K.E., and Terry never have to fight alone. +I encourage you to tell your local lawmakers that trans students belong in our schools and that these attacks need to end. +The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a number of cases this term that will have a crucial impact on civil rights and civil liberties — from LGBTQ equality to reproductive freedom and immigrants’ rights. +Earlier in the term, the ACLU had two cases asking whether workers can be fired for being LGBTQ. +On March 2, we will be arguing a case on immigrants’ rights, and we have filed or will file friend-of-the-court briefs in major cases involving reproductive freedom, contraceptive access, and religious freedom. +We sat down with David Cole, the ACLU’s national legal director, to discuss what’s in store for the ACLU next week, and what’s at stake for civil liberties this SCOTUS term.  +Q: The ACLU is going to the Supreme Court next week. +What is the case and what’s at stake? +We will be arguing Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam on Monday, March 2. +It asks whether the Constitution guarantees judicial review of deportation orders. +This is a fundamental question for every immigrant, and it’s all the more important because President Trump is seeking to deport as many people as quickly as he can, often with as little process as possible. +To that end, the administration has expanded a program called “expedited removal,” which allows the government to order the deportation of foreign nationals while denying them the right to have their case reviewed in court.  +We’re defending Thuraissigiam, who is a Tamil, an ethnic minority group in Sri Lanka. +He fled to the United States seeking asylum after being abducted and tortured by government agents. +He applied for asylum, but the asylum officer found that he did not present a “credible fear of persecution at home,” even though the violent treatment he suffered fits precisely the pattern of government abuse of Tamils in Sri Lanka.  +We argue that Thuraissigiam has a constitutional right to have a court review whether the deportation was legal or not through “habeas corpus,” a writ allowing any person facing detention to challenge its legality before a judge. +The government argues that the Constitution does not protect immigrants, like Thuraissigiam, who challenge the legality of their removal from this country. +In so arguing, it asks the court to depart from over 100 years of Supreme Court precedent. +At the end of the day, if immigrants can be deported without judicial review, regardless of the legality of their deportation, then the rule of law in immigration proceedings will mean nothing. +Under the government’s view, our client would have no judicial recourse, even if the Department of Homeland Security denied his request for asylum because he is dark-skinned.  +Q: The court will also hear arguments on a Center for Reproductive Rights case related to abortion next week. +What’s at stake there?  +A: +In this case, June Medical Services v. Russo, we filed an amicus brief supporting the abortion providers. +The court will hear arguments on March 4. +It’s a challenge to a Louisiana state law that requires doctors who provide abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals.  +But what’s at stake is whether the new Supreme Court with two justices appointed by President Trump will give states the green light to push abortion care further and further out of reach.  +Four years ago, in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute that was identical to the Louisiana law. +In that case, the court said there is no medical rationale for requiring doctors who provide abortions to have admitting privileges in local hospitals. +All the law did was make it harder for people to get abortions. +Louisiana nonetheless argues that their identical law is constitutional. +But to reach that result would likely either formally or as a practical matter overturn Whole Women’s Health, and if the court does that, it will be a very disturbing sign for the future viability of abortion rights. +Q: This is the first reproductive rights case that Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch will hear since being confirmed to the court. +How do you think this will affect the decision?  +A: That’s the million-dollar question. +No one knows for sure. +What we do know, is that President Trump promised to put justices on the court to reverse Roe v. Wade. +So we know what his intention was, but the question will be whether these justices abide by precedent or feel free to break from it.  +Q: Is there a common thread in both these cases?  A: +The common thread is that for the court to rule against the position we are advancing would require it to break from precedent. +We’re asking the court to hold fast to core principles that have long been decided. +The opposing sides, in both cases, are asking the court to ignore precedent and make new law.  +I think we’re well-positioned to address these issues, because we’ve been at the forefront of the struggles for immigrants’ rights and reproductive freedom for the last 50 years. +We were involved in Roe v. Wade itself, and we’ve been involved in virtually all the court’s major immigrants’ rights and reproductive rights decisions for decades. +Reproductive freedom and immigrants’ rights are two of the most important issues that we fight for every day, and never have they been more under attack than under the Trump administration.  +Q: What is the biggest challenge we face in these two cases? +A: +The biggest challenge is that we now have a court that is dominated by very conservative justices. +The question will be whether the court decides these cases in a partisan way, or whether it will rise above the partisan divide and act like a court. +We rely on Supreme Court justices to apply the law, not to enforce partisan political views. +These cases will be a real test of that principle.  +Q: The Supreme Court recently announced it will hear Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. +What is at stake there? +A: +This case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, involves the City of Philadelphia's taxpayer-funded foster care program and a nondiscrimination rule. +Catholic Social Services, one of the nonprofits who contracted with the city to help carry out the city’s foster care program, refuses to certify same-sex couples as fit foster parents, even if they are otherwise fully qualified. +Philadelphia’s law prohibits such discrimination. +CSS claims that it has a constitutional right under the Free Exercise Clause to get government money to carry out a government program while violating the terms of the government program and engaging in discrimination with government money. +We represent two Philadelphia nonprofits that work with and for kids and families in the foster care system. +We argue, alongside the City of Philadelphia, that if anyone wants to participate in a government program, they have to abide by the nondiscrimination rule and accept all qualified families. +We won in the lower courts, but the Supreme Court has agreed to review the decision. +This will be one of the most important cases argued next October. +Catholic Social Services argues that they have a religious license to discriminate. +We vehemently disagree.  +Q: What other SCOTUS cases is the ACLU involved with this year? +A: +We are involved in many cases, but I’ll just mention a few. +We directly represented Aimee Stephens and Don Zarda in two cases that ask whether firing someone because they are LGBTQ is a form of sex discrimination in violation of federal law. +The cases were argued in October, and we’re awaiting a decision. +We argue that under the plain language of the statute, when you fire a woman for being attracted to women, but wouldn’t fire a man for being attracted to women, you are discriminating on the basis of sex. +The same holds true when you fire an employee for coming to work as a woman because she was assigned male at birth. +That is also discrimination because of sex.   +We also filed an amicus brief challenging President Trump’s revocation of DACA, which provides legal status and work privileges to 700,000 undocumented young people who were brought to the U.S. as children. +The lower courts held that the revocation was illegal. +If the court rules otherwise, all DACA recipients will be in jeopardy of deportation. +Additionally, we are preparing an amicus brief in a Trump v. Pennsylvania, a case challenging a rule that would allow employers to deny insurance coverage to employees for contraception if the employer objects to contraception on religious or moral grounds. +It essentially allows employees to impose their religious beliefs on their employees’ private lives. +The lower courts ruled that the rule was illegal because the administration lacks the power to give employers the right to inflict their beliefs on their employees. +Q: What is the one key takeaway you want the public to know about the current SCOTUS term? +A: +There is really one big thing to watch for this term: We have a new court with two new conservative justices. +Are they going to apply the law and be bound by prior constitutional decisions, or are they going to break from those principles and use their majority power to make new law that undermines civil rights and civil liberties?  +Whatever happens, we can be sure of one thing: The ACLU will be there, advocating for the rights of us all. +I was denied healthcare because I am transgender. +The justification, according to the hospital, was that religious doctrine permits them to refuse transgender patients, just because of who we are. +The Trump administration agrees: Over the past few years, the government has tried to greenlight sex discrimination under the guise of religious liberty. +They’re doing this through a series of policy changes targeting our access to healthcare, workplaces, schools, and other spaces that we belong in, like everybody else. +It seems like the administration and discriminatory healthcare providers wish that trans people didn’t even exist, but we do, and we have medical needs just like all other people. +My story is unfortunately one of many cases of sex-based discrimination that the administration is trying to allow against LGBTQ people. +In August 2016, I was in the process of undergoing gender-affirming care through a series of medical treatments. +I made an appointment to undergo a treatment at Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a hospital in the Dignity Health chain, near Sacramento, California, where I live. +Trans people exist. +And we have medical needs just like all other people. +Two days before my appointment date, a nurse called me to go over the details, and I mentioned that I was transgender. +The very next day — a day before my procedure was supposed to take place — the hospital called my doctor to inform her that the appointment had been canceled because the procedure was related to my gender transition. +When I heard the news, I was so devastated that I collapsed on the floor. +Once I was able to pick myself up, I remember just stumbling around the house, blinded by my tears. +I was fortunate to be able to undergo the procedure at a different hospital. +But the experience left scars. +I had no idea prior to this that my local, community hospital was a Catholic hospital, or that they would argue that religious doctrine permits them to prevent doctors from providing patients with the care they need just because those patients are transgender. +It should never be okay to deny transgender people — or anyone else — the care we need just because of who we are. +Dignity Health is the fifth largest health system in the U.S., with billions of dollars in revenue. +But according to the Trump administration, I’m a threat to Dignity Health. +My life — and the lives of every other transgender American — doesn’t seem to matter to this administration. +In California, however, the law prohibits businesses open to the general public — including hospitals — from discriminating on the basis of gender identity. +In 2017, the ACLU and the law firm Covington & Burling LLP filed a lawsuit against Dignity Health on my behalf. +Just last fall, a court agreed that I suffered discrimination when the hospital cancelled my surgery. +The court also said that Dignity Health does not have a right to violate California’s nondiscrimination law. +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement While my case has moved through the courts, the Trump administration weighed in. +Less than a year after I filed my case, the Department of Health and Human Services issued the Refusal of Care Rule to support religious people and entities in limiting the care they provide to patients. +HHS is supposed to protect patients and expand access to healthcare — not allow providers to use religion as a license to discriminate. +In justifying their Refusal of Care Rule, the Trump administration cited three court cases that they said showed why this discriminatory rule was necessary. +Mine was one of them. +HHS is supposed to protect patients and expand access to healthcare — not allow providers to use religion as a license to discriminate. +My name is now in the Federal Register. +The fact that the Trump administration singled me out truly knocked me down for almost a year. +When I try to explain this to people, some folks think I should see this as a badge of honor; that I must be doing something right if the administration is coming after me personally. +But it doesn’t feel that way to me. +It’s emotionally draining, it’s overwhelming and it’s a huge burden I have to carry. +The truth of the matter is that I’m still trying to process it. +The impact of the Refusal of Care Rule will reach far beyond trans people. +It will profoundly impact access to reproductive health care, particularly for the millions of patients — who are disproportionately Black and Latinx — seeking options counseling and a referral for abortion in the Title X program. +It’s also part of the administration’s larger goal of erasing trans people and greenlighting religious-based discrimination. +Today, I’m speaking truth to power in Congress and defending my right and my community’s right to access healthcare. +Despite the repeated efforts of the Trump administration, trans people will not be erased. +I was fired from my job as funeral director of a Detroit-area funeral home in 2013. +I always received good reviews and had recently been promoted. +The reason I was fired: I am a transgender woman.   +What happened to me wasn’t right, and I know it happens to many other people. +So I contacted the ACLU. +Firing someone because of who they are is discrimination, and it’s against the law.   +Right now, my case is before the U.S. Supreme Court and I am waiting for a decision that could come at any moment. +The question is whether transgender people have the same protections from discrimination on the basis of sex as everyone else.   +No matter what the court decides, transgender people will still be here and we will still be fighting for the opportunity to work, go to school, and see a doctor — just like everyone else.   +This journey has given me lots of time to think about the importance of transgender people being visible. +On Transgender Day of Visibility, which happens annually on March 31, I’m sharing some of what visibility means to me.   +One of the first things that happened after my case was filed was a media story that used a photo that wasn’t of me. +At that moment, I started to realize how important it was for me to be seen as myself, not just at home, not just at work, but everywhere.   +As more people learned my story, countless transgender people have told me how much my story has meant to them. +In my own life, being able to meet other transgender people — from my neighbors in Michigan to Laverne Cox — there’s no doubt that meeting transgender people makes a difference.  +This embed will serve content from {{ domain }}. +See our privacy statement When people ask me what they can do to support transgender people, I say that you must start by being accepting and supportive of the transgender people in your life, and then start to support the transgender community.   +It’s not that hard to see that we exist. +It’s not that hard to support us. +So here are a few things I suggest you consider.   +If you hear someone making a joke about transgender people, say something. +I am not a joke. +I am a person. +If you work for a business that wants to support transgender people, consider making a donation to an organization led by transgender people and make your support known to elected officials, not just your customers. +If you care about transgender people and are eligible to vote, make sure you are registered and tell candidates that you support transgender people and expect them to as well.   +Many transgender people have experienced discrimination on the job, in school, in housing, at the doctor’s office — even at home with their family. +That can make it difficult to have a job that allows you to care for yourself, let alone cover your health insurance. +Transgender people often have a lot to be concerned about, and with so many people concerned about their jobs and their health at this very moment, it can be a scary time.   +After checking on our transgender friends, we should all be saying to elected officials that we support laws the federal Equality Act and want to see laws right here in Michigan to say that it’s wrong to discriminate against transgender people.   +Visibility matters. +And so does action to support transgender people.   +For my transgender siblings: It took me many years of life to be ok with being me. +And I’m happy being me. +I hope you will be who you are. +Speak up for yourself. +Don’t hang your head in shame because somebody else doesn’t believe in what you are doing. +No matter if everyone or no one knows you are transgender, you are perfect and you are as visible as you need to be.    +I wasn’t sure how much support I was going to receive when I filed my lawsuit. +In October 2019, years after this journey began, I became the first person to have a case about the civil rights of transgender people argued before our nation’s highest court. +And then when we left the courtroom to hear people chanting my name outside of the Supreme Court steps, telling me that they love me, that had a big effect on me.   +I hope all transgender people can feel that love and support. +Not just today, but every day. +For years state lawmakers have pushed legislation attempting to shut trans people out of public spaces. +In 2020, lawmakers zeroed in on sports and introduced 20 bills seeking to ban trans people from participating in athletics. +These statewide efforts have been supported through a coordinated campaign led by anti-LGBTQ groups that have long worked to attack our communities. +Before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most state legislatures, Idaho became the first state to pass a sweeping ban on trans people’s participation in athletics from kindergarten through college. +We, along with our partners, immediately sued. +Advocates across the country are gearing up to continue the fight against these harmful bills in legislatures when they reconvene. +In Connecticut, the ACLU is defending the rights of transgender athletes in a lawsuit brought by cisgender athletes seeking to strike down the state’s inclusive policy. +Though we are fighting every day in the courts and in legislatures, upholding trans rights will take more than judicial and legislative action. +It will require rooting out the inaccurate and harmful beliefs underlying these policies. +Below, we debunk four myths about trans athletes using the expertise of doctors, academics, and sports psychologists serving as experts in our litigation in Idaho. +FACT: Including trans athletes will benefit everyone. +MYTH: The participation of trans athletes hurts cis women. +Many who oppose the inclusion of trans athletes erroneously claim that allowing trans athletes to compete will harm cisgender women. +This divide and conquer tactic gets it exactly wrong. +Excluding women who are trans hurts all women. +It invites gender policing that could subject any woman to invasive tests or accusations of being “too masculine” or “too good” at their sport to be a “real” woman. +In Idaho, the ACLU represents two young women, one trans and one cis, both of whom are hurt by the law that was passed targeting trans athletes. +Further, this myth reinforces stereotypes that women are weak and in need of protection. +Politicians have used the “protection” trope time and time again, including in 2016 when they tried banning trans people from public restrooms by creating the debunked “bathroom predator” myth. +The real motive is never about protection — it’s about excluding trans people from yet another public space. +The arena of sports is no different. +On the other hand, including trans athletes will promote values of non-discrimination and inclusion among all student athletes. +As longtime coach and sports policy expert Helen Carroll explains, efforts to exclude subsets of girls from sports, “can undermine team unity and also encourage divisiveness by policing who is ‘really’ a girl.” +Dr. Mary Fry adds that youth derive the most benefits from athletics when they are exposed to caring environments where teammates are supported by each other and by coaches. +Banning some girls from athletics because they are transgender undermines this cohesion and compromises the wide-ranging benefits that youth get from sports. +FACT: +Trans athletes do not have an unfair advantage in sports. +MYTH: +Trans athletes’ physiological characteristics provide an unfair advantage over cis athletes. +Women and girls who are trans face discrimination and violence that makes it difficult to even stay in school. +According to the U.S. Trans Survey, 22 percent of trans women who were perceived as trans in school were harassed so badly they had to leave school because of it. +Another 10 percent were kicked out of school. +The idea that women and girls have an advantage because they are trans ignores the actual conditions of their lives. +Trans athletes vary in athletic ability just like cisgender athletes. +“One high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” explains Andraya Yearwood, a student track athlete and ACLU client. +“One sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster," she adds. +In Connecticut, where cisgender girl runners have tried to block Andraya from participating in the sport she loves, the very same cis girls who have claimed that trans athletes have an “unfair” advantage have consistently performed as well as or better than transgender competitors. +"A person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance,”according to Dr. Joshua D. Safer. +“For a trans woman athlete who meets NCAA standards, “there is no inherent reason why her physiological characteristics related to athletic performance should be treated differently from the physiological characteristics of a non-transgender woman.” FACT: +Trans girls are girls. +MYTH: +Sex is binary, apparent at birth, and identifiable through singular biological characteristics.  +Girls who are trans are told repeatedly that they are not “real” girls and boys who are trans are told they are not “real” boys. +Non-binary people are told that their gender is not real and that they must be either boys or girls. +None of these statements are true. +Trans people are exactly who we say we are. +There is no one way for women’s bodies to be. +Women, including women who are transgender, intersex, or disabled, have a range of different physical characteristics. +“A person’s sex is made up of multiple biological characteristics and they may not all align as typically male or female in a given person,” says Dr. Safer. +Further, many people who are not trans can have hormones levels outside of the range considered typical of a cis person of their assigned sex. +When a person does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, they must be able to transition socially — and that includes participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. +According to Dr. Deanna Adkins, excluding trans athletes can be deeply harmful and disruptive to treatment. +“I know from experience with my patients that it can be extremely harmful for a transgender young person to be excluded from the team consistent with their gender identity.” +FACT: +Trans people belong on the same teams as other students. +MYTH: +Trans students need separate teams. +Trans people have the same right to play sports as anybody else. +“For the past nine years,” explains Carroll, “transgender athletes have been able to compete on teams at NCAA member collegiates and universities consistent with their gender identity like all other student-athletes with no disruption to women’s collegiate sports.” +Excluding trans people from any space or activity is harmful, particularly for trans youth. +A trans high school student, for example, may experience detrimental effects to their physical and emotional wellbeing when they are pushed out of affirming spaces and communities. +As Lindsay Hecox says, “I just want to run.” +According to Dr. Adkins, “When a school or athletic organization denies transgender students the ability to participate equally in athletics because they are transgender, that condones, reinforces, and affirms the transgender students’ social status as outsiders or misfits who deserve the hostility they experience from peers.” +Believing and perpetuating myths and misconceptions about trans athletes is harmful. +Denying trans people the right to participate is discrimination and it doesn’t just hurt trans people, it hurts all of us. +It’s been more than 50 years since Black and Brown trans women led the revolutionary Stonewall Riots, fighting back against police brutality and discrimination and launching a movement for equality. +This week, we celebrated another incredible landmark in the fight for LGBTQ rights. +In a 6 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed that it is illegal for employers to fire or otherwise discriminate against someone simply because they are LGBTQ. +Though more work remains to protect the rights of the LGBTQ community, this decision will go a long way towards affirming legal protections in education, housing, credit, and health care — areas where too many LGBTQ people, particularly Black and Brown LGBTQ people, still face discrimination. +Chase Strangio, the Deputy Director for Transgender Justice for the ACLU’s LBGT and HIV Project, joined the podcast to help breakdown this historic decision. +A Landmark Supreme Court Decision Affirms LGBTQ Rights A Landmark Supreme Court Decision Affirms +LGBTQ Rights It’s been over 50 years since Black and Brown trans women led the revolutionary Stonewall Riots, fighting back against police brutality and discrimination and launching a movement for equality. +Today, we celebrate another incredible landmark in th... It’s been over 50 years since Black and Brown trans women led the revolutionary Stonewall Riots, fighting back against police brutality and discrimination and launching a movement for equality. +Today, we celebrate another incredible landmark in th... Visit this episode +The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday ruled in favor of American Civil Liberties Union client Gavin Grimm, deciding that restroom policies segregating transgender students from their peers and denying transgender student accurate transcripts are unconstitutional and violate Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. +The decision comes after a five-year long court battle that began when the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Virginia filed a sex discrimination lawsuit against the Gloucester Country School Board for adopting a discriminatory policy requiring Grimm and other transgender students to use “alternative private” restrooms. +Here are four highlights from the decision today: “Grimm’s four years of high school were shaped by his fight to use the restroom that matched his consistent and persistent gender identity. +In the face of adults who misgendered him and called him names, he spoke with conviction at school Board meetings. +The solution was apparent: allow Grimm to use the boys’ restrooms, as he had been doing without incident. +But instead, the Board implemented a policy that ... sent him to special bathrooms that might as well have said ‘Gavin’ on the sign. +It did so while increasing privacy in the boys’ bathrooms, after which its own deposition witness could not cite a remaining privacy concern. +We are left without doubt that the Board acted to protect cisgender boys from Gavin’s mere presence — a special kind of discrimination against a child that he will no doubt carry with him for life.” +“The proudest moments of the federal judiciary are when we affirm the burgeoning values of our bright youth, rather than preserve the prejudices of the past. ... +How shallow a promise of equal protection that would not protect Grim from the fantastical fears and unfounded prejudices of his adult community. +It is time to move forward. +The district court’s judgment is Affirmed.” +Judge Wynn issued a second opinion in agreement, called a concurrence, adding: “Th[is] is indistinguishable from the sort of separate-but-equal treatment that is anathema under our jurisprudence. +No less than the recent historical practice of segregating Black and white restrooms, schools, and other public accommodations, the unequal treatment enabled by the Board’s policy produces a vicious and ineradicable stigma. +The result is to deeply and indelibly scar the most vulnerable among us — children who simply wish to be treated as equals at one of the most fraught developmental moments in their lives — by labeling them as unfit for equal participation in our society. +And for what gain? +The Board has persisted in offering hypothetical and pretextual concerns that have failed to manifest, either in this case or in myriad others like it across our nation. +I am left to conclude that the policy instead discriminates against transgender students out of a bare dislike or fear of those ‘others’ who are all too often marginalized in our society for the mere fact that they are different. +As such, the policy grossly offends the Constitution’s basic guarantee of equal protection under the law. +“I see little distinction between the message sent to Black children denied equal treatment in education under the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ and transgender children relegated to the ‘alternative appropriate private facilit[ies]’ provided for by the Board’s policy. +The import is the same: ‘the affirmation that the very being of a people is inferior.’ +(Martin Luther King, Jr.)” +Today’s ruling follows a recent decision from the Supreme Court that it is illegal to fire someone for being LGBTQ. +The ACLU argued in the case of Aimee Stephens that federal civil rights laws that prohibit sex discrimination protect LGBTQ people. +Today the court once again ruled that Title IX, which also prohibits sex discrimination, applies to transgender students. +While the summer has brought legal wins for the LGBTQ community, the fight is not over. +In 2020, over 200 anti-LGBTQ laws were active in state legislatures, including dozens targeting transgender youth. +The ACLU and its partners fought many of those and won, and will continue to fight for transgender youth across America. +For millions of students, this school year will be like none other -- not only because of the pandemic. +States and the federal government are pushing a spate of anti-trans legislation and policies aimed to ban trans students from participating in sports like their peers and to undermine their abilities to fully participate in school and public life. +The Department of Education is backing these efforts by threatening to withhold funding from any schools that refuse to enact anti-trans policies. +These attacks come after a Supreme Court victory in June, which upheld the rights of LGBTQ people in the workplace by ruling that you can’t be fired or otherwise discriminated against simply because you are LGBTQ. +One of the lawyers behind those cases is Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice for the ACLU's LGBT and HIV Project, recently named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year. +Why is the government going out of its way to attack trans rights? +To understand what’s going on, we have to go back a few years to the marriage equality victories at the Supreme Court in 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges. +There was an immediate backlash from anti-LGBTQ groups, who then zeroed in on expelling trans people from public spaces like restrooms and locker rooms. +Now the conversation has shifted to trans participation in sports. +Our opponents are pushing a narrative that trans girls in particular are a threat to the survival of women’s sports, which is predicated on the view that they and the government should and do have the authority to say who is a woman. +They’re also implementing and pushing policies that would subject any participant in girls’ or women’s sports to sex verification procedures where they have to prove that they’re “really a girl.” +These groups don’t care about sports or women’s rights. +They’re opportunistically looking for ways to attack trans people, and in the process, hurting all women and girls. +How did the conversation shift from restrooms to sports? +Well importantly, through organizing and advocacy we were largely successful in defeating our opponents in their efforts to ban trans people from restrooms and locker rooms. +But in the restroom conversation we spent a lot of time talking about how no one had to worry about seeing anyone naked, suggesting that trans people are so ashamed of our bodies that we would hide them.  +This strategy, though successful, pushed off the conversation to another day about contexts where we have to directly contend with our bodies. +In sports, the body is more salient, so there's more work to do to overcome deeply entrenched thinking about sex being binary and the view that you can easily divide people into categories based on physiological characteristics. +In sports, the body is more salient, so there's more work to do to overcome deeply entrenched thinking about sex being binary Our opponents are incredibly good at distorting the conversation and spreading misinformation despite not having scientific evidence to back up these claims. +Trans athletes have been able to participate in the Olympics, the NCAA, and other elite sports for many years, yet we've literally never had a trans person qualify for the Olympics and there are no examples of trans dominance in any elite sport anywhere in the world. +So we're obviously not responding to a practical reality. +We're responding to fear and misinformation, which is often true when it comes to trans people and policy in the United States and around the world. +What is the Department of Education doing about the attacks against trans students? +The DOE is taking the position that you must discriminate against trans students in order to receive absolutely essential services. +At the same time, they have done absolutely nothing to assist schools in opening safely, or supporting families and children. +Schools are in crisis right now, completely underfunded while needing to staff up to deal with the demands of remote learning and everything else we're expecting educators to come up with in the midst of the pandemic. +It’s so egregious on so many levels, and it’s sending an absolutely horrible message to trans students that the federal government will not protect you. +We need to build structures of safety and inclusion for our students, not structures of punishment and exclusion. +How do you reconcile increasing trans representation in the media with what’s going on in the government? +It can be incredibly affirming to see people who look like you or look like a possibility of what you might want your life to be. +I don't want to take away the power of that, especially for trans kids, who  can feel alienated from the world and from their own bodies. +But the media can distort the realities of trans people’s lives, particularly for people who’ve never knowingly met a trans person and whose only reference is what they see on TV — which portrays glamorized, highly curated narratives that can undermine the urgency of what’s going on in the government and in the material reality of trans lives. +If we don’t also do the work to support trans lives on the ground, then it could end up placing precariously situated trans people in the path of more violence. +Many of the clients in the ACLU’s trans rights cases are high school students. +How does it feel to see youth leading the fight for trans rights? +The most incredible part of our work is working with our clients, who are so fierce in their advocacy for themselves before they even reach us. +Our clients are putting themselves out there in this deeply personal way while the government is attacking their existences. +And yet they find the ability to sustain their sense of joy and push forward. +If people find a place where they feel connected to their body, the idea that the federal government will come and try to squander that is just that is just beyond illegal. +It's unthinkable. +How does that affect you as a parent? +Young people have an incredible amount of insight and we take that away from them if we impose overly structured categories that don’t have to be there. +The binaries that we utilize make no sense for the human experience in a lot of ways, and the more we give people the space to experience possibilities without preordained structures of how things have to be, the more we're going to see people create new and more expansive structures to exist within and beyond. +It’s just inevitable. +And I know that really scares people, which is why we’re seeing this backlash. +But ultimately, we have always been here creating what is possible, and our lives and our magic are unstoppable. +The 2020 election is approaching, along with what could be a challenging legislative session. +What can people do on the ground to support trans rights? +Look at the candidates and their records for presidential and senate candidates. +In some places, our opponents are strategically using ads to try to get people to vote for anti-trans candidates. +Michigan’s Senate race is a prime example. +We need to create a counter narrative and support candidates that support trans people. +There are ways to help in our individual lives, too. +Part of why some anti-trans policies succeed is because of misinformation and fear of trans people. +We can try to reorient the people in our lives toward understanding trans existence in a way that neutralizes the weaponized narrative of trans people as a threat. +We can also materially support and uplift individual trans people to ensure that our trans communities are surviving, thriving, and leading our movements with the tools we have developed over generations. +President Trump has told the Supreme Court it should be legal to fire someone just because they’re LGBTQ. +The President may be a bully, but he’s just one voice. +Today, more than 2,000 voices from across the country joined together to tell the Supreme Court: Don’t roll back our rights. +The message came in the form of friend-of-the-court briefs—nearly 50 in all—filed in a trio of cases involving workers who lost their jobs because of who they are. +Aimee Stephens, a funeral director in Michigan represented by the ACLU, was fired for being transgender. +Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor in New York represented by the ACLU as co-counsel, was fired for being gay, as was Gerald Bostock, a child welfare services coordinator in Georgia. +For decades, federal law has protected workers like Aimee, Don, and Gerald from losing their jobs because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, but the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to reverse years of progress. +Today’s filings show why the Trump administration is wrong—and why we must win. +Here are some of the highlights: There’s widespread consensus that the law already protects LGBTQ people, and the Supreme Court should say so. +Briefs from across the political spectrum—from labor unions including the AFL-CIO and the SEIU to political conservatives including former Bush administration officials—agree that federal law bars firing workers because they are LGBTQ. +Former Chair of the Republican National Committee Kenneth B. Mehlman penned an op-ed explaining why LGBTQ rights are consistent with conservative values: All of us need a way to provide for our families, and all of us should have the freedom to compete for jobs based on what we can contribute, not who we are. +Religious organizations and faith leaders, including the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and Muslims for Progressive Values, filed a brief highlighting their shared core religious belief in the dignity and worth of all individuals, including people who are LGBTQ. +More than 150 Members of Congress filed a brief explaining that discrimination against people because they are LGBTQ is prohibited under federal law, even though Congress has not yet enacted legislation that would say so expressly. +LGBTQ people aren’t the only ones who benefit from robust application of our nation’s antidiscrimination laws—or who would be harmed if the Supreme Court takes those protections away. +Businesses from Apple to Zillow filed a brief arguing that that affirming protections for LGBTQ workers would strengthen their ability to recruit and retain top talent, to generative innovative ideas by drawing on a greater breadth of perspectives, and to attract and better serve a diverse customer base. +Over 100 states, cities, counties, and mayors filed a brief explaining how workplace discrimination threatens people’s ability to meet basic needs like housing and healthcare, forcing local governments to fill the gap when community members cannot provide for themselves. +Women CEOs and other C-suite executives, including Sheryl Sandberg and Shonda Rhimes, filed a brief showing that, if employers are allowed to make decisions based on sex stereotypes, that would limit opportunities for all women to advance in the workplace. +Rolling back the clock on workplace protections would have devastating effects. +The American Medical Association and other national medical associations filed a brief demonstrating that workplace discrimination harms the health of LGBTQ people. +Civil rights organizations filed a brief spotlighting the particular need for LGBTQ people of color, who suffer far higher rates of job discrimination than their white counterparts, to remain protected in the workplace. +Anti-poverty organizations filed a brief showing the distinctive harms of anti-LGBTQ discrimination not only on workers, but also on their children, the LGBTQ community, and society at large. +It’s no surprise that workers like Aimee, Don, and Gerald have their livelihoods on the line this fall. +But as today’s filings make clear, the stakes couldn’t be higher—for all of us. +SEE ALL OF THE BRIEFS The full list of the briefs, including links to the full text, will be updated as the briefs are filed. +It’s been more than three years since North Carolina lawmakers passed House Bill 2, the hateful North Carolina law that compromised the ability of transgender people like me to safely navigate our daily lives. +As the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit the ACLU and Lambda Legal filed to stop this measure, I’ve spent the last three years fighting alongside LGBTQ North Carolinians and others to mitigate the harm caused by H.B. 2 and its discriminatory replacement law, H.B. 142. +Yesterday, we secured an important victory: a federal court ordered that neither of these laws can be used to bar transgender people from North Carolina restrooms that match who we are. +This victory belongs to the trans and non-binary people in North Carolina who continue to lead the fight for justice in North Carolina and beyond. +We reached this settlement, known as a consent decree, with Governor Roy Cooper, who officially agrees with us that trans people in North Carolina have the right to use the correct public restrooms for their gender. +But the leaders of the General Assembly, who passed H.B. 2 and H.B. 142, refused to sign on. +After years of managing the anxiety of H.B. 2 and fighting so hard, I am relieved that we finally have a court order to protect transgender people from being punished under these laws. +Being able to use facilities that match our gender is a basic necessity for participating in public life and being treated as full members of society. +It is not a luxury. +The nationwide outcry that followed these discriminatory laws sent a message that we still have to amplify now: Trans and non-binary people belong in public spaces. +We belong in North Carolina. +We belong everywhere. +Yesterday’s order provides some clarity and relief for those of us who have been suffering under H.B. 2 and H.B. 142 for years. +It is an important victory but not a complete one. +Local protections for LGBTQ people are still banned under state law and so many members of our community, particularly Black and Brown trans and non-binary people, continue to face violence, harassment, and discrimination simply because of who we are. +This October, the Supreme Court is looking at the case of Aimee Stephens, who was fired for being trans. +The Trump administration has attempted to roll back the rights of trans people at every turn. +Yet another Black trans woman, Denali Berries Stuckey, was killed this week in South Carolina. +My community faces violence every day. +While a part of this court fight in North Carolina may be ending, our fight for full justice continues. +The Trump Administration has shown it will stop at nothing to undermine access to health care for marginalized communities. +Most recently, the Administration has proposed to undermine critical protections against sex discrimination in Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, the Health Care Rights Law. +Instead of combatting discrimination in accessing health care and insurance coverage, the Administration is looking for any opportunity to weaken the Health Care Rights Law’s protections, which have been life saving for many transgender and non-binary people. +Under the Trump Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has abandoned its duty to fight against discrimination in health care. +It stopped defending existing regulations in a lawsuit attacking protections for transgender individuals and people who have obtained abortions. +HHS then turned around and cited that very lawsuit as a reason for changing the regulations. +But HHS cannot use its failure to defend current protections as a reason to gut them. +The proposed rule removes explicit protections for transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people, as well as for people seeking, or who have obtained, services related to pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion. +The Administration has made clear that a central goal of the proposed changes is to excise transgender people from the protections of the Health Care Rights Law. +Though their intent has been to “erase” transgender people, the Administration can neither erase transgender people from existing statutory protections nor exclude them from society. +Case after case has confirmed that transgender people are protected under the Health Care Rights Law—and that is something the Administration cannot change even if this rule is finalized. +This isn’t just about definitions, though. +This rule is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to undermine our nation’s antidiscrimination laws. +The proposed rule would also: eliminate protections ensuring that people who have limited English proficiency are aware of their health care rights; narrow the list of health insurance providers covered by the Health Care Rights Law and prohibited from discriminating based on race, national origin, age, disability, or sex; and give religiously-affiliated health care institutions a broad license to discriminate on the basis of sex. +Even though one in six hospital beds in the United States is in a Catholic hospital, and the number of religious health care providers is only growing, the Administration wants to lift prohibitions on religious health care institutions discriminating based on a patient’s sex. +The proposed rule continues the Trump Administration’s mission to undermine access to health care for marginalized communities. +So far they want to deprive people of coverage for contraceptives, decimate family planning services, dramatically expand the ability of health care institutions and workers to refuse to provide medical services, and penalize access to health care by immigrant women and children. +Transgender people already face threats of violence and discrimination in all aspects of their lives and the Trump Administration is inviting more. +The Administration is intent on emboldening discriminatory and dangerous denials of care for transgender individuals. +They have already banned transgender members of the military from openly serving and accessing certain critical medical procedures, reversed positions as to whether federal law protects transgender people from workplace discrimination, and proposed allowing taxpayer-funded shelters to turn away transgender people experiencing homelessness. +Despite these attacks by the Trump Administration we will continue to fight to ensure equal access to health care and coverage, free from discriminatory treatment or denials. +For all these reasons, tens of thousands of people are telling HHS to abandon the proposed rule, and to keep the current Health Care Rights Law regulations in place – and I hope you join us in doing so. +Jena Faith’s experience in the Steuben County Jail was a living nightmare. +The military veteran spent four weeks in the jail awaiting trial last spring. +She was initially housed in the jail’s women’s facility without incident, but things changed when officials suddenly transferred her to the men’s facility, despite the fact that she is a woman. +During the weeks that Jena spent as a woman in a men’s jail, she was routinely targeted with physical and verbal harassment from other incarcerated people and guards. +On her first day in the men’s facility, a fellow incarcerated person started touching her body and blowing kisses at her, making her feel scared and uncomfortable. +When Jena told him to stop, he said that he wanted to marry her, and he wrote her several letters claiming he was in love with her. +Afraid, Jena showed the jail’s guards, but all they did was move her to another section of the men’s general population, where she was promptly targeted by another man. +She knew her new harasser to be violent, but even as he repeatedly hurled threatening transphobic slurs at her in the presence of guards, they did nothing beyond telling him to stop a single time. +The guards also started calling her “mister” and “a man,” even though she explained to them that she was a transgender woman. +Terrified, Jena spent the rest of her days in the men’s facility feeling sick and scared to leave her cell. +Jail officials also denied Jena her doctor-prescribed hormone therapy, even as they made sure to give her all of her other prescribed medications, which led to hot flashes, cold flashes, nausea, and stomach pain. +Since she was released from jail, Jena continues to suffer through sleepless nights and night terrors because of what she went through. +On August 22, the New York Civil Liberties Union, along with the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund and the law firm BakerHostetler, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Jena. +It argues that what happened to her is a violation of numerous state laws designed to protect the rights, dignity, and humanity of trans people. +While Jena’s experience was harrowing, it’s not unique. +Across the state, trans people are often held in jail and prison facilities that are not consistent with their gender, even though state law prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and courts have held that it’s discriminatory to refuse to treat a person consistently with their gender identity. +In part because they are housed incorrectly, trans people are exposed to overwhelming levels of abuse and harassment while behind bars, and they are far more likely than cisgender people to be targeted for the worst types of violence and mistreatment. +Part of the reason this problem is so widespread is that the state has not made it crystal clear to jail and prison officials that the laws protecting trans people apply when they are incarcerated. +But there are steps New York can take immediately to make sure other people don’t endure what Jena experienced. +To start with, the State Commission on Correction (the SCOC), under the direction of Governor Cuomo, should adopt minimum standards to ensure the safety and well-being of LGBT people in county facilities. +This guidance is needed because some jails are clearly waiting for the state to act before they do anything to change how trans people are treated. +A Rensselaer County official, for example, told the NYCLU they would not address the safety of trans prisoners unless the SCOC required it. +Gov. Cuomo has loudly proclaimed that he’s a defender of LGBTQ people, and he even instituted a travel boycott of North Carolina when lawmakers there passed legislation denying trans people access to facilities that correspond with their gender identity. +But on the issue of incarcerated trans people’s right here in New York to be free of the same type of discrimination that he objected to in North Carolina, Cuomo’s administration has been silent. +The NYCLU sent a letter to the SCOC in February urging it to put out regulations to protect LGBT people. +We received no response. +State lawmakers also have a role to play here. +They can and should pass legislation that helps to clarify and protect the rights of LGBT people when they’re incarcerated. +We have a long way to go, but these actions would be a critical first step towards making New York a place where people like Jena Faith are not punished for who they are. +Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard argument on whether it is legal to fire people for being transgender or for being gay. +I represent Aimee Stephens, the woman who lost her job as a funeral director for being transgender, and I was sitting at counsel table during the argument. +You can read the argument transcript online. +I’m optimistic about our chances. +We need five votes, and it seemed to me that Justices Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor were leaning our way, as hoped. +Justice Gorsuch certainly implied that he thought our textual argument carried some weight, and that it was at least possible he will vote in favor of the employees. +Justice Kavanaugh was almost entirely silent, giving very little clue as to his thinking. +While Justices Roberts and Alito to me did not seem favorably disposed toward the employees and Justice Thomas presumably feels the same, we only need five votes. +I think it is very possible that we will get them, in both the LGBQ cases and the trans case that were argued yesterday. +Our argument is morally right, of course, but it is also simple and legally sound. +The question is whether discrimination against LGBTQ people is discrimination because of sex. +It makes no sense to say that discrimination against someone for identifying with a sex other than their assigned sex at birth, or for being attracted to people of the same sex, is not about sex. +The other side’s arguments sounded strained, and that’s because their arguments have no real basis in law or logic. +The justices would have to warp the statute to exclude trans people and LGBQ people, and I think there is reason to hope that a majority will refuse to do that. +Yesterday’s argument included much discussion about a variety of sex-specific policies, and whether trans people may be forced to comply with them based on assigned sex at birth. +While none of those policies are actually at issue in these cases, they were the subject of a lot of questions from the justices. +That is because the other side’s strategy—even in the sexual orientation context—is to counter our arguments with anti-trans fear-mongering. +I fear that to achieve a majority, the justices will write an opinion that would enable forcing trans women to follow the dress code for men, or to use men’s restrooms. +While language like that would not technically be binding, it could make things much more difficult for trans people at work, at school, and in public places. +And it could shore up the legitimacy of gendered dress codes that currently are legally dubious because they reinforce stereotypes about women in the workplace. +Now, we wait. +The decision may come out as early as January, or as late as June. +Before and after, we need full-throated support for complete freedom from sex discrimination in the workplace and beyond. +It should be beyond doubt that women get to wear pants to work (something Aimee Stephens’ employer forbade). +It should be beyond doubt that trans people get to work as who we really are. +It should be beyond doubt that LGBQ people get to be out at work. +I think Aimee Stephens was right when she told Vox: [T]he fact that we’re able to bring it forth and hear the case presented is a victory already. +Regardless of whether it’s a favorable decision or not, we still have a lot of work to do. +When this part’s over, we just work on the next issue, and work hard and keeping going. +Transgender people are criminalized for our bodies. +We are profiled, stereotyped, and presumed guilty based on the way we look or for failing to meet gender expectations, and it must stop. +Nearly one in six transgender people has been incarcerated. +For trans people of color, the number is one in two. +It’s staggering, and it demonstrates the deep bias in our current laws and criminal justice system. +This World AIDS Day, let’s not forget that transgender women — particularly trans women of color — are also more likely to be living with HIV than cisgender people. +The fight for trans justice cannot be separated from the work to reduce new transmission and provide care to those who are living with HIV, while ending stigma and criminalization for having HIV. +To win this fight, we must decriminalize sex work. +Since the passage of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), trans sex workers have been pushed to hit the streets late at night or take other risky actions, which put them in more danger. +They aren’t able to screen their clientele and can’t take precautions to protect themselves in case something bad happens to them. +Being back on the streets increases the risk for unsafe sex practices. +Economically marginalized people face increased pressure to engage in risky behavior and have less ability to control their activities. +Trans women of color are frequently profiled as sex workers even when they are not engaging in sex work. +This has highly impacted undocumented sex workers, who are at even higher risk of harassment and abuse. +Walking while trans laws and no condoms as evidence laws can help stop the profiling of trans women and especially trans women of color. +Trans people who choose to engage in sex work still need the law to protect against coercion, violence, and abuse. +We face arrest, abuse and violence. +We deserve a legal system that protects us, not only from incarceration, but also from the dangers of life on the street where many of us are forced to turn for survival. +That’s why the ACLU’s Trans Justice campaign, along with local partners and organizations led by current and former sex workers, is fighting to end the targeting of trans people by decriminalizing sex work. +Such reform would help to protect sex workers from HIV, lowering the risk of putting themselves in compromised situations. +It would make interacting with clients safer, reduce violent interactions with police, and lessen the fear of talking to the police when abuse does happen. +This reform is especially important for sex workers living with HIV. +In many states, what would normally be misdemeanor charges related to sex work become felonies for people living with HIV. +These laws have been used to send trans women and others living with HIV to prison for years, even when there was no risk of HIV transmission. +In some states, after incarceration, they need to register as sex offenders. +These laws not only don’t stop HIV transmission — they make it more likely. +They spread misinformation and stigma about HIV, push sex workers and clients into riskier choices, and make it harder for people to survive. +As the World Health Organization has found, sex workers are among the most vulnerable to HIV, and laws criminalizing their activities increase violence and stigma against them. +Sex workers deserve protection from violence and access to health care free from stigma. +By changing our laws, we can bring sex work out of the dangerous corners of the world and into the light where people are protected — not targeted — by the law. +Around the country and the world, people are mobilizing for menstrual equity. +Central to the policy agenda: accessible and affordable period products for everyone who needs them. +As legislative interventions gain traction, advocates are also readying legal arguments to challenge unfair policies. +Constitutional law scholar and dean of UC Berkeley Law Erwin Chemerinsky recently co-authored a Los Angeles Times op-ed proposing that the failure of states to exempt menstrual products from sales tax — the tampon tax — amounts to denial of equal protection under the Constitution. +In forging these claims, a question emerges: How can we recognize that barriers to menstrual access are a form of sex discrimination without erasing the lived experiences of trans men and non-binary people who menstruate, as well as women who don’t? +Some arguments that challenge discriminatory laws based on sex-linked characteristics have made the point that “only women” menstruate, get pregnant, or breastfeed. +But that is not a full or accurate portrayal — and menstrual stigma and period poverty can hit trans and non-binary people particularly hard:  +Trans people are three times as likely to be unemployed and more than twice as likely to be living in poverty as the general population. +Those who are disabled, people of color, or undocumented immigrants are especially likely to be unemployed and living in poverty. +While free menstrual products are not uniformly provided in women’s restrooms, they are almost never available in men’s restrooms, even for pay. +Men’s restrooms are also less likely to have a place to dispose of these products conveniently, privately, and hygienically.    +Similarly, women’s homeless shelters sometimes provide menstrual products, but men’s typically don’t. +Some domestic violence shelters exclude trans and non-binary people — even though more than half have experienced intimate partner violence. +Those shelters often provide a variety of types of support, including access to menstrual products for those who need them. +While access to menstrual products in women’s prisons is often inadequate, it is far worse in men’s prisons. +Trans and non-binary people may be incarcerated in either. +Menstruation is not the only reason trans and non-binary people may need menstrual products. +Trans women and non-binary people may also need pads and liners for months after vaginoplasty, and occasionally at other times. +Some who take estrogen also experience period symptoms such as pain and nausea and may need medication to manage these symptoms. +Those who experience endometriosis or adenomyosis, conditions that can cause continuous heavy bleeding, often face barriers to treatment, as well as an ongoing and often unmet need for pads and tampons. +Simply stated: because limited access to and the cost of menstrual products can hit trans and non-binary communities especially hard, as a matter of policy, a holistic agenda for menstrual equity and access must include trans people.  +(We have a Menstrual Equity Toolkit for those interested in how to create one.) +But what about in the court of law? +The constitutional argument is straightforward. +Any law that targets one sex — or one race, or one religion — is inherently discriminatory. +In the context of the tampon tax, for example, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky harkened to a famous remark by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that a tax on yarmulkes is a tax on Jews. +By analogy, a tax on menstrual products is a tax on women — even though not all women menstruate, and some men and non-binary people do. +Legally, the focus is on the intention behind the action. +Targeting something associated with one group can show intent. +This doesn’t require that all or only people from the targeted group do the activity. +Take yarmulkes again. +Not all Jewish people wear yarmulkes, and some people who aren’t Jewish do wear yarmulkes (for example, if attending a Jewish religious service). +Still, if a legislature decided to tax people for wearing yarmulkes, or to impose sales tax on yarmulkes but not similar items, that would be anti-Semitism, and it would violate the constitution. +Similarly, imposing a sales tax on menstrual products but not similar items is sexist, and violates the constitution. +Discrimination is illegal even when it affects members of multiple groups. +Feminist scholars have long pointed out that sexism can harm people other than women. +For example, Paula England has pointed out the tendency to devalue labor traditionally done by women, even when it is done by men. +Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously challenged a rule that denied widowed fathers benefits that widowed mothers received. +The rule both discriminated against women workers, who couldn’t earn the same benefits for their families that men did, and against men who wanted the opportunity to care for their children. +We don’t need to erase trans or non-binary people to show that barriers to menstrual equity, such as the tax on menstrual products, are unconstitutional sex discrimination. +This tax targets a bodily function associated with women for less favorable treatment. +It relies on sexist ideas that women’s needs are frivolous and unnecessary. +It is irrational, and it directly affects cis and trans women, trans men, and non-binary people. +It’s unfair, unconstitutional, and illegal. +We’re just days into the first state legislative sessions of 2020 and across the country, lawmakers are once again targeting transgender young people with a slate of proposed laws that would bring devastating harms to the transgender community. +In 2016, lawmakers fixated on where transgender people go to the bathroom. +This year, lawmakers have zeroed in on transgender people playing sports and receiving life-saving medical care. +It is hard to imagine why state legislators have decided to prioritize barring transgender young people from sharing in the benefit of secondary school athletics or disrupting medical treatment consistent with prevailing standards of care. +But here we are, the start of the session, a time to fight. +As has been the case since 2015, South Dakota is leading the way with legislation targeting transgender youth. +On the first day of this legislative session, South Dakota lawmakers introduced HB 1057, a bill that would make it a felony for medical providers to affirm a transgender minor’s gender. +This bill would not only compromise positive health outcomes for transgender youth, but it would lead to the arrest and imprisonment of doctors for simply treating their patients consistent with prevailing medical standards. +That’s right. +Lawmakers want to throw doctors who follow basic medical standards for trans youth behind bars and leave trans youth with no recourse at all. +Denying best practice medical care and support to transgender youth can be life-threatening. +It has been shown to contribute to depression, social isolation, self-hatred, risk of self-harm and suicidal behavior, and more. +The “problem” this bill and other similar bills in Florida, South Carolina, and Missouri is supposed to be addressing? +That medical providers are treating children in accordance with long-established standards of care and the Hippocratic oath they took to do no harm. +Lawmakers want to stop people from being transgender and they are willing to put doctors in jail and tell transgender youth that they shouldn’t receive health care in order to achieve their aims. +Imagine being a young person in South Dakota who struggled with depression and anxiety in early childhood, as many transgender people do, because they couldn’t quite identify why they felt so alienated from their peers, their family, and their own body. +Over time, they come to recognize that they have a gender that does not align with what they were assigned at birth, tell their family, find support, and begin a course of medical treatment that is quite literally saving their life. +With bills like those proposed in South Dakota and elsewhere, young people are at risk of having their lifeline stripped away in an instant. +The care that gave them a chance to live is at risk of becoming a crime. +Their lives are at risk of becoming criminalized before they even get a chance to live them. +And these legislative attacks go beyond health care. +Elsewhere, lawmakers have taken aim at transgender people through proposed bans on transgender student athletes participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. +These measures would exclude transgender people from enjoying the benefits of sport on equal terms with their non-transgender peers. +Not only do these bills discriminate against transgender young people in ways that compromise their health, social and emotional development, they also raise a host of privacy concerns. +In New Hampshire, for example, the proposed law would require any student athlete whose gender is “disputed” to have medical verification of their sex via “(a) +The student's internal and external reproductive anatomy;(b) +The student's naturally occurring level of testosterone; and (c) An analysis of the student's chromosomes.” +This type of Orwellian intrusion into the bodily autonomy of youth will sweep much broader than transgender youth and potentially impact the ability of all young people — particularly young girls — to safely partake in school activities. +And, if some lawmakers have their way, this will be the national norm as similar bills are pending in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Washington state. +Though lawmakers claim that these measures are aimed at protecting vulnerable youth, they in fact do the opposite. +And this, too, is a pattern. +The first anti-LGBTQ bill to pass this session is a Tennessee bill that allows foster and adoption agencies to turn away prospective foster families based on the agencies’ religious beliefs — thus limiting prospective parents for kids in out-of-home care. +At the end of the day, with all these measures, it will be young people who suffer most. +For transgender young people across the country, this time of year means bracing for public debates over their bodies, athletic abilities, medical care, and restroom practices. +In some fundamental ways, these are ultimately debates about whether transgender people should exist at all. +The latest round of proposed legislation tells us is that some people don’t think we should. +We must all fight to remind lawmakers that we already do exist, that we aren’t going anywhere, and that we have communities of people fighting alongside us. +Legislation Affecting LGBT Rights +Across the Country Last updated 1/22/2021Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in America continue to face discrimination in their daily lives. +While more states every year work to pass laws to protect LGBTQ people, we continue to see state legislatures advancing bills that target transgender people, limit local protections, and allow the use of religion to discriminate. +Source: American Civil Liberties Union +Less than a month and a half into 2020, this state legislative session has seen unprecedented attacks on LGBTQ people, and an alarming focus on bills that would harm trans youth. +Also alarming: These bills, and the terminology used in them, use similar language and clearly come from a common playbook. +Right now, bills are pending in 10 states that would criminalize life-saving, best practice medical care for trans youth, putting government in the way of decisions that should be left up to the young person, their parents, and their medical providers. +Proponents of these bills repeat similar lies about medical care, but these bills are opposed by all major medical associations that just want to be sure all kids can get the health care they need. +At the same time, 16 states currently are considering bills that would ban young trans athletes from participating in athletic activities consistent with their gender (bills in Missouri and Idaho have hearings this week). +Some of the bills only exclude girls who are trans, echoing language that was once used to keep cisgender women out of sports. +Others also require boys who are trans to participate solely on girls’ teams. +Statewide scholastic sports organizations typically regulate the terms of participation in sports to ensure all youth can participate fairly. +These bills would instead authorize invasive medical examinations of young athletes, and would substitute a categorical exclusion from school sports that doesn’t match up even with the most stringent regulations governing elite competition like the Olympics. +And still, other bills would allow all health care providers to refuse care based on religious objections to trans people, or make it harder for schools to support trans youth. +These bills — and dozens of other anti-LGBTQ measures — are pending in states across the country from Alaska to Florida. +That’s not a coincidence. +These efforts are part of an orchestrated national campaign led by groups like Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom, — who last week filed a lawsuit attacking trans student athletes — and the Family Policy Alliance, to demonize trans youth and drive a wedge among supporters of LGBTQ equality. +We can’t let them succeed. +We know that when young people are supported by their parents and communities, they thrive. +Research shows that transgender youth whose families support their gender identity have a 52 percent decrease in suicidal thoughts, a 48 percent decrease in suicide attempts, and significant increases in self-esteem and general health. +This isn’t theoretical. +The South Dakota Health & Human Services Committee voted last week to kill their bill restricting access to health care for trans youth. +While a bill to exclude trans kids from sports failed in committee in Alabama on February 13, the sponsor has already scheduled it for another hearing next week. +And that same day, a House committee in Arizona just voted to move forward a bill that would bar trans young people from participating in sports. +Other legislatures are poised to act soon. +In South Dakota — trans youth, their parents, medical providers, business leaders, and others spoke up and made it clear that these attacks will hurt young people and the state. +As is so often the case — the victory in protecting the rights of transgender people belongs to the trans community. +But even when these bills are defeated, the fact young people and their families have to show up over and over before lawmakers and testify to try to stop these attacks is itself harmful. +Let’s fight back with these youth and the entire LGBTQ community, and show our young people who are watching – and the orchestrated movement attacking us – that trans kids have fierce allies and we won’t let these bills pass. +Like Zaya Wade said last week, we only get one life. +If we can’t be ourselves, how can we live? +On her way home from the bus stop on a spring night in the Bronx last year, Linda Dominguez cut across a park because it was the most direct route to her apartment. +Even though others leaving the bus were also crossing the park, three officers from the New York City Police Department singled out and arrested Linda, a Latina transgender woman, and took her to the precinct. +Linda, who doesn’t speak English, had no idea why the police had stopped her or what they were arresting her for. +While it is technically “criminal trespass” to cross through a park after closing hours, the NYPD’s enforcement of that crime and other low-level offenses is overwhelmingly and disproportionately targeted at Black and Latinx people like Linda. +In the precinct, an officer spoke to her in Spanish, and she explained that she was a transgender woman and had legally changed her name. +She then gave the officer both her previous first name and her current first name, along with accurate information about her last name, date of birth, and home address. +Things got worse from there. +The officer who had arrested Linda placed her in a part of a cell that was separated from other people. +She cuffed Linda to a bar in the cell using pink handcuffs. +Around her, Linda saw other people being placed in cells. +None of them, however, were cuffed inside the cells, and none of them were in pink handcuffs. +While other people who were arrested were referred to by their last names, the officers repeatedly and mockingly called Linda by her old first name. +Officers repeatedly gestured at Linda while joking, laughing, and shooting disgusted looks at her. +Even when Linda was brought to court the next morning, she still didn’t understand why she was there. +It was only later that she learned she was charged with criminal trespass for being in the park at night as well as with “false personation” — a crime requiring a person to have knowingly misrepresented their actual name with intent to prevent the police from discovering their identity — for giving her previous and current names to the police. +The charges against Linda were eventually dismissed in August, but what happened to Linda has left her traumatized with a lingering fear of the police. +On Tuesday, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of Linda for malicious prosecution for targeting her with a bogus criminal charge because she is transgender. +The abuse and harassment the police subjected Linda to also violated a host of state and local civil rights laws and demonstrated that the city has failed to take reasonable measures to train and supervise its officers when interacting with transgender people. +Learn More About the Case What Linda has gone through is all too common for Latina trans women around the country. +It was this sort of profiling and violence against LGBTQ people that sparked the Stonewall Rebellion and that has sustained advocacy in the decades since then. +More recently, Make the Road New York, a community organization that Linda is a member of, released a report documenting police misconduct against LGBTQ people in Queens. +The report highlighted, among other things, how transgender people are often profiled as sex workers and targeted with bogus arrests. +The NYPD has known about incidents like these for a long time. +In 2012, it issued a series of patrol guide provisions establishing basic protections for transgender people who come into contact with the police, including a specific provision prohibiting officers from charging trans people with “false personation” based on naming confusion. +The policy changes look good on paper but, as Linda’s case illustrates, they have not translated into necessary changes on the ground. +In 2017, the NYC Department of Investigation found that the steps the NYPD has taken to prevent abuse of transgender people since the 2012 guidance was released were woefully inadequate. +The report found that only six out of 77 departments had even received training on the new guidance. +Linda cares deeply about advocating for her community, and she decided to do what she could to keep what happened to her from happening to anyone else. +With this lawsuit, we want to make sure that the NYPD does its job and turns good policies into good practices when it comes to the transgender New Yorkers it is sworn to protect. +This piece was originally published on USA Today. +When I gave birth to my first baby, the doctor said, “It’s a girl!” +Before I even knew my child, those words helped me imagine the future. +But the future was different from what I expected. +By the time my child was in high school, he went by a boy's name, ran on the boys’ cross-country team, received hormone therapy, underwent chest surgery and used the boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms. +It was clear early on that Aidan was different. +From about the age of 2, Aidan didn’t want long ponytails but short hair. +He wanted to wear shorts and track pants — going shopping meant the boys’ section. +He was super athletic. +Aidan looked like a boy. +I thought I was raising a tomboy. +I wondered whether someday my daughter would come out as a lesbian. +Then, in junior high, Aidan told me, “Mom, I was born in the wrong body. +I’m transgender.” +I was floored. +When your child comes to you and says, The most basic things you think you know about me are false — it takes your breath away. +I Googled my mind into oblivion. +I read about families that kicked children out of the house and disowned them. +I read about schools that refused to use a child’s chosen name and preferred pronouns. +I learned that transgender kids have a sky-high suicide rate. +I was terrified. +I realized that my choice might be a dead daughter or a thriving son. +Living your truth is hard — but right I had hoped Aidan would wait until after high school to come out publicly as transgender, but after 10th grade, he told me he was going to do it on Facebook. +I couldn’t stop him, and so I posted my own letter alongside his video — and people were supportive. +Afterward, Aidan seemed lighter and happier. +Even so, it was not an easy path. +Our family used to go to church together, and we’d jam to Christian music in the car — until one church associate told Aidan he was damned to hell. +Aidan was devastated, and eventually quit the youth group. +These days, he questions the existence of God. +I still go to that church and feel so sad and angry that representatives of an institution I value denied my child’s sense of himself — I didn’t want that to happen in other places. +So I felt grateful for the support from Boyertown Area High School in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. +By 10th grade, when Aidan started there, he had been consistently dressing in boys’ clothes for years. +He told the guidance counselor he had gotten strange looks using the girls’ bathroom and needed an alternative. +She offered the nurse’s bathroom. +That summer, Aidan started taking testosterone. +When he returned to school in the fall, we filed for a name change so he would officially be “Aidan.” +Then he had chest surgery. +In Aidan’s senior year, he joined the boys’ cross-country team and, with the school’s permission, began using the boys’ restroom and locker rooms. +Finally, he felt fully validated for who he is. +Aidan was coming into his own as a happy-go-lucky, popular and confident trans kid. +Everyone who met him seemed to like him — he was even elected to the Homecoming Court. +My fear began to fade. +There's more on the line than just bathrooms But during Aidan’s senior year, a handful of other students sued the school, claiming that their privacy was violated because transgender students were using the same bathrooms and locker rooms. +Adolescence can be an awkward time for anyone, but the high school has private changing areas and bathrooms +so no student has to change in front of others. +I’m grateful that two courts have recognized the right of transgender students like Aidan to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. +But now the other students have asked the Supreme Court to review the case. +We are working with the American Civil Liberties Union to discourage the Supreme Court from taking up the case. +It might seem like this is just about a bathroom — but in fact it’s a powerful institution saying to a child, you have no right to be who you say you are. +Schools form the center of kids’ social lives, and they are where kids develop a sense of themselves. +Had the school excluded Aidan from the same facilities as other boys, it would have negated, instead of affirmed, his new and shining confidence and ease in the world. +He knows transgender kids who have had more experiences like that: They have been rejected by family, friends, institutions. +Several have attempted suicide. +I consider myself a very lucky mom. +God blessed me with two wonderful kids. +My greatest hope is that the world recognizes my son, and other transgender people like him, and allows them to find their paths. +After a short-lived victory in January, transgender students in South Dakota are once again being targeted with legislation that would put them at greater risk and, at the same time, cause serious damage to the state’s reputation and economy. +On Jan. 24, lawmakers in the state Senate scuttled a bill requiring transgender students to participate in high-school athletics based on the gender they were assigned at birth. +A broad coalition — including the largest school district in the state, faith leaders, doctors, athletes, and parents — came together to oppose the measure. +A similar bill has now been reintroduced along with two others that would harm transgender kids. +The bills are each unique, but they have a common goal: To attack transgender people, particularly transgender students and their families. +HB 1225 is a near clone of the now-dead SB 49. +It would exclude transgender student-athletes from enjoying the same opportunities and programs as their peers. +It would force transgender kids to play sports according to the gender on their birth certificates and overturn a policy that has successfully been in place for years. +The bill flies in the face of doctors; sports associations, such as the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee; and local school administrators, who understand the importance of providing equal educational opportunity to transgender students. +HB 1108 would prohibit the discussion of “gender identity” and “gender expression” in kindergarten through seventh-grade classrooms. +While this bill is clearly meant to target transgender kids, it’s so broad and poorly written that it has implications for all students. +Everyone has a gender identity, after all. +The bill, which passed out of committee on Wednesday, would prevent teachers and administrators from creating a safe and welcoming educational environment for all students. +The third bill, HB 1205, was thankfully defeated on Thursday. +The bill claimed that it would protect parents and guardians from any adverse governmental action for denying their minor children treatment of any kind to support gender transition. +Parents already have broad authority and power to make health-care decisions for minor children in their care. +The bill was a proclamation by the government that it disapproves of transgender young people. +All three bills come on the heels of year-after-year legislative attacks against transgender people in South Dakota. +Each time an anti-trans bill is introduced, the ACLU of South Dakota is flooded with calls from scared kids and their families. +They just want to know that they can go to school without being discriminated against, targeted, or bullied. +Every kid in our state deserves to be treated fairly and with dignity and respect. +These bills put those shared values at risk. +With recent nondiscrimination advances in New Hampshire and wins at the ballot box in Anchorage and Massachusetts where nondiscrimination protections were affirmed, attacks against transgender students in states like South Dakota can go unnoticed by most people. +South Dakota kids need the rest of the country to understand what’s happening and to get involved. +The legislation that’s being road tested here will find its way to other state capitols if it isn’t defeated. +The backlash to the anti-trans HB 2 in North Carolina demonstrates the collective power that can be exerted when business leaders, tourists, sports associations, and everyday people let their values guide their wallets and when they raise their voices. +The danger this legislation creates is real. +The potential harm to South Dakota is significant, and the stakes for transgender students are high. +Kids are hurting. +Every student deserves to go to school, to feel safe and supported, and to be given an opportunity for success. +We need to let transgender kids in South Dakota know that they aren’t alone and that people have their backs and will stand with them against discrimination. +Dashir Moore, a transgender man from Georgia, wanted a fresh start in life. +So at the age of 31, he packed up and moved to Colorado, a state that offered both a great lifestyle and trans healthcare. +He hoped he could finally be himself. +Things went well at first. +Almost immediately after Dashir arrived in Colorado, he was able to update the gender marker on his driver’s license. +He got a job as a customer service rep. +Then he scheduled chest surgery. +No stranger to our byzantine insurance system, Dashir called his benefits line to check if the procedure was covered and was told it would be. +He also confirmed that he didn’t need prior authorization before the surgery. +But shortly after the surgery, he found out his insurance would not pay for the procedure, and he soon found himself saddled with medical debt and out of a job. +%3Ciframe%20allow%3D%22accelerometer%3B%20autoplay%3B%20encrypted-media%3B%20gyroscope%3B%20picture-in-picture%22%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FpqlAMSobSDA%3Fautoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%22%20thumb%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aclu.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fweb19-dashirthumb-560x315.png%22%20width%3D%22560%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy statement. +This embed will serve content from youtube.com. +Two days after the surgery, his care coordinator called and told him that his insurance company had refused to pay after all. +Dashir learned that his employer had selected a health insurance plan that excludes medical expenses incurred for “Gender Transition: Treatment, drugs, medicine, services, and supplies for, or leading to, gender transition surgery.” +Dashir began to receive bills from the hospital, which eventually totaled almost $30,000. +His anxiety skyrocketed, and Dashir couldn’t continue to work at his job. +Insurance carve-outs for transition-related care are illegal. +But as Dashir learned the hard way, that hasn’t stopped some from continuing to deny transgender people the care they need. +Here’s the truth about transition-related healthcare. +Myth: Transition-related care is optional. +Reality: Transition-related care is anything but optional. +Many transgender people experience gender dysphoria, the medical term for incongruence between a person’s gender identity and their sex assigned at birth where such incongruence results in clinically significant distress. +Medically accepted standards of care for gender dysphoria include social transition, hormone treatment, and surgery. +The goal of treatment for gender dysphoria is to alleviate distress by helping patients live in accordance with their gender identity. +In Dashir’s case, medically necessary care for his gender dysphoria included surgery to remove breast tissue and create a male chest. +If not addressed, gender dysphoria places patients at great risk for depression, anxiety, self-injury, and suicide. +In other words, failure to treat gender dysphoria can mean the difference between life and death. +Myth: Insurers don’t have to cover transition-related care. +Reality: Insurers can’t deny patients otherwise covered services because they are part of gender transition. +Insurers can limit coverage to care that is medically necessary, but they can’t deny medically necessary care based on who a patient is. +For example, the surgery Dashir needed — a mastectomy — is routinely covered by insurance companies to treat patients with cancer or a genetic predisposition to cancer, such as the BRCA genes. +But Dashir was denied coverage for the same procedure because he is transgender and needed it to treat his gender dysphoria. +That’s discrimination. +Myth: Coverage for transition-related care is too expensive. +Reality: Coverage for transition-related care costs just pennies per insured. +Opponents of transgender equality, including President Trump, have used cost to justify denying transgender people medically necessary care, but their objections don’t stand up to scrutiny. +An expert hired to defend the state of Wisconsin’s exclusion for transition-related care recently estimated the cost of coverage would be between four and 10 cents per insured per month. +That represents less than 0.1 percent of overall medical costs. +It’s hard to imagine Wisconsin claiming it was justified in denying medical coverage for treatment for other conditions, like depression or diabetes, to save pennies per month, yet that’s exactly what it did in denying coverage for transition-related care. +That sends a deeply disturbing message about the value placed on transgender people’s lives. +Dashir may be down, but he’s not out. +Together with the ACLU, he filed a charge of discrimination against his former employer to end the discriminatory denial of healthcare. +We’re standing with Dashir and transgender people across the country so that all of us have the freedom to be who we are. +This piece was originally published in The Denver Post. +When I was a kid, my mom gave me Barbies, but I preferred to play with G.I. Joes. +By high school, I was dressing in my brothers’ clothes. +At Georgia State University, I first heard the word to name who I am: transgender. +I began living as male. +I shaved my head and started getting fade haircuts. +I started taking testosterone. +My new best friend, the first to accept me for who I am, was another Black man. +I was coming into myself, and that felt so good. +Then my best friend was shot and killed in a robbery. +After his death, I would drive around Atlanta, crying. +I had the feeling I had to get out of the South. +It was like Atlanta was a girl and she broke my heart — I didn’t want to see her anymore. +I heard that Colorado has a great lifestyle and excellent trans health care, with doctors specialized in gender-confirming surgery. +In my soul, I wanted to go somewhere where I could be myself. +I packed my Honda CR-V and my puppy and in October 2017, we drove almost 1,400 miles. +My depression lifted when I saw the "Welcome to Colorado" sign, with the sun rays poking through the clouds. +I was going to build a new life as a man. +I updated the gender marker on my driver’s license to male. +In February 2018, I started a job at InnoSource, a staffing agency, as a customer service rep. +I started paying premiums for the company’s United Healthcare plan and signed up to work with the trans health coordinator at Denver Health. +And I decided to get chest surgery. +This was going to be a pivotal moment in my transition. +I had spent years wearing a compression shirt, but I wanted to get those breasts off my chest. +I never wanted a hysterectomy or bottom surgery — chest surgery was going to be the gender-confirming surgery of my life. +That May, I called the company that processed my health claims, UMR, twice and representatives said the procedure was covered at 70 percent and didn’t need preauthorization. +(I didn’t know Denver Health called UMR for authorization anyway.) +My surgery took place on May 21. +I woke up so happy. +There was no bleeding or bad bruising, and the pain was manageable. +I felt free. +I had no idea that after my surgery had begun, UMR had contacted Denver Health to deny me coverage. +I only found out after I got a call at home. +After some investigation, I learned that my employer had negotiated a plan that excluded coverage for gender transition, including “treatment, drugs, medicines, services, and supplies for, or leading to, gender transition surgery.” +Suddenly, I had a $30,000 medical debt. +Doctors had found three lumps in my left breast, but I skipped my post-op appointment because I couldn’t afford to pay. +The next week, my dog — a sweet English bulldog who had been my biggest support — got sick. +He needed a $1,400 surgery. +I should have been able to afford that, but I had just made a big payment toward my surgery; I had nothing. +I asked family and friends to contribute and set up a GoFundMe page, but my dog died a few days later. +I was devastated. +Back at work, I began to experience anxiety attacks. +I’d stand in the parking lot, my heart racing, sweat dripping down my back, feeling dizzy. +Eventually, I resigned. +I felt like this company’s anti-trans bigotry had taken everything — my pride in my job, my dog’s life, my love for my new home, and my own joy in who I am. +I am fighting for my rights because I want that joy, that hope, that love, and that pride back. +And I want to make sure that no other vulnerable person is unable to get basic health care because a company discriminates and says who they are is not covered. +Dashir Moore lives in Colorado Springs. +Together with the ACLU, he is challenging the denial of health care because he is transgender. +Andraya Yearwood, a junior at Cromwell High School in Connecticut, recently finished second in the 55-meter dash at the state open indoor track championships. +But instead of well-deserved accolades from her community, she now finds her achievements being publicly challenged — simply because she is transgender. +There is a long legacy of sex discrimination in athletics. +Myths, such as the idea that physical exertion would harm women’s reproductive systems or that women were inherently inferior athletes, were historically used to “protect” women out of participation in entire fields, including marathon racing and contact sports, despite ample evidence that girls can compete and win against boys. +The enactment of Title IX, the federal statute banning sex discrimination in school programs and activities receiving federal funds, was intended to end such discrimination, and it has indeed resulted in a dramatic increase in girls’ participation in sports. +But girls — and particularly girls of color — still face stark inequalities in opportunities, funding, and resources. +The marginalization of trans student athletes is rooted in the same harmful history of gender discrimination and stereotyping that has impeded the achievement of gender equality in sports as a whole. +Old stereotypes regarding athleticism, biology, and gender are being directed at transgender girls, who are frequently told outright that they are not girls (and conversely transgender boys are told they are not really boys). +This policing of gender has been used to justify subjecting transgender student athletes to numerous additional barriers to participating in sports, from onerous medical requirements to segregation in locker rooms to outright bans on their participation. +The truth is, transgender women and girls have been competing in sports at all levels for years, and there is no research supporting the claim that they maintain a competitive advantage. +As Yearwood rightfully pointed out, all athletes, cis and trans, compete with different advantages, but only some are questioned: “One high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better. +One sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster.” +When girls are pushed out of sports, they miss out on the community building, leadership skills, and all of the other benefits that being part of a team can offer. +This is particularly harmful for transgender students, who face detrimental effects on their physical and emotional wellbeing when they are pushed out of affirming spaces and communities. +These stereotypes are also being invoked in the arena of professional sports, where so-called “gender testing” has been used to police the bodies of women of color and intersex women. +The International Association of Athletic Federations has targeted athletes like Dutee Chand and Caster Semenya for testosterone testing based on arbitrary limits. +IAAF’s new set of proposed regulations, which Semenya is challenging, would require female athletes with hyperandrogenism to undergo unnecessary medical treatment to suppress their hormones in order to compete. +Cisgender women should be concerned whenever an alleged concern for “protecting” our wellbeing is invoked to justify exclusion. +We’ve seen these arguments play out with the harmful and debunked “bathroom predator” myth, where false concerns for cis girls and sexual harassment have been used to promote legislation banning transgender people from public restrooms. +Most recently, we’ve seen it harnessed by legislators like those in South Dakota who have capitalized on recent transphobic comments to push for bills like SB 1225, which would have banned all trans youth from playing sports in school consistent with their gender identity. +One thing is clear: The politicians who introduce these anti-trans bills are not concerned with the integrity of girls’ athletics, any more than proponents of bathroom bans are concerned about preventing gender-based violence. +We must see these efforts for what they are: fear mongering intended to push transgender and nonbinary people out of public spaces. +When misinformation about biology and gender is used to bar transgender girls from sports in schools receiving federal funds, it amounts to the same form of sex discrimination that has long been prohibited under Title IX. +Schools should look for ways to support all girls who want to participate in athletics, rather than attempt to police gender on the basis of impermissible sex stereotypes. +After years of working to affirm my identity in a world where transgender people are questioned constantly about their decisions, I felt hopeful as I arrived for the surgery I had waited so long for. +I was 27, and I would finally be closer to calling my body home. +Since I was a kid, I’ve felt like my body didn’t match my soul. +I felt uncomfortable in clothes. +I felt disgusting when I showered. +Everything felt wrong, but it took me a while to figure out why. +Once I discovered that I am a man, I went to my doctor to start the process of medically transitioning. +I began taking testosterone. +I had a double mastectomy. +The next step was a hysterectomy. +My surgery was scheduled for Aug. 30, 2017, at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, California. +It’s the only hospital in the area, and I was so excited that my community offered transgender care. +I could get the operation close to home and then recover with my loved ones. +I had a pre-op appointment on Aug. 24 that went smoothly, and I followed all the instructions to prepare for my surgery. +On Aug. 30, I arrived at the hospital and they checked me in and did the surgery prep, which was extremely uncomfortable and triggering. +I was given a pink gown. +I asked the nurse if I could have a blue gown, but she told me I was having a “female surgery” and should wear the pink. +I felt like a child all over again, sitting uncomfortably in a pink dress. +But I forced myself to do it, I had been waiting so long for this. +They hooked me up to an IV to get ready to put me to sleep. +About an hour after waiting, my surgeon finally came to get me. +But when I saw the look on his face, I got a terrible feeling. +He told me my surgery was canceled. +It was denied by the Catholic Church for ethical reasons. +I didn’t understand how this could be happening. +The Catholic bishops didn’t approve of my surgery. +It seemed unreal. +I had an anxiety attack and thought about all the pre-op and mental preparedness I had to go through just to get here. +I freaked out and started crying. +I was given medication to calm me down. +Fifteen minutes after that, the hospital staff asked me to leave. +I still had booties on my feet as a nurse led me outside. +I felt humiliated and queasy as I sat on the curb waiting for my roommate to pick me up. +It seems the hospital does not understand how it feels to be treated inhumanely just because your body parts do not match your soul. +This surgery was important — it was meant to balance my hormones. +The delay disrupted my life. +I felt like the hospital’s bigotry had set me back years. +Today, with the help of the ACLU, I filed a lawsuit. +It’s unfair for St. Joseph to deny me care because I’m a transgender man. +I should be able to go to the hospital where I live. +Life in Humboldt County has been tough enough. +Everyone thinks it’s a liberal place, but it’s not for trans people. +I am regularly harassed and called names. +I didn’t expect discrimination from a hospital. +The sting from the rejection remains, but I hope my story lets others know that this is unacceptable. +And we should continue to fight until we are all treated fairly. +No one should be denied health care because of who they are. +Can a business fire someone because they’re LGBTQ? +The Supreme Court will soon tell us. +After a funeral home outside Detroit fired Aimee Stephens because she is transgender, Aimee won a federal appeals court ruling that the firing violated the federal law barring sex discrimination in the workplace. +After Don Zarda was fired from his job as a skydiving instructor because he’s gay, another federal appeals court ruled that his firing, too, was sex discrimination. +On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would take up Aimee and Don’s cases (plus a third) to decide whether to take those civil rights protections away from Aimee, Don, and all LGBTQ people in America. +Not surprisingly, President Trump’s Department of Justice will argue that it should. +In Aimee’s case, she worked for six years in a job she loved as funeral director, getting great reviews. +Her boss and co-workers knew her as a man, but she always knew she was female. +In 2013, Aimee gathered the strength to come out to her supervisor as the woman she is. +She was hoping to find acceptance and to be judged on her good performance alone. +Instead, her boss fired her, making no bones about the fact that it was because she was transgender. +Aimee Stephens In Don’s case, he worked at a skydiving company on Long Island, New York. +Don’s teaching often involved tandem skydives, in which he was strapped hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder with customers learning how to jump. +In the summer of 2010, as Don was strapping himself to a female customer for one of those tandem dives, he told her that he was gay to assuage any concern she had about being strapped to a man she didn’t really know. +He never thought the comment would cause the end of his career at Altitude Express. +But after the dive, Don’s boss fired him because a client learned he was gay. +In both Aimee and Don’s cases, the appeals courts ruled that they were discriminated against because of their sex. +If Aimee was a valued employee when her boss thought she was a man, but unacceptable when he learned she was a woman, it’s frankly hard to see what it could be other than sex discrimination. +In addition, the court in Aimee’s case — following court decisions over many years — held that discrimination based on transgender status is a form of sex discrimination because it’s impossible to describe what it means to be transgender without talking about a person’s sex. +Similarly, the court in Don’s case held that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination because you can’t describe what it means to be gay without talking about a person’s sex. +In addition, the courts held that both Aimee and Don were penalized for failing to conform to their employer’s sex stereotypes — in Don’s case that men should be attracted to women and in Aimee’s case that people who are assigned the male sex at birth are not supposed to look and behave as women. +The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission agrees that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. +And for several years it has been enforcing that statute on behalf of LGBTQ people from every corner of the country who face workplace discrimination. +Unfortunately, President Trump’s Justice Department has taken the opposite position — arguing in both of these cases that it’s perfectly legal under federal law to fire Aimee because she’s trans and Don because he’s gay. +The Supreme Court ruling that Trump seeks — that firing LGBTQ people is legal — would shock most of America. +A core American value is that people should be judged in the workplace based on their performance, not their identity. +It’s a travesty that our government is advocating for discrimination to be legal. +The stakes here are huge. +If federal law says it’s fine to fire someone because she’s lesbian or transgender, other federal civil rights laws may well not protect LGBTQ people, either. +The federal education anti-discrimination law may not stop schools from harassing transgender students. +The Federal Housing Act may not stop landlords from evicting same-sex couples. +And the Affordable Care Act may not prevent health care providers from turning away transgender people. +In fact, such a ruling could lead to the very “erasing” of transgender people from civil rights laws that the Trump Administration is reported to have been considering last fall. +Tragically, Don died in a skydiving accident in 2014. +Don’s surviving partner, Bill Moore, and his sister, Melissa Zarda, have continued the lawsuit on behalf of Don’s estate. +Bill and Melissa will be at the Supreme Court this spring along with Aimee, and all three will fight to ensure that the court doesn’t strip millions of LGBTQ people in America of the federal non-discrimination protections that current law provides. +Here’s hoping the court lives up to the nation’s values and rejects the Trump administration’s effort to relegate LGBTQ people to second-class status. +This piece discusses violent attacks and deaths of Black trans women and will be updated to reflect those who have been killed in 2019. +It has been a horrific week for transgender and non-binary people. +Muhlaysia Booker, Claire Legato, and Michelle Simone are Black trans women who have been murdered in the past week. +At least five Black trans women have been killed so far in 2019. +(Note: This number has risen since this piece was originally published with an updated list below). +On Wednesday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to give federally funded shelters a license to discriminate and turn away transgender people. +The policy move is seen by many transgender and non-binary people as an act of violence on our community and our lives. +Then Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced its plan to take away protections for trans people from discrimination in healthcare. +Like many Black trans women, I struggled to find employment and experienced homelessness. +I supported myself, and my family, by doing sex work. +I was once assaulted and robbed by a client. +Even in New York City, outside of the Stonewall Inn, I have been attacked and hospitalized. +For many trans and non-binary people, particularly Black trans women, our homes are not safe. +Our schools are not safe. +Our workplaces are not safe. +We are ridiculed by health care providers and denied basic and necessary health care. +When we don’t feel safe to get lifesaving medical care, and when shelters that receive taxpayer dollars are allowed to turn me and my community away, there is no place to go but the streets, where we face violence and murder. +And too often, just like I experienced, law enforcement fails to respond. +%3Ciframe%20allow%3D%22accelerometer%3B%20autoplay%3B%20encrypted-media%3B%20gyroscope%3B%20picture-in-picture%22%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2Fy4sQVxCp5JE%3Fautoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%22%20thumb%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aclu.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fweb19-chasestrangio-1160x617.jpg%22%20width%3D%22560%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy statement. +This embed will serve content from youtube.com. +Transgender people need our friends and family to see us, honor and acknowledge who we are, and say publicly that we belong. +In announcing the new proposal, which has not yet been formalized, HUD continues to spread lies and myths about transgender people that we have seen before. +The Trump administration has been saying transgender people are lying about who we are in our schools, workplaces, and the military. +It even suggested in the HHS comments that sharing space with trans people violates the rights of non-transgender people. +Trans women are women. +Trans men are men. +Non-binary genders are real. +We face violence and discrimination in almost every aspect of life. +We are not a threat. +And we have a right to belong in this country and in shelters. +We deserve access to health care. +To fight back against these attacks, here are three things you can do: Check-in: Ask the transgender and non-binary people in your life how they are and what support they need. +Speak-up: Ask candidates for office and elected officials how they will respond to the violence against transgender people. +Support: Reach out to trans-led organizations and ask how you can be a part of the fight in your own community. +Transgender and non-binary people are a part of our country as voters, as taxpayers, as students, as parents, and as employees. +We cannot be erased, no matter what this administration does. +#SayHerName +We honor the lives of the Black trans women who have been killed in 2019. +Dana Martin Jazzaline Ware Ashanti Carmon Claire Legato Muhlaysia Booker Michelle Tamika Washington Paris Cameron Chynal Lindsey Chanel Scurlock Zoe Spears Brooklyn Lindsey Denali +Berries Stuckey Kiki Fantroy Pebbles LaDime Doe Tracy Single Bailey Reeves Bee Love Pebbles LaDime Doe Tracy Single +We also honor the lives of Johana ‘Joa’ Medina, Layleen Polanco and Jordan Cofer. +Learn more about violence impacting transgender people. +Since taking office, the Trump administration has launched a systematic attack on laws that exist to protect all of us from discrimination when we seek basic health care. +Today, we’re taking them back to court over it. +Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) resurrected a policy that allows health care providers — including hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices — to use their religious beliefs to withhold critical information and obstruct patient’s access to health care. +In 2009, the ACLU challenged the original version of the rule. +Ten years later, we filed a lawsuit to, once again, preserve access to evidence-based, nonjudgmental health care and ensure that medical standards — not religious belief — guide health care. +There is no better example of “a solution in search of a problem” than this policy. +In finalizing this rule, the government highlighted a number of cases the ACLU brought to protect patients from discrimination. +The rule cites three of our clients: Tamesha Means, who was turned away three times by a religiously affiliated hospital in the midst of a miscarriage of a non-viable fetus, without being provided even the basic counseling that her own life could be in jeopardy if she did not access an emergency abortion; Rebecca Chamorro, who was denied a standard postpartum tubal ligation at the religiously affiliated hospital where she was scheduled to give birth — although her doctor was ready and willing to perform it; and Evan Minton, whose hysterectomy was cancelled by a religiously affiliated hospital the day before it was scheduled to take place when the hospital learned he is transgender. +According to the Trump administration, the problem is not that Tamesha Means developed a life-threatening infection, that Rebecca Chamorro had to undergo an unnecessary surgical procedure, or that Evan Minton was denied essential gender-affirming care. +The problem is that they all stood up and challenged the institutions that put religious directives before their health and wellbeing. +This rule would do nothing to prevent the harm these patients suffered as a result of being denied care. +Indeed, by transforming the hospitals’ unlawful act of turning patients away into a protected exercise of religious liberty, this rule would only cause more patients to be discriminated against and deprived of the care they need. +That’s not just a bug in the system — it’s the whole point. +We raised exactly these problems when HHS first proposed this rule in 2018. +But HHS moved forward with it anyway, resulting in an even more extreme final rule. +HHS has even declined to clarify whether the rule applies in emergency situations, potentially leading to refusals of care with dire consequences. +The administration claims this rule is needed to protect religious liberty, but religious liberty does not include a license to discriminate, to deny essential care, or to cause harm to others. +There are already safeguards in place to protect employees’ religious beliefs. +All this rule does is encourage discrimination against patients, sending a clear message about what discrimination is tolerable and who is worthy of protection. +Like so many of this administration’s policies, the refusal of care rule would have its most profound impact on access to reproductive health care, particularly for the millions of patients — who are disproportionately Black and Latinx — seeking options counseling and a referral for abortion in the Title X program. +Under the rule, if a pregnant patient requests counseling, a nurse could refuse to provide information about abortion, leaving that patient without a complete picture of the available options. +The clinic where the nurse works may not know that the patient did not receive complete counseling because, under this policy, the clinic is only permitted to ask staff members about their objections to doing their jobs once a year. +And even if the clinic learns that the nurse is refusing to provide complete options counseling to patients, the rule is so absolute that the clinic could have no option but to hire additional staff to provide the services or risk losing all its federal funding if it violates the rule. +Because that is unrealistic for most clinics operating under extremely tight budgets, practically this means the clinic would likely have to cut services, diminish the quality of those services, or discontinue them altogether. +The refusal of care rule’s failure to account for patients’ wellbeing not only flies in the face of everything the Title X program stands for, it also undermines basic principles of medical ethics and informed consent. +The ACLU and NYCLU brought this challenge with two organizations who have been leaders in this fight: the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), the lead national advocacy organization for the Title X family planning program representing hundreds of health care providers across the country; and Public Health Solutions, Inc. (PHS), the largest public health nonprofit serving NYC, including tens of thousands of uninsured and underinsured New Yorkers each year. +We refuse to stand by as access to health care is pushed further out of reach for this country’s most vulnerable populations. +The refusal of care rule violates the Constitution and numerous federal legal protections for patients and so the rule should be prevented from going into effect. +Contrary to what this government would have you believe, the “problem” is not that people are seeking basic health care; the problem is that the Trump administration is doing everything it can to undermine access to that care as well as to embolden discrimination in the process. +In recent years, the number of transgender and nonbinary people murdered has hit record highs. +This year, the alarming trend is expected to continue. +According to one survey, one in four transgender people have been assaulted because they are trans. +The majority of deadly attacks against transgender people are against women of color. +In Jacksonville, Florida, four Black transgender women have been shot in the last six months alone. +Three of them were killed. +The pattern has alarmed activists locally and nationally. +Civil rights groups have asked the Department of Justice to investigate the Jacksonville attacks and provide training on responding to this kind of violence for local law enforcement. +A recent investigative report by ProPublica on the murders in Jacksonville found that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) consistently misidentified the victims by referring to them as men and by the names given to them at birth. +Invalidating the identity of a trans person by invoking an abandoned birth-designated name is known as “deadnaming.” +This practice negates the truth of transgender victims’ lives and prevents accurate investigations into their deaths. +The report found that nationally, across 65 law enforcement agencies investigating trans murders since January 2015, “in 74 of 85 cases, victims were identified by names or genders they had abandoned in their daily lives.” +If a woman who is transgender is killed and reported as male, then her community may not be accurately informed of her death and witnesses may not know to come forward. +Erasing the truth of trans lives, even in death, is also a demoralizing blow to the trans community. +Activist and actress Laverne Cox responded to the ProPublica report on Instagram, recalling a time she contemplated suicide and feared the truth of her life being erased in death: Being misgendered and deadnamed in my death felt like it would be the ultimate insult to the psychological and emotional injuries I was experiencing daily as a black trans woman in New York City, the injuries that made me want to take my own life. +The trauma of being denied a claim to one’s own truth is reason enough to stop the practice of deadnaming and misgendering transgender people. +But practically speaking, deadly violence against transgender people, including by suicide, is fueled by this kind of government action that legitimizes anti-trans bias by perpetuating the idea that a trans person’s name and gender aren’t “real.” +Deadnaming isn’t the only government practice contributing to pervasive bias. +In many states, it is difficult to impossible for transgender people to update the gender marker listed on their driver’s license or birth certificate. +Even where such changes are permissible, many transgender people, particularly transgender women of color, live in poverty and cannot afford to see a doctor to obtain the required documentation to make the change or pay the fees to the agencies that issue identification. +Without identification matching their gender, transgender people can be “outed” as transgender in routine interactions at bars, movie theatres, hospitals, or with police. +Such interactions can lead to harassment and violence. +As the ProPublica report documented, being known as transgender also leads to pervasive job discrimination. +Without laws explicitly protecting them from discrimination, many transgender people — particularly trans people of color who also experience systemic racism — face housing and food insecurity, homelessness, and criminalization. +Without safe access to public spaces — whether shelters, libraries, stores, hospitals, or the workplace — transgender people are perilously situated and face heightened risks of violence. +If you are being followed but can’t duck into a restaurant without fearing rejection, humiliation, and discrimination, your risk of violence escalates. +If you are homeless and can’t safely access shelter because you are transgender, your risk of violence escalates as you navigate street-based homelessness. +If you cannot find stable work and you need to participate in criminalized economies like the drug or sex trades to survive, your risk of violence escalates. +The insistence on ignoring the truth of a transgender person’s name and gender in the midst of the systemic factors that contribute to violence, truly is, as Cox noted, adding insult to grievous injury. +If we are to stop the staggering rise of violence against trans women of color in Jacksonville and across the country, we must take meaningful steps to recognize the basic humanity of trans people in life and in death. +A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday issued the most affirming judicial opinion about transgender people I’ve ever read. +For several years, the Florida prison system denied Reiyn Keohane access to hormones and prevented her from following the dress and grooming standards that all other women are subjected to, because she is a woman who has been placed in a male facility. +Despite the fact that she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and had been receiving hormone therapy prior to her incarceration, Florida told her she would never get access to hormones in prison. +Even though she began to live publicly as her true self at age 14, years before she was incarcerated, prison officials buzzed her hair short, made her wear boxer shorts, and confiscated her women’s underpants and bras as contraband. +The refusal to allow her to express her femininity caused her severe distress that resulted in several attempts at self-castration and suicide. +Under the Constitution, the state can’t be “deliberately indifferent” to the serious medical needs of prisoners. +It’s a tough standard to meet, but after listening to the evidence the ACLU and ACLU of Florida put on at trial, Judge Mark E. Walker, the chief judge for the Northern District of Florida, saw a clear constitutional violation. +He wrote: +And if Ms. Keohane’s treatment in Defendant’s custody isn’t deliberate indifference, then surely there is no such beast. +Ultimately, this case is about whether the law, and this Court by extension, recognizes Ms. Keohane’s humanity as a transgender woman. +The answer is simple. +It does, and I do. +Judge Walker concluded his opinion stating “Ms. Keohane is not an animal. +She is a transgender woman. +Forthwith, Defendant shall treat her with the dignity the Eighth Amendment commands.” +Compassion for people in prison is so rare, those passages make me tear up. +This is one of very few decisions to hold specifically that social transitioning — the ability to live as a woman in daily life — can be part of medically necessary care for transgender people in prison, just as it is in the outside world. +The judge explained: For purposes of this order, “social transitioning” refers only to Ms. Keohane’s request for access to Defendant’s clothing and grooming standards for female inmates. +To be clear, Ms. Keohane is not requesting permission to wear stiletto heels or costume jewelry while in Defendant’s custody. +Instead, she’s only ever sought to be treated like any other female inmate in this state. +This includes the ability to possess and wear the same bras, panties, hairstyles, and makeup items permitted in Defendant’s female facilities. +And he made clear why this is so important: “All inmates, male and female, are severely limited when it comes to self-expression. +For Ms. Keohane, aside from using the appropriate pronouns, the only way she can express her gender identity in prison is by wearing women’s undergarments and grooming like a woman.” +The portion of the decision that requires the state to let Reiyn follow the women’s hair length standards is particularly important — and a legal first. +This decision was issued five years to the day after Chelsea Manning came out as transgender and was told by the United States government in no uncertain terms that she would not get any treatment for her gender dysphoria while she was in prison. +In Chelsea’s case, the Department of Defense, which was holding her in a military prison, ultimately treated her with hormones after we sued, but forced her to maintain male hair-length standards until her release. +The decision in Reiyn’s case shows how important — and how powerful — the judicial system can be. +It can force the state to change its policies and thereby transform the lives of people like Reiyn. +And it can also inspire all of us to live up to the ideals in our Constitution. +Here’s hoping this decision not only creates concrete change on the ground, but that it inspires more people — in prisons and elsewhere — to open their hearts to our fellow human beings, including our transgender friends, colleagues, and community members. +UPDATE (11/05/2018): Massachusetts votes to preserve a law that prohibits discrimination against transgender people in public accommodations. +On November 6, votes cast in states and communities around the country could have a dramatic impact on the dignity, safety, and lives of transgender and nonbinary people. +Nowhere is this more clear than in Massachusetts. +Question 3 is a referendum on a nondiscrimination law passed by a bipartisan supermajority and signed by Republican Governor Charlie Baker in 2016. +A “yes” vote would keep the law, which prohibits discrimination against transgender people in public accommodations. +This includes parks, bathrooms, gyms, restaurants, and hospitals — anywhere that isn’t a person’s work, home, or school. +A “no” vote says that discrimination against transgender people is acceptable. +Without the nondiscrimination law, transgender and nonbinary people could be turned away from restaurants, stores and businesses, just because of who they are. +We have seen this at the municipal level before, but this is the first time a law explicitly prohibiting gender identity discrimination is being put to a statewide vote. +It should be the last, but if we lose, we are likely to see similar attacks on existing protections for LGBTQ people throughout the country. +Since Obergefell, opponents of equality have turned their efforts toward blocking protections for transgender people, using the same fear mongering tactics — like railing against “predatory men in dresses” — they have used against the LGBTQ community in schools and legislatures for decades. +Our opponents claim that acknowledging the dignity of a transgender person by allowing them equal access to our public spaces will make the world less safe — a widely disproven myth. +This fear makes me inclined, as a nonbinary person, to dodge issues relating to my identity — like gender neutral pronouns. +But sometimes that’s not an option. +No matter what bathroom I go into, for example, I risk harassment. +Once, I walked into a women’s room and a woman at the sink told me I was in the wrong bathroom. +She followed me to the stall, and waited outside while telling me she was going to call the manager. +I was terrified and embarrassed. +Despite being proudly nonbinary and doing trans advocacy work professionally, I was keenly aware that I had violated gender norms and was paying the price. +Like so many transgender people, all I could think about was my safety. +Nondiscrimination laws, like the ones that currently exist in Massachusetts, demonstrate that a state and its residents value the dignity, safety, and humanity of all people. +No one should be turned away from places open to the public simply because of their gender expression. +I didn’t speak out in that moment, but I’m doing so now. +We know that the best way to defeat our opponents’ lies is to familiarize people with our transgender family, friends, and coworkers. +That’s how we won in Anchorage, when the community defeated an anti-transgender ballot measure earlier this year. +And that’s what we’ve been doing in Massachusetts. +Throughout this campaign, I’ve told the story of that bathroom experience at voters’ front doors and on the phones. +When we talk to them about the reality many transgender and gender nonconforming people experience, they understand that this law has made Massachusetts a better and safer place for everyone. +They want their transgender friends, neighbors, and loved ones to have the same basic protections they enjoy. +Join the ACLU's grassroots force: People Power Sign up to join hundreds of volunteers at the next nearest local campaign event. +Click to learn more! +Source: PeoplePower.org +In addition to Massachusetts, ACLU voters in every state have the opportunity to vote for equality for trans and nonbinary people. +In recent years, we’ve seen more school boards move to protect all students’ right to learn by ensuring that transgender and nonbinary students have equal access to restrooms, locker rooms, and school activities. +At the federal level, the Equality Act would fill significant gaps in legal protections, guaranteeing explicit and comprehensive nondiscrimination for LGBTQ people nationwide, as well as updating protections for women and people of color. +House and Senate candidates should be asked if they stand with the 70 percent of Americans who support such protections. +Despite our opponents’ attempts to reduce transgender equality to a matter of restroom access, we know it’s about so much more. +This is about treating everyone fairly. +It’s about dignity and respect. +I hope Massachusetts voters remember that when casting their ballots on November 6. +Every day across the nation, the ACLU is called on to defend all the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. +There's never been a more important time to support the ACLU and our effective work to protect civil liberties. +If you like what you just read, help us continue to speak freely by donating today. +Shannon Andrews just helped bring comprehensive health care coverage to transgender state employees across Wisconsin. +Even more reassuring, she proved that average Americans understand that discrimination against transgender people comes with a cost. +Shannon supervises a cancer research lab at the University of Wisconsin. +Like other state employees, she gets health care insurance through the state. +But as a transgender woman, Shannon faced state rules that specifically excluded coverage for hormone therapy and surgery relating to gender transition. +Her doctors say that care is medically necessary for her. +Being denied transition-related care can be devastating. +For Shannon, it caused serious depression and even prompted thoughts of killing herself. +Without insurance coverage, Shannon faced two terrible risks. +She could either drain her retirement account to pay for health care herself and risk not having the money to retire or keep her retirement savings but face the very real risk that she would not be alive for retirement. +Shannon chose to pay for the care herself, but many other transgender people don’t have the savings she had. +After arranging for the care she needed, Shannon wasn’t done. +She, along with fellow state employee Alina Boyden, sued the state over its exclusion, and a federal trial court recently ruled that the state’s exclusion of coverage was unlawful sex discrimination that violated federal law. +Her lawsuit also prompted the board that sets health insurance policy for the state to remove the ban on transition-related health care, so state employees across Wisconsin will now be eligible for this care going forward. +Earlier this week, Shannon told her story to a jury of her peers in Madison, Wisconsin, seeking to recover both the cost of her surgery and compensation for the discrimination she suffered at the hands of the state. +The jury responded by awarding Shannon $479,000 and her co-plaintiff, Alina, $301,000. +Shannon stood up for herself and all transgender people by challenging the state’s discriminatory policy. +Her courage was rewarded not only when the court recognized the illegality of the state’s policy, but also when a jury — people pulled from every walk of life in Wisconsin — heard her story and recognized the harm she suffered. +For me, it’s beyond heartening that a jury could meet two transgender women for the first time in a courtroom, understand their stories about the denial of surgery and hormone care, relate to them as fellow human beings, and award them damages like this. +It’s another sign of how the country is learning more and more about transgender people, which is due to the courage of individual transgender and nonbinary people like Shannon and Alina. +Every day across the nation, the ACLU is called on to defend all the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. +There's never been a more important time to support the ACLU and our effective work to protect civil liberties. +If you like what you just read, help us continue to speak freely by donating today. +Over the weekend, The New York Times revealed that officials within the Trump administration are pushing for a definition of the term “sex” in federal civil rights laws that would eliminate non-discrimination protections for transgender people. +Transgender people and their families understandably panicked at that news. +The reality, though, is that transgender people are already protected from discrimination in many contexts under federal law. +And we are already fighting in court alongside transgender plaintiffs to keep those protections from being taken away. +Federal civil rights laws bar sex discrimination by employers, schools, landlords, and health care providers, through laws such as Title VII, Title IX, and the Affordable Care Act. +Federal courts have consistently ruled that the protection against sex discrimination covers discrimination against transgender people, in contexts ranging from employment to education to access to health care. +Recognizing that anti-trans discrimination is a form of sex discrimination makes sense, given that you can’t describe what it means to be transgender without talking about the person’s sex. +The idea that bans on sex discrimination cover transgender people is not new and it’s not something the Obama administration made up. +State courts have ruled this way going back to the 1970s, and federal courts have done so since the 1990s. +Today, many federal appeals courts agree that trans people are protected from discrimination under statutes barring sex discrimination, and a wide range of federal agencies has issued rulings or regulations protecting transgender people through bans on sex discrimination. +That includes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor. +The Trump administration is trying hard to take away these existing protections and make anti-trans discrimination legal in every context it can find. +They are arguing in court that civil rights laws don’t cover transgender people and they have revoked administrative guidance that used to make clear to schools and prisons that transgender people are protected under current law. +They have also made clear they will propose new regulations that would leave transgender people without recourse under federal law for discrimination they face in many contexts. +If successful, Trump’s actions would harm millions of people all across America. +Aimee Stephens, whom the ACLU represents, is one of them. +She worked as a funeral director and embalmer for six years at a funeral home in Detroit. +Aimee knew she was a girl from an early age. +When she came out to her boss and co-workers as the woman she is, her boss fired her for being transgender. +Aimee and her wife, Donna, have had to sell off their possessions just to stay afloat. +This spring, a federal appeals court ruled that what happened to Aimee was not only wrong, it was unlawful sex discrimination. +The funeral home has asked the Supreme Court to reverse the case and leave Aimee with no job and no remedy for the discrimination she experienced. +On Wednesday, the Department of Justice will file a brief in the case about whether it believes the federal appeals court was right to rule for Aimee. +Its position won’t be a surprise: Attorney General Sessions issued a memorandum in September 2017 declaring that the very federal law Aimee sued under — Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — doesn’t protect transgender people from discrimination. +Aidan DeStefano, another ACLU client, would also face harm if the Trump administration succeeded in undoing legal protections for transgender people. +Aidan, who is transgender, used to attend Boyertown Area Senior High School in central Pennsylvania. +His school district allows boys like Aidan to use the boys’ restrooms, participate in boys’ sports teams, and use the boys’ locker rooms. +The school district adopted that policy in large part because a guidance document from 2016 from the U.S. Department of Education made clear that Title IX, which bars sex discrimination by schools, covers anti-trans discrimination. +But in early 2017, the Trump administration revoked that guidance. +Yet when anti-trans activists sued Aidan’s school over its policy allowing transgender students to use the restroom, the courts rejected their challenge and upheld the school’s inclusive policy. +The people behind that lawsuit have announced that they will ask the Supreme Court to take up the case. +If the Trump administration had its way, Shannon Andrews would also lose the protections of civil rights laws. +Shannon supervises a cancer research lab at the University of Wisconsin. +Like other state employees, she gets health care insurance through the state. +Shannon faced state rules that specifically excluded coverage for hormone therapy and surgery relating to gender transition, even though her doctors say that care is medically necessary for her. +Last month, a federal judge ruled that the state violated federal law when it barred Shannon from receiving this health care because she’s transgender. +What’s more, a jury of Shannon’s peers recognized that the state’s treatment of her was wrong and awarded her damages for the discrimination she faced. +In this context as well, the Trump administration is working to change the federal government’s official interpretation of one of the laws that Shannon relied on — a portion of Obamacare that bars discrimination based on sex — in an effort to allow discrimination against transgender people. +The good news here is that this administration doesn’t get the last word on trans people’s rights. +Many courageous transgender people are already in court, fighting to maintain these essential civil rights protections. +They’ll continue to do so, and we’ll be by their sides, as long as it takes to maintain their basic rights. +Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump think federal law shouldn’t protect transgender people. +They think it should be legal to fire someone just because she’s trans. +Five federal appeals courts disagree. +On Wednesday, the ACLU asked the Supreme Court to let stand one of those rulings, in the case of Aimee Stephens. +Aimee had worked at a funeral home in Detroit for nearly six years when she wrote a letter telling her boss and coworkers that she is transgender. +Two weeks after she came out as a woman to her employer, he fired her -- not because of concerns about her job performance, but just because she is transgender. +When Aimee sued the funeral home for discrimination, its defense was that it was perfectly legal to fire her because she is transgender. +It even argued that her complaint should be dismissed because Aimee Stephens never worked there. +In March, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled for Aimee, stating that discrimination against transgender people is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a law that protects employees from discrimination. +That appeals court joined a growing consensus among federal courts on this issue. +Five federal appeals courts, as well as dozens of lower federal courts, agree that anti-trans discrimination is a form of sex discrimination that violates federal law. +Important federal agencies have issued decisions or regulations that say the same thing, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor, among others. +But the Trump administration disagrees. +A year ago, Attorney General Sessions declared that transgender people would no longer be protected from sex discrimination under Title VII, changing the rules for all federal programs. +The funeral home has asked the Supreme Court to review Aimee’s case, reverse the ruling in her favor, and declare that federal civil rights laws don’t protect transgender people. +On Wednesday, the ACLU filed a brief with the Supreme Court explaining why it should decline review and allow the ruling to stand. +The Department of Justice also filed a brief with the court on Wednesday, in which it attacked the appeals court ruling for Aimee. +While the department didn’t expressly call for the court to grant review in Aimee’s case, its sharp critique of the appellate ruling still sends a clear message that the administration opposes transgender equality. +%3Ciframe%20allow%3D%22autoplay%3B%20encrypted-media%22%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20scrolling%3D%22no%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FlIISUGE_7ZA%3Fautoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%22%20width%3D%22530%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy statement. +This embed will serve content from youtube.com. +The Justice Department’s position in Aimee’s case is part of a much larger attack on transgender people by the Trump administration. +As revealed in an article in The New York Times earlier this week, the administration is considering adopting a definition of the term “sex” in federal civil rights statutes that would intentionally exclude transgender people from protection. +It would withdraw existing civil rights protections from millions of people all across America, and is a shameful, hate-filled move. +But Trump and Sessions are facing a serious problem. +No administrative rules, such as those the administration is reportedly considering, can override all the federal court rulings that have found anti-trans discrimination to be a form of sex discrimination that violates federal law. +The issue now sits with the Supreme Court. +It should recognize the rightness of those earlier court decisions and allow the ruling in Aimee’s case to stand. +Her story shows why it’s simply wrong to fire someone because they are transgender. +I was in funeral services for nearly three decades before I was fired in 2013 for being transgender. +In March, a federal appeals court agreed that it was wrong to fire me just because of who I am. +Now, the Supreme Court will consider whether to review that court ruling. +While studying to be a pastor in college, I needed a job, and I found one in a funeral home. +There are a lot of different ministries people can pursue, and I realized comforting people during one of the most vulnerable points in their lives was my ministry. +Some of my coworkers became my closest friends. +It meant a lot to me that one co-worker once trusted me to handle the funeral arrangements for a family member. +My performance reviews were always positive. +For the nearly seven years I worked specifically at R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, I received regular raises, including one just a few months before I was fired. +Deciding to share my identity with my employer followed a lifelong journey to understand my gender. +I knew, from around five years old, that I was different, even though there was no internet to help make sense of what was going on with me. +As a child, I would swipe some of mom’s clothes as she was discarding them. +It was nice to wear them and feel like the real version of myself, even for a just a few minutes. +My whole life, I tried to live as a man. +Eventually, I told my wife Donna the truth: I am a woman. +She encouraged me to see a therapist, who I expected to tell me something was wrong with me. +But after a few sessions, she told me there was nothing wrong with me. +In fact, she helped me think through the steps I could take to become more comfortable expressing myself. +It started with going grocery shopping dressed as a woman, and then going out to eat with Donna. +I remember when we first walked into a restaurant. +Everybody naturally looked up to see who was coming in. +There were no comments from anyone, and I felt relief. +The more time I spent being me, the more I finally started feeling right. +%3Ciframe%20allow%3D%22autoplay%3B%20encrypted-media%22%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20scrolling%3D%22no%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FlIISUGE_7ZA%3Fautoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%22%20width%3D%22530%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy statement. +This embed will serve content from youtube.com. +There were rough patches — like being shunned from our church. +I was worried about family members and how they would take the information about my identity. +So was Donna. +But both our families have been more understanding than either of us could have expected. +It took longer to talk to my coworkers. +One day, in November 2012, I felt that I couldn’t go any further. +I couldn’t come out at work — I had overheard coworkers make derogatory remarks at times and I didn’t feel I could face them. +But I also couldn’t keep living two lives. +I felt ready to kill myself, because I couldn’t think of a way out. +After a long hour, I realized I had too much to live for. +I put down the gun that had been in my hand and picked up a pen. +I started writing a letter to my co-workers, a letter that I would eventually hand to my boss. +The first coworkers I told were ready to support me, which made me feel so much better. +A few months later, I handed my boss the letter while sitting in the chapel of the funeral home. +It said that after an upcoming vacation, I would start using the name Aimee and following the home’s dress code requirements for women. +My boss didn’t say anything at the time A couple weeks later, he came up to me and said, “This isn’t going to work.” +He handed me a letter with a severance package. +Aimee Stephens Was Fired Because She Is Transgender. +That’s Sex Discrimination. +I had given almost seven years of my life to the funeral home, offering countless families comfort when they needed it most. +Being discarded so coldly was hard to understand. +With the help of the ACLU, I sued my former employer for discrimination. +My case made its way up, and when the federal appeals court said this past March that what happened to me was both wrong and illegal, I started to see that not only did I have the support of my wife Donna and many of our family and friends, something not all transgender people have — but I had the support of the law. +I brought this lawsuit in part to extend that support to all transgender people. +No one should be fired because of who they are. +I hope the Supreme Court sees the same. +On Trans Day of Remembrance the trans community honors our dead. +Too many names are read and remembered at vigils around the world marking the deaths of trans people who have been murdered during the year. +This year is again on pace to be the deadliest year for transgender people in the United States. +As of October, at least 22 trans people were killed, almost all of them women of color. +We look at their photos, say their names, light a candle and then, too often, we move on until we add a new name to the list. +Lethal violence against transgender people continues to escalate, but that is only one cause of death in our community. +Existing data suggests that the life expectancy for trans women of color in the U.S. is somewhere in the mid-30’s. +While many lose their lives because of individually perpetrated violence, many more die too soon because of restricted opportunities. +Kicked out of homes or schools in their youth, subjected to employment and housing discrimination in adulthood, driven into the criminal legal system, and denied health care, trans people, particularly those of color, often face insurmountable barriers to survival. +Now, we remember our dead against the backdrop of a Trump administration driven to write us out of federal legal protections, eager to erase us. +A month ago, The New York Times reported that a memo circulating across multiple federal agencies sought to excise transgender people from protection of the law. +We die because people don’t want us to live. +Remembrance is essential, but so too is action. +We must, as artist Micah Bazant proclaimed in an adaptation of Mother Jones’ famous refrain, “honor our dead and fight like hell for the living.” +In this moment of ongoing crisis for our community, here are some concrete actions that can be taken for trans justice and survival. +Education. +Since taking office, the Trump administration has argued that trans students should not be protected from discrimination under federal law. +While the overwhelming majority of courts disagree and trans people remain protected under federal and constitutional law, trans students continue to face hostile conditions in school, leading many to be pushed out of secondary school altogether. +Parents and educators can fight to create inclusive, supportive, and affirming environments for all students by including trans issues in curricula, implementing trans affirming policies, and ensuring that no student faces bullying or harassment. +Employment. +Last month, the Trump administration told the Supreme Court that federal law prohibiting sex discrimination should not protect transgender workers. +Though again, the overwhelming majority of courts disagree, discrimination against trans people persists. +Employers and workers can fight to ensure that trans people are supported in the workplace and send a message that we are an essential part of the labor market that deserves the same protections available to all other workers. +Check to make sure your workplace has policies prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ people, including by affirmatively covering health care and ensuring access to restrooms for trans workers. +Arrest and Incarceration. +Due to discrimination in housing, employment, and education, combined with family rejection, trans people face disproportionately high rates of involvement in the criminal legal system. +Upon arrest, trans people are more likely to have bail set, but are less likely to be able to pay bail than cisgender people due to high rates of poverty and isolation from families of origin. +Working to end mass incarceration, ending cash bail, and paying cash bail when set are critical steps to take in the fight to protect trans lives. +Immigration. +The Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants affect many in the trans community who are fleeing violence in their birth countries. +In the fight to end unconstitutional restrictions on asylum, including trans immigrants in the conversation is essential, as many face intersecting and compounded discrimination and trauma. +Connection. +Connect with, believe, and see trans people. +The community is demonized by fear-driven rhetoric that our lives and bodies pose threats to others. +Yet we are here, existing and living our truths. +Challenge your assumptions about what it means for us to live our truth. +Ask yourself how you “really knew” your gender and consider that we, like you, just know who we are. +Creation. +There is always more to be done. +Watch your state legislatures for attacks on trans people. +Disrupt anti-trans jokes or comments at your family holiday. +Search your family history for the trans relatives who were erased. +Do your research. +Take on the burden so we don’t always have to. +Trans lives are on the line every day. +Today, we remember those we have lost and urge a movement in defense of those who are still with us. +I’m a professor of family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, and I have dedicated my career to studying how discrimination impacts LGBTQ adolescents. +I’m also transgender, and I know from experience that growing up is different — and still much more difficult — for LGBTQ youth. +So it came as a disappointment when I learned that the state university where I work does not cover transition-related healthcare for its employees or their dependents. +On Wednesday, I filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of Arizona and the Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s universities, to rectify the damage done to transgender state employees, like me, and dependents. +The fact that the state of Arizona’s health insurance coverage categorically excludes transition-related surgery is a violation of federal civil rights laws and the U.S. Constitution. +Arizona provides the same discriminatory health plan to nearly all state employees and their dependents. +That means hundreds, if not thousands, of transgender state employees or transgender dependents of state employees cannot receive medically necessary care recommended by their doctors, such as a mastectomy or a hysterectomy. +This is true even though that same care would be covered for cisgender people, individuals who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. +I know of at least 20 families affiliated with the University of Arizona that are harmed by the state’s anti-trans health insurance policy. +Without a doubt, there are many more across the state. +I filed this lawsuit not only for me but also for all of the transgender and nonbinary youth and adults in Arizona whose lives would be made better by knowing that there is one less law that discriminatorily targets them. +Research shows that when adolescents are able to live authentically and begin gender-affirming treatment that is appropriate for them, they look just like their cisgender peers in terms of their mental health. +The problem is, there are too many roadblocks to authenticity for transgender people. +Hostile family members, discrimination in the community, and unfair government policies, like the one I’m fighting, are just a few of the factors that stop transgender people from being themselves. +A study I recently published in the journal Pediatrics confirmed that transgender teens have a much higher suicide risk than their cisgender peers. +My co-authors +and I discovered that half of transmasculine adolescents have attempted suicide at least once before they turn 20. +The same is true for more than 40 percent of nonbinary adolescents and nearly 30 percent of transfeminine adolescents. +For cisgender adolescents, the rates are much lower: under 20 percent, regardless of gender. +I was in my early 20s when I began my gender transition. +In 2004, I had a double mastectomy that cost me $8,000 out of pocket. +I was just out of college, and my father-in-law had to co-sign a loan so that I could afford the procedure. +I am fortunate that my family supports me and that we were able to take on that debt, but many people are not that lucky. +There are a lot of people across Arizona who cannot access the health care they need unless it is covered by insurance. +That’s the situation I’m in now. +My wife, Danielle, and I have two young children and are taking care of an aging parent. +It’s not financially feasible for us to pay out of pocket for the procedure my doctor recommends, a hysterectomy. +So, until Arizona’s discriminatory health plan is improved, I will be forced to live with aspects of my body that do not align with my identity and cause me significant anxiety. +A recent court ruling in Wisconsin held that denying state employees health insurance for gender-affirming medical care violates the Constitution and federal law. +I hope for a similar result in Arizona. +It will improve not only my life but the lives of many other Arizonans. +Transition-related surgery can be life-saving. +No one should be denied medically necessary care because of who they are. +Denying this care is not only wrong, but it is also against the law. +The state of Arizona has a constitutional and moral duty to change its healthcare coverage to include transition-related health care. +Update: On January 22, 2019, the Supreme Court lifted blocks on the trans military ban that were secured by two lawsuits while federal courts continue to review. +Our case, Stone v. Trump, continues to move forward at district court in Maryland. +After four separate courts blocked the Trump administration’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, the White House announced a new plan to carry out the ban on March 23. +How is this possible? +And what does this mean? +We sat down with three lawyers from our LGBT & HIV Project — Josh Block, Chase Strangio, and James Esseks — to break it down. +Last week, the Trump administration announced a new plan to implement the ban on trans people serving in the military. +What does that policy actually do? +Josh: +They are calling it a new policy, but it’s really just following through on what Trump ordered last year. +He told the military last year to ban transgender people from serving. +Last week the military did it. +Chase: +Yes, it is just the military's implementation of his order to ban trans people from serving. +There is nothing new. +The implementation of Trump's plan, which was released last Friday, is a wholesale ban on trans people serving, just like Trump asked for when he first tweeted. +Can some trans people stay in the military? +Josh: +Yes, they made an exception to the policy for people who are already in the military and diagnosed with gender dysphoria to get around the court orders in place. +But that is a small exception. +The actual policy is that if you are transgender, you can't serve. +So trans people can't enlist unless they serve as the gender they were assigned at birth? +Chase: Correct, and only if they have taken no steps to transition of any kind. +So really: Trans people can't enlist. +Also, many trans people do have gender dysphoria and if they have access to a doctor, a diagnosis. +But, for people currently serving, many were serving in the shadows before the previous ban was lifted in 2016 so do not have that documentation. +James: +The implementation policy says that trans folks who don't want to transition, who don't suffer any dysphoria because of being trans, and who can serve in their assigned sex at birth can enlist or serve. +But do those people even exist? +Chase: I don't think those people exist. +Or if they do, they aren't trans. +What about trans people who are already enlisted/currently serving? +Chase: +In theory, they can stay in the military if they are out now and have a diagnosis. +But what we don't know is what kind of punishment they will face for being trans: lack of promotions, denial of deployment, forced discharge for pretextual reasons. +So there's a chance that if you're currently in the military and you come out as trans, you could be discharged? +Josh: If this new policy goes into effect, anyone who comes out as trans for the first time will be affected. +Didn't the court already strike this ban down multiple times? +How can they do this? +Josh: +They can't. +That's why the government is asking the courts to dissolve their injunctions. +The government is pretending that they have now gone through an independent analysis that is not infected by Trump's transparent discriminatory intent. +It's very similar to the games the government has played with the Muslim ban. +Pretending to pass a new policy and then claiming it isn't tainted by Trump's unconstitutional orders. +So the government is claiming it has new evidence that should be sufficient justification for the ban moving forward? +Josh: +They were supposed to study the issue and claim to have found “new evidence” to support the ban. +But that "new evidence" is mostly data from before transgender people were allowed to serve openly. +Chase: +And it isn't even really much evidence at that. +It is a lot of uncited ideological polemics about how trans people are just inherently devious and threaten the privacy of others with no support for any of it, which is why they have been condemned, for example, by the APA: “The American Psychological Association is alarmed by the administration’s misuse of psychological science to stigmatize transgender Americans and justify limiting their ability to serve in uniform and access medically necessary health care." +Why do you all think the Trump administration is choosing the military as the vehicle for its anti-trans agenda? +Chase: +Well they certainly aren't limiting their attacks to the military. +They have attacked us in the context of education, employment, health care and housing. +It is an all-out assault. +Josh: +Right. +The simple answer is that the administration wants to encourage discrimination against trans people any time it has power to do so. +But the military does have a special salience on our society. +Excluding trans people from the military sends a powerful message that trans people are not part of the fabric of American civic life. +What can people do? +Chase: People can support trans people in their lives, and make clear publicly that they oppose this administration's efforts to erase and target us. +They can fight discrimination at the federal, state and local levels. +Add your name to stop Trump's ban on transgender military service Anything else you think people should know? +Chase: It is important that we keep in mind this is part of an effort to confuse and exhaust us and it is part of the same strategy of this administration to roll back civil rights protections and target particular groups of people and communities. +The injunctions are still in place so for now they are blocked from implementing any of this. +We are fighting to keep it that way and will keep fighting. +Stacie Ray knows firsthand how dangerous it can be to have ID documents that don’t reflect who she is, especially when they out you as transgender to other people. +For instance, in 2016 Stacie attended a new job orientation along with 10 other new employees, and they were all required to present their birth certificates. +When a human resources staffer called Stacie up in front of all the other new employees and examined her documents, the staffer said, “Why doesn’t your gender match?” +That’s because while Stacie is a woman, she was assigned male at birth, and her Ohio birth certificate still says she’s male. +Ohio is one of just three states, plus Puerto Rico, that refuse to update the gender marker on birth certificates, at any time, for any reason. +The consequences for Stacie were severe: She was outed to her co-workers as transgender and they started calling her “the freak of the company.” +Another female co-worker told Stacie that if she ever encountered Stacie in the women’s room, she would “beat [her] ass.” +The intense shunning and harassment led Stacie to quit that job just two weeks later. +The following year, Stacie was working as a truck driver and sought a higher paying job that required a hazardous materials endorsement for her commercial driver’s license. +That endorsement in turn required a background check from the Transportation Safety Administration . +At the first appointment for getting the background check, Stacie gave the TSA both her Ohio driver’s license, which correctly showed her as female, and her Ohio birth certificate, which still said male. +The TSA not only told her it wouldn’t do the background check because of the discrepancy in the gender markers on her Ohio documents, but it also outed her as transgender to others in the waiting area. +Humiliated and in tears, Stacie drove directly to the Ohio Board of Health, Office of Vital Statistics, which handles birth certificates, explained what she had just been through, and asked for a corrected birth certificate. +They said, “We will never change it.” +Stacie, however, has had enough. +Last week, she and three other courageous transgender people born in Ohio sued the state over its intransigence around updating birth certificates. +The ACLU, ACLU of Ohio, and Lambda Legal, which have brought the case together, argue that the state’s policy violates individuals’ equal protection, privacy, and free speech rights. +But at its core, Ohio’s policy refuses to treat Ohioans with basic human dignity. +That’s all Stacie and the other plaintiffs are seeking, and it’s what they deserve. +Over the last few years, voters in Houston, Texas, and Anchorage, Alaska, each had anti-trans ballot issues put in front of them. +In 2015, we lost. +Just last week in Alaska, we won. +This naturally raises the question: What did the civil rights community and the trans community do differently in Anchorage than Houston? +The answer is simple but difficult to execute: Transgender people must lead the effort and be introduced as our friends and neighbors to hundreds of thousands of voters. +In Houston, voters were asked whether to keep the city’s new civil rights ordinance, which barred discrimination based not just on gender identity or sexual orientation, but also based on race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, and other grounds. +Our campaign focused on the importance of civil rights laws for everyone, knowing that the public was with us on that issue. +Our opponents, however, pushed a singular campaign slogan of “no men in women’s bathrooms,” zeroing in on transgender protections and distorting what the law would do. +Our side, not ready to focus the campaign on transgender people, tried to change the subject, and it didn’t work. +They defeated us 61 percent to 39 percent, a spread of 22 points and a devastating loss. +Now fast forward to last week, when Anchorage citizens voted on an anti-transgender ballot measure. +Our opponents pushed the same core narrative about the threat of transgender people in restrooms. +But last Friday, city officials announced that the Fair Anchorage campaign defeated that measure by 52.7 percent to 47.3 percent, a spread of 5.4 points. +What changed? +First, the Anchorage campaign put local transgender people front and center in the campaign, its leadership, its ads — some of the most trans-inclusive ads ever used in a political campaign — and its messaging. +We didn’t shy away from the other side’s focus on “bathroom predator” myths, we confronted them directly. +Trans people are our neighbors and our friends. +When the public sees that, we win. +Here’s the core of what we’ve learned since Houston: To stop the horrific attacks on transgender people being launched all across the country, the key is to empower trans leaders and trans voices to tell their stories so that the general public can get to know transgender people. +Trans people are our neighbors and our friends. +When the public sees that, we win. +%3Ciframe%20allow%3D%22autoplay%3B%20encrypted-media%22%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FnxnvDI3QF10%3Fautoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%22%20thumb%3D%22files%2Fweb18-aktranscase-thumb-560x315.jpg%22%20width%3D%22560%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy statement. +This embed will serve content from youtube.com. +Second, voters know more about transgender people than they did even just a few years ago. +This public conversation has been pushed forward by fights in state legislatures and the courts. +When the South Dakota Legislature passed such a bill in 2016, transgender individuals met with the Republican governor, who vetoed the bill in part because of what he learned from engaging with actual trans people. +When Tennessee was considering a similar bill, a courageous young man testified before the legislature about his experience as a transgender person. +His testimony turned key votes and the anti-trans bill failed. +When North Carolina enacted its infamous anti-trans restroom restriction law, known as HB2, trans people were leading voices in the public discussion of the measure. +Transgender students were the centerpiece of the court case that temporarily shut down HB2, and an inspiring young man named Gavin Grimm put a face on this issue for the whole country. +When his high school excluded him from the common boys’ restroom, just because he is transgender, Gavin fought them all the way to the Supreme Court. +Time magazine recognized him as one of the 100 most influential people of 2017. +Third, the Anchorage campaign figured out how to do this education on a massive scale. +In addition to its online and TV ads and a lot of earned media, the campaign reached out to voters directly. +They mailed 147,000 direct mail pieces to Anchorage voters, had over 13,000 individual conversations with voters, made over 66,000 phone calls, and knocked on over 2,000 doors. +The Fair Anchorage campaign mobilized allies from local and national businesses and associations to over 40 faith leaders from across the religious spectrum as well as over 100 bipartisan community leaders, public safety advocates, and educators. +The Anchorage campaign shows how we move people from fear to understanding and acceptance. +There’s no shortcut we can take to get there — it requires significant investment in basic education and outreach — but Anchorage proves it’s possible. +That’s important, because there are more fights on the horizon. +In November, Massachusetts voters will see the same issue on their ballot, and that campaign is up and running. +And in Montana, opponents of LGBT equality are trying to put a similar measure on the November ballot as well. +We know the attacks in legislatures around the country will continue — but we’ve proven we can stop them. +Inspired by the success in Anchorage, we will continue the larger national conversation about the basic humanity of transgender people while beating back these efforts in Massachusetts, Montana, and wherever they appear next. +Kasandra Reddington has been a proud Montanan ever since her family moved to the state when she was 10 years old. +She is a graduate of Montana State University Billings with a degree in psychology and now resides in Helena, where she works as a tutor at a public college. +She enjoys a lot of things about Montana, but especially the state parks. +Unfortunately, an anti-trans ballot initiative is threatening Kasandra’s ability to work and do the activities she loves, solely because she is transgender. +Kasandra is not alone. +Around the country, opponents of LGBTQ equality are targeting transgender and non-binary people in all aspects of their lives. +In recent weeks, we’ve seen attacks from the Trump administration impacting transgender people’s ability to attend school, join the military, be free of violence in prison, and obtain health care. +These attacks are happening in states, cities, and school districts as well. +Right now, in Montana, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, the ACLU and transgender people are fighting back. +After losing the marriage equality battle — both in the court of law and in the court of public opinion — anti-LGBTQ groups have escalated their attacks on transgender people. +These attacks aren’t new, but they have reached a new level of intensity. +Many of these efforts have targeted transgender people’s right to access public spaces, particularly restrooms and locker rooms in places such as schools, libraries, parks, and government buildings. +By exploiting fear and misunderstanding about transgender people, anti-LGBTQ advocates are trying to spread a false narrative about safety and privacy that endangers the health and well-being of trans people and thwarts progress for the LGBTQ community as a whole. +In Montana, an anti-LGBTQ group drafted a dangerous ballot measure, I-183, which seeks to bar transgender and non-binary people from using public spaces consistent with their gender identity. +For Kasandra, the measure represents a serious threat to her personal safety and her livelihood. +“[I-183] would attempt to force me into the men’s restroom, where I don’t belong,” she explains. +“It puts me at risk for physical assault and loss of my job.” +Kasandra decided to join the ACLU in our lawsuit challenging I-183 because she was inspired by transgender activists and public figures who came before her to help make things better for the next generation. +The impact of I-183 would be sweeping, preventing localities from passing or enforcing nondiscrimination ordinances and forcing trans people out of public places like schools, jobs, parks, courts, and libraries. +“[I-183] doesn’t make it any more illegal to assault someone in a public restroom,” Kasandra explains. +“All it does is assault the freedom of trans people. +It is making the public less safe for people to enjoy.” +Montana is not the only place where the right of transgender and non-binary people to exist in public spaces is under threat. +In Oregon and Pennsylvania, anti-LGBTQ organizations are targeting schools that have implemented policies to protect LGBTQ students from discrimination and harassment. +These groups are trying to convince the courts and the public that the mere presence of transgender and non-binary people in public restrooms and locker rooms violates their privacy, despite the fact that these arguments have been rejected and debunked time and time again. +In both Oregon and Pennsylvania, the ACLU is working alongside local LGBTQ organizations to counter these unfounded arguments in court. +In Pennsylvania, the lower court already found that schools have an obligation to treat transgender students equally under the law, including when accessing common restrooms and locker rooms — an important precedent for transgender students around the country. +Now, we’re fighting the same battle in Oregon and defending the victory in Pennsylvania. +No matter what form these attacks take, our response is the same. +We will represent transgender and non-binary people facing discrimination and intervene when anti-LGBTQ groups target districts and localities for doing the right thing. +We will also continue to confront myths about safety and privacy, as we did in Anchorage, with trans people leading the way. +Our opposition wants to legalize discrimination. +We will keep working until transgender and non-binary people in all 50 states have the freedom to live their lives freely and equally. +Yesterday another federal court said what we’ve been arguing all along: Federal law protects transgender people. +For the past four years, Gavin Grimm has been seeking justice. +For most of his time at Gloucester High School, the district’s school board prohibited him from using the boys’ restroom and forced him to use single-stall facilities that no other student was required to use. +They singled him out to be stigmatized and segregated in this way just because he is transgender. +With the ACLU’s help, Gavin sued his school district for violating his rights under the constitution and Title IX, a civil rights law protecting students from sex discrimination. +Gavin’s case made it all the way to the Supreme Court in 2017. +But then in February 2017, just one month after Donald Trump took office, the departments of Education and Justice withdrew the Obama-era guidance. +More so, the Solicitor General sent a letter to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping to undermine the decisions made by the Fourth Circuit. +And it worked. +A couple months away from graduation, the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back down, asking the lower courts to consider the case without the guidance from the Obama administration. +Over a year later, a federal court has finally vindicated what Gavin has been saying all along. +The court held that, even though Secretary of Education Betsy Devos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions revoked guidance protecting trans students, they could not change what the law means. +The court, citing a long line of court decisions supporting transgender people, held that Title IX protects Gavin and other transgender students from discrimination. +Forcing Gavin to use separate restrooms violated his rights under both Title IX and the Constitution and hopefully soon three other courts will be doing the same. +This is an incredible victory for not just Gavin — one that only adds to the forward momentum we’ve been creating in the courts to recognize that transgender people are already protected under federal law. +The court has allowed Gavin’s case to move forward by denying the school’s attempts to dismiss the case. +But the decision did more than that. +The court challenged the idea that policies based on “biological sex” can be implemented. +As U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright put it, “attempting to draw lines based on physiological and anatomical characteristics proves unmanageable.” +Gavin’s victory won’t be able to give him back all the years he spent in Gloucester High School, but Gavin is determined to see his case through to the end so that other students never have to go through the same experience. +The Department of Education may no longer be interested in hearing civil rights complaints from transgender students, but the courts are thanks to people like Gavin Grimm. +Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice recently announced yet another attack on transgender people. +This time, he’s targeting transgender people in the Bureau of Prisons with a new policy statement mandating placements based on assigned sex at birth except in rare cases and erasing hard-won changes to BOP policy that allowed transgender prisoners to be placed in accordance with their gender identity. +We sat down with Chase Strangio, staff attorney with the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project, and Amy Fettig, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, to discuss what this means for transgender people in prison and the ACLU’s work going forward. +Last Friday, the BOP announced a new rule concerning transgender prisoners and undid some Obama-era rules. +Can you explain what changed and how it affects trans prisoners? +Amy: The former rules required that gender identity — a person’s authentic, core understanding of their own gender — play a central role in where a person is held in a male or female prison. +Now, the BOP is saying gender identity doesn't matter really and what they call "biological sex" will determine placement. +That is going to put a lot of people in danger. +Chase: The old policy — though certainly nowhere near perfect — was one that took decades of advocacy work to develop, and lots of prisoners fought and suffered to get to a better place with respect to BOP policy. +Notably, "biological sex" is never defined in the policy, and it seems to mean anything other than the gender that trans person knows themselves to be. +Even though BOP attempted to undermine the safety of trans people in custody, they cannot change federal law, regulations, or the Constitution, and all of those things still protect trans people (however tenuously) and we will fight to ensure that they are enforced. +Amy: BOP is violating the law by not following the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which is mandatory for federal and state prisons and jails around the country. +PREA requires that a person's own sense of where they will be safer be given real consideration. +Now the BOP says that only in "rare" circumstances will anything beyond "biological sex" be considered. +This is especially troubling because it sends the wrong message to prisons and jails around the country. +If BOP doesn't follow the law, how can we expect others to? +You said that it took work from transgender people and advocates over the course of decades to create the previous rules. +During that time, and since then, what have we learned about the conditions for trans people in the prison system. +Chase: The conditions for all people in prison are abysmal and inhumane, so we should start from that first premise. +And then on top of that, trans people experience particularly harsh conditions because the sex-segregation of prison and the systematic anti-trans bias within the system make it almost impossible for trans people to survive. +Amy: In fact, trans people are the most vulnerable people in prisons and jails. +Almost 40 percent of trans prisoners report being sexually assaulted in prison. +And nearly 30 percent are placed in solitary confinement mostly because they are vulnerable. +Chase: One California study found that 59 percent of trans women in men's prisons in California had experienced sexual assault, while less than 5 percent of the general population reported sexual assault. +Let's take a step back. +What do we know about transgender people who are in our criminal justice system and how this community compares to our general prison population? +Chase: Our entire criminal legal system is the product of the over incarceration and policing of people of color and this is also true of transgender people of color. +In one survey nearly 50 percent of Black trans women reported having been incarcerated at some point in their lives. +Due to family rejection, discrimination in schools and workplaces, housing discrimination, and lack of access to health care and ID, trans people are disproportionately living in poverty and homelessness. +Since we criminalize poverty in this country, that also drives trans people into the criminal legal system. +Not to mention that trans folks are often profiled as sex workers or engaged in the drug and sex trades to survive. +Amy: Too often prison and jail are used to deal with issues that could be far, far better handled in the community. +But we've left incarceration as the only social safety net available in this country. +It makes no sense. +What about the ACLU's involvement here. +Can you talk a little about the transgender people the ACLU has represented? +Chase: We have represented prisoners who have been denied access to health care related to gender transition, including a group of Wisconsin prisoners challenging a terrible law that tried to restrict any government funding for gender affirming care, Chelsea Manning in her challenge to the Department of Defense, and many others. +We have also worked collaboratively with prisoners on many policy issues, including in the many rounds of providing comments on proposed PREA regulations. +Amy: Back in 1994, we represented Dee Farmer in front of the Supreme Court (Farmer v. Brennan) in what has become the seminal prisoner rights case. +Chase: +And then for the 20th anniversary we organized a conference called Deliberate Resistance to commemorate all the work that Dee did. +Amy: I was actually on the phone with Dee last week, and she is still fighting for the rights of trans prisoners. +She's a remarkable person. +And I am proud that the ACLU was able to represent her. +Chase: We also have been involved in many cases on behalf of trans prisoners and detainees who have been subjected to violence in police lock-up, jail, and prison and have worked to ensure that they are able to have their day in court. +Even though there is so much work that remains, some amazing people have fought back against the many inhumane and often torturous conditions they have faced. +Amy: Chase and I are working on a case right now about health care for transgender people in prison. +It's getting better in some places, but still too many prisons are denying people the lifesaving and life-affirming care they need. +Indeed, can you talk a bit about what would be a better set of conditions for transgender people in prison, and how the BOP rules supported those conditions? +Chase: The most important thing is to first get people out of prison. +We incarcerate too many people, and a lot of our work has to be about disrupting the drivers of incarceration. +People should be able to survive while they are locked up, released sooner, and have access to basic survival needs when they do. +The former BOP policy that was rolled back allowed for the actual prisoner to assess the conditions that would be safest for them. +We need policies that provide care that people need, that recognize the gender that people are, and that ensure that people receive safer housing and access to programming. +Amy: One of the first things that prisons should do is treat prisoners like people — not just numbers. +These changes are a profound culture shift in prisons. +And it needs to happen if they are ever going to become anything but the warehouses of horror that they now are. +BOP's policy rollback is in the exact wrong direction. +And it sends a message of disrespect, discrimination, and disregard that will have implications down the line. +“Warehouses of horror” is quite the image. +What is the ACLU doing at this point, with the rollback of the rules, to support transgender people in prison? +Chase: The ACLU is working in a broad coalition of groups to try to identify what trans people in custody need in confinement settings across the country. +We will keep filing lawsuits to ensure people receive health care and are not subjected to unconstitutional, cruel, and violent conditions. +Amy: It's important that we let people know what's happening and why it's important. +Prisons like to do things quietly so you won't know, especially because the majority of the public can't see what's happening. +We have to make sure that people know and understand what undermining the rights of our most vulnerable people actually means. +When I was growing up, I avoided dresses and had short hair. +I was basically a happy-go-lucky kid, but I was also different. +In seventh grade, I wrote a letter to my mom: “I don’t like my body. +I don’t like what I have,” but I held off on giving it to her. +Then while I was away at Bible camp, I blurted out over the phone: “Mom, I’m a dude.” +She told me she loved me no matter what. +I came out publicly as a boy in high school and went through therapy, hormone treatment, and surgery to help the body I saw in the mirror reflect the person I felt I was. +I was the first openly transgender student at my school and the first to publicly transition. +I started using the boys’ bathroom my senior year. +But a handful of students and parents at my school, Boyertown Area Senior High in Pennsylvania, sued to stop the school from allowing transgender students like me to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that match our their gender identities — saying the presence of someone like me there violates other people’s privacy. +Less than an hour after arguments in a federal court yesterday in Philadelphia, three judges rejected that argument and said that treating transgender students equally does not hurt anyone else. +I was so relieved. +When I started at Boyertown Area Senior High, the first time I stepped into the girls’ bathroom, the girls stared at me because I looked like a guy. +It was uncomfortable, and it was clear that I didn’t belong there. +I asked school administrators if there was another option, and they said I could use the nurse’s bathroom. +I had started seeing a psychotherapist who is a gender specialist, and I started taking steps to live in a way that reflected who I am. +In 10th grade, I asked my teachers to call me “A” rather than my birth name, a girls’ name. +That summer, I started taking hormones to helpfully become the guy I was meant to be. +I was already wearing guys’ clothes at home, school, work, and church. +When I went back to school in the fall, I asked my teachers to call me Aidan and refer to me as “he” or “him,” which they did. +I immediately felt different in every part of my life. +Schoolwork was easier for me. +I felt happier and more myself. +There were more steps. +I began the process of legally changing my name to Aidan Maxwell DeStefano. +I stopped competing on the girls’ track team — but stayed on as a manager because I loved the team. +I had a bilateral mastectomy. +I began the process of changing my legal documents, including my birth certificate, from saying “female” to saying “male.” +In 11th grade, the boys’ cross-country team asked me to join, and my counselor told me I could use the boys’ bathroom if I wanted to. +By the time I first walked into the boys’ bathroom in 12th grade, I was ready. +I knew I was a guy, and everyone seemed to support me. +I even got elected me to the homecoming court. +When I ran my last race on the cross-country team, it felt great to hear the cheers from the other guys, my teammates. +And in the locker room, I really felt like “one of the guys,” something I had been waiting for my whole life. +Being able to be my true self is more important than I can describe. +In my last semesters of high school, I made the honor roll three times in a row — something I had never achieved before because I had been too distracted and stressed trying to hide who I was. +I was so shocked and angry when I found out that other students were suing the school to stop the policy of allowing kids like me from using a bathroom that matches our gender identity. +I’m lucky to have a supportive family and friends, but most transgender kids I know don’t. +What happens at school can make or break their world. +And being allowed to use the bathrooms we choose is a way to show support and make us feel recognized for who we are. +At one hearing in this case, the judge asked me how many times I’d used the men’s restroom at the courthouse that day. +I had been there several times — I had literally peed in the same room as one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, and he had had no idea the guy next to him was trans. +I graduated high school last year. +Now I’m at community college, and I’m really happy. +My experience in high school was formative — I became who I am with crucial support from my family, friends, teachers, and school administrators. +No one stood in my way when it came to something as basic as using the bathroom consistent with who I am — and every trans person should have that same basic freedom. +High school helped give me a strong sense of myself. +Now, as I make decisions about my future, I know I’m going to live my own life the way I want it to be. +It was just over a year ago that Laverne Cox told us to google Gavin Grimm, the high school student barred from his school’s restrooms because he is transgender. +America listened. +Since then, celebrities like Cox and students like Grimm have helped us understand what it means to be transgender. +That new understanding is reflected in path-breaking court decisions recognizing that transgender people have the freedom to live openly at school, at work, and in the military. +And it led voters to reject a recent ballot initiative that sought to exclude transgender people from restrooms that match their gender identity — a victory for the transgender community that was unthinkable when Cox stood up at last year’s Grammy Awards. +That momentum got a giant push forward yesterday from a federal appeals court in Philadelphia. +The court rejected another attempt to bar transgender boys and girls from restrooms and locker rooms that other boys and girls use. +And it did so in a powerful opinion affirming “the needs, humanity, and decency of transgender students.” +Cisgender students at Boyertown Area Senior High had sued to block transgender students like Aidan DeStefano from using facilities that correspond to their gender identity. +They claimed that boys like Aidan are really “girls,” and that their mere presence in restrooms and locker rooms amounted to privacy violations and sexual harassment. +Last month, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals took the unusual step of rejecting those claims just minutes after the case was argued, signaling that it understood the importance of the case to students and the community. +Yesterday, the court issued an opinion explaining its reasoning and displaying particular insight and empathy for transgender students. +First, the court rejected efforts to use misleading language to label transgender students as other than who they are. +By calling transgender boys “girls” and transgender girls “boys,” opponents of LGBT equality hoped to sow confusion and fear about students sharing common spaces. +The court saw through that tactic and embraced accurate, respectful language to describe both transgender students and their peers, becoming the first federal court of appeals to use the word “cisgender.” +Next, the court recognized that there is nothing wrong, let alone illegal, about going about daily life while being transgender. +That includes using shared restrooms and locker rooms. +What is offensive is comparing being transgender to the outrageous conduct involved in many sexual harassment cases, like a supervisor demanding that his employee dance nude. +Yet that’s precisely the comparison the challengers made. +Finally, the court pointed out an even more basic flaw in the cruel effort to block transgender students from using the same restrooms and locker rooms as other boys and girls: Federal courts have already recognized that not only are schools not prohibited from treating transgender students equally, they are legally required to do so. +That’s because discrimination based on transgender status is a form of sex discrimination barred under federal law. +As the court wrote, forcing transgender students to use facilities apart from other students “would very publicly brand all transgender students with a scarlet ‘T,’ and they should not have to endure that as the price of attending their public school.” +Indeed, the court recognized that such discrimination can exacerbate the challenges transgender students already face and even be life-threatening. +Yesterday’s opinion confirmed what schools around the country have found to be true: Treating boys and girls who are transgender like other boys and girls is the right thing to do and fosters a positive school environment. +And that’s good news not only for transgender students like Gavin and Aidan, but for all students. +On June 30, it was announced that an anti-trans measure in Montana failed to collect enough signatures to appear on the ballot in November. +This is the second time in recent months that those who oppose transgender equality have failed in their efforts to use the ballot to move their agenda forward in a state many think of as conservative. +The anti-trans initiative, I-183, was thought up by the Montana Family Foundation. +It would have forced people to use the public accommodations, such as restrooms and locker rooms, that align with the gender listed on their original birth certificate. +This law would have made public spaces, like schools, work places, and parks unsafe for transgender and non-binary Montanans. +It also would have jeopardized all Montanans’ privacy — anyone entering a public space might have been forced to show paperwork proving their gender to anyone who asked. +The ACLU of Montana and other Montana organizations joined forces as part of the Free and Fair Montana coalition to oppose I-183. +As a part of the effort, the ACLU challenged the language of the original petition in court. +We were successful, causing the signature collection campaign to start over. +Then we filed suit on behalf of transgender and non-binary residents of Montana saying that I-183 was unconstitutional. +But the success in Montana, as in Washington State and Anchorage, was ultimately made possible by the leadership of members of the transgender community, who stood up to fight against bad public policy. +Through the Trans Visible Montana campaign, for example, transgender and non-binary Montanans were introduced to their neighbors and had the opportunity to explain the harmful impact a law like I-183 would have on the state. +The lessons from Washington State, Anchorage and Montana are clear. +If we want to beat back anti-trans initiatives and legislation, the efforts have to be led by transgender people who can share their stories with voters. +And voters are clearly ready and willing to listen. +Our success in Montana is not the end of the story. +In November, voters in Massachusetts will be asked to repeal a two-year-old state law that protects transgender people from non-discrimination in public accommodations, including bathrooms and locker rooms. +The ACLU and the Freedom for All Massachusetts coalition are fighting for a “Yes” vote in Massachusetts to protect the nondiscrimination law. +This coalition understands that our response must be to tackle myths head on and empower trans leaders and voices. +I'm proud of my home state for joining the growing list of states around the country that have rejected these kinds of attacks on transgender people. +I believe that come November, Massachusetts voters will add their state to that list, too. +(Update 7/20/2018: Hilde appreciates that CVS took her experience seriously. +She spoke with a CVS representative who offered a sincere apology on behalf the company and said that the pharmacist who mistreated Hilde acted outside of the company’s guidelines. +Hilde hopes that CVS will make its nondiscrimination policies public, so that transgender and non-binary customers have some assurance the corporation will take appropriate action if similar discrimination occurs in the future.) +On a recent day in April, I left my doctor’s office elated. +I was carrying my first prescriptions for hormone therapy. +I was finally going to start seeing my body reflect my gender identity and the woman I’ve always known myself to be. +I went straight from my doctor to the CVS in my town, Fountain Hills, Arizona, which is a suburb of Phoenix. +I handed over the three prescriptions that my doctor, who specializes in hormone therapy, had just given me. +That’s when my day took a turn. +After years of working to affirm my identity in a world where transgender people are questioned constantly about how well they know themselves, the pharmacist refused to fill one of the prescriptions needed to affirm my identity. +He did not give me a clear reason for the refusal. +He just kept asking, loudly and in front of other CVS staff and customers, why I was given the prescriptions. +Embarrassed and distressed, I nearly started crying in the middle of the store. +I didn’t want to answer why I had been prescribed this hormone therapy combination by my doctor. +I felt like the pharmacist was trying to out me as transgender in front of strangers. +I just froze and worked on holding back the tears. +When I asked for my doctor’s prescription note, the pharmacist refused to give it back, so I was not even able to take it to another pharmacy to have my prescription filled. +I left the store feeling mortified. +When I got home, I called my doctor’s office to explain what happened. +The office staff tried to intervene by calling the pharmacist, but he still refused to fill my prescription without explicitly explaining why. +My doctor ended up having to call the prescription into the local Walgreens, where the medication was filled without question. +I transferred all of my prescriptions there so that I never again have to see the pharmacist who discriminated against me. +I have contacted CVS’ corporate complaint line multiple times, but no one has addressed my concerns or offered me an apology. +Tell CVS: Transgender Customers Need Their Prescriptions, Too My family supports me, fortunately, and helped me work through the anger and humiliation this experience caused. +But many other transgender people are not as fortunate as I am. +I don’t want to think about what might happen if this pharmacist mistreats a transgender person who does not have a good social support system. +Today, I filed a complaint with the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy and am publicly asking CVS to take action and apologize for the way I was treated. +CVS has received perfect marks for the past four years in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which is a valuable tool for assessing corporate policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees. +But something is still not right. +Measures should be in place to ensure no other customer is humiliated like I was. +Through training and written policies, the company needs to make it clear to their employees — especially their pharmacists — that transgender customers deserve respect. +No healthcare worker should rely on personal beliefs to reject decisions made by doctors and their transgender patients about medically necessary care. +Aimee Stephens knows first-hand how religiously-motivated discrimination can wreck your life. +Aimee worked as a funeral director for a Michigan funeral home for six years. +Aimee is a woman who is transgender, but for six years she went to work presenting as a man, while she struggled to be able to live her life as a woman. +When she could hide no longer, she came out to her boss. +Two weeks later, he fired her, saying “this is not going to work out.” +The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued on Aimee’s behalf, seeking a remedy for the funeral home’s blatant sex discrimination. +The funeral home didn’t deny that it fired Aimee because she was going to present as a woman. +Instead it said that federal law allows it to fire her because of the funeral home owner’s religious belief that it’s a sin to transition from one gender to another. +A federal judge in Detroit agreed with the funeral home and dismissed the EEOC’s suit. +The judge ruled that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) permitted the funeral home to use to justify discrimination against transgender employees. +That court’s view, if allowed to stand, would carve out an exception to federal civil rights laws for any employer with religious beliefs that support discrimination. +And it could authorize not just anti-transgender discrimination, but discrimination based on race, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation – in short, all civil rights protections that are basic guarantees of equality in America. +The ACLU, representing Aimee, is before the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit today challenging the trial court ruling. +While the freedom of religion is a core American value that’s protected by the Constitution, religious freedom doesn’t give anyone the right to discriminate. +Aimee Stephens’s case is just one example of how those opposed to LGBT rights are seeking to use religion as an excuse to discriminate. +Later this fall, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in another religious exemptions case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. +In that case, a bakery outside Denver refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple, Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig citing the bakery’s religious objections to gay people getting married. +The Supreme Court is set to decide whether the bakery has a constitutional right to discriminate based on its religious beliefs and its artistic freedom. +Anti-LGBT advocates are also trying to use religion to deny people health care. +In a Texas case, health care providers have challenged federal rules that bar discrimination in access to health care. +They argue that such rules violate their religious freedom in requiring them to provide health care to transgender people. +And in California, a Catholic hospital refused to perform a hysterectomy on a transgender man, arguing that its religious beliefs justify turning the patient away. +In the past, courts have largely rejected attempts to use religion to discriminate. +But our opponents haven’t given up. +We need to fight back, for Aimee Stephens and for LGBT people all across the country. +My name is Pax Enstad, and I’m a high school junior, a son, a brother and a friend. +I’m also a transgender boy. +When I tell people this, it seems like everyone wants to know: What’s the precise moment when you realized you are transgender? +The thing is, there was no single moment, no bolt of lightning that suddenly hit me. +It was more of a process of admitting who I am to myself. +When I hit puberty, I felt really gross and unhappy with my body. +I stopped swimming and doing things outside, and started wearing baggy shirts. +I asked my parents for a chest binder, but I didn’t tell them it was to flatten the breasts I was getting. +My body was a thing that I tried to forget about. +I’m close with my sister, Maya, who is two years older and in college now. +When we realized we both liked girls, we decided to come out to our parents together. +On the day that same-sex marriage became legal nationwide, Maya and I bought rainbow balloons and streamers. +We went to the Pride parade with our parents and afterward, we gave them a rainbow card that said, “We’re gay.” +I had yet to confront my own fear of being transgender. +I thought, maybe all these feelings will go away, but they didn’t. +Existing in a body that didn’t feel like mine became increasingly unbearable. +Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis, and the distress it caused me was severe; I panicked when I didn’t have my chest binder on. +I put off telling my parents about my being transgender. +I was embarrassed about it, and didn’t want to say anything until I was totally sure. +By the time I finally told them, I knew I needed to have surgery to confirm the gender identity I’ve had all along. +What had been a years-long process for me was for my parents a sudden revelation. +They love me and have done their best to be supportive of me. +But PeaceHealth, my mom’s employer, refused to pay for the chest reconstruction surgery my doctor prescribed to treat my gender dysphoria, citing an exclusion for “transgender services.” +It felt terrible to know that PeaceHealth, a nonprofit health care system, had decided that transgender people like me don’t deserve coverage for the same double mastectomy surgeries it will cover for others. +It was treating essential treatment as something frivolous. +The possibility that PeaceHealth’s refusal to cover my surgery might lead to a delay in me receiving the surgery made me extremely anxious and desperate. +I told my parents I could not wait. +They could see this was not about making a “choice” to have surgery – this was something I needed to be me. +To come up with the $10,000 to pay for it, my parents dipped into my college fund and took a second mortgage on our house. +After I had chest reconstruction surgery, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. +After I had chest reconstruction surgery, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. +It was also literally true; I had lost six pounds. +I felt so light and amazing. +The relief was immediate, like, ‘Oh finally, that’s over!’ +I went to homecoming with my best friend and was able to wear boys’ shirts I couldn’t wear before. +I looked dapper +and I felt proud. +But I’m still devastated by the fact that simply because I’m transgender I was refused coverage for the medical care that my doctor prescribed for me. +With the help of the ACLU, we’re bringing a lawsuit against PeaceHealth because no one should be refused care because of who they are. +Gender dysphoria is real and serious. +If left untreated, it can have terrible consequences, including suicide. +Surgeries like the one I had are recognized as medically necessary treatment by every major medical association in America. +Ensuring that transgender people get the health care they need will help save lives. +After two years of being attacked by their very own state government, trans North Carolinians are moving closer to obtaining partial victory. +Today Gov. Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein have proposed a possible settlement to limit the harms of the state’s anti-transgender laws on trans and gender non-conforming people living in and visiting North Carolina. +While the governor and attorney general have at least attempted to mitigated the damage they have done, the University of North Carolina has opted to continue to defend the law in court. +Once again sitting on the sidelines and jeopardizing the well-being of their students, facility, and staff, the university seeks to maintain a right to discriminate. +For the past two years, North Carolina lawmakers have prioritized attacks on trans people. +Our lives, our bodies, our ability to exist in public have been compromised amidst rhetoric and official policy that falsely and dangerously situates us as inherent threats to the privacy of others. +First, former Gov. Pat McCrory signed the infamous H.B. 2, which, among other things, codified a sweeping ban on trans people’s use of single-sex facilities in accordance with our gender. +The law passed through a special session of the General Assembly in a matter of hours, was signed by McCrory that same day, and immediately went into effect. +Though it prompted nationwide backlash from sports leagues, businesses, artists, and others — becoming a cautionary tale of what not to do — the impact on the trans community in North Carolina and across the country was felt immediately. +We became pawns in a political game while our pain, discrimination, and trauma was exacerbated and our ability to exist in public life threatened. +Later, McCrory lost the gubernatorial election in November 2016, partly as a result of the unpopularity H.B. 2, but the state’s anti-trans legacy lived on. +Though Gov. Roy Cooper campaigned on a platform to repeal H.B. 2, he never made it happen. +Instead, like his predecessor, he signed a bill that passed through the assembly in a matter of hours, without any community buy-in. +The law, which purported to repeal H.B. 2, did no such thing. +The replacement, H.B. 142, was just another attack on trans people with different language. +The ACLU and Lambda Legal have spent nearly two years challenging H.B. 2 and then H.B. 142 in court. +During that time, the Department of Justice switched sides. +First it sued North Carolina for violating federal law. +But after the election of President Trump, the Justice Department proclaimed its support for the anti-trans positions advanced by North Carolina lawmakers. +The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, along with Gov. Cooper and Attorney General Stein, are now asking the court to enter a consent decree — a binding agreement — limiting the ability of H.B. 142 to target and harm transgender people in North Carolina. +Like H.B. 2, H.B. 142 created fear and uncertainty for transgender and gender non-conforming people in North Carolina, who were either explicitly or effectively barred from using multi-user, single-sex facilities, like restrooms in government buildings. +The proposed agreement among some of the parties would ensure that no state actor could bar transgender individuals from using restrooms or locker rooms that accord with who we are and how we live our lives. +Today’s proposal is no substitute for comprehensive legal protections or the full repeal of the law, but it is a start. +Nothing is final yet, and the judge will still have to sign-off on the proposed agreement among the plaintiffs, the attorney general, and the governor. +The legislature will likely join UNC in fighting the proposal and continuing to attack the LGBT community Even if the agreement is accepted by the court, other parts of H.B. 142 will remain, like the ban on localities passing non-discrimination protections that include protections for LGBTQ people and others not explicitly protected under state law. +No matter what happens in court or in the legislature, the harms of H.B. 2 and H.B. 142 have been felt across the state. +Trans and gender non-conforming people feel targeted and abandoned, and the UNC system has repeatedly stood on the side of discrimination while their students and staff suffer. +At best, this is a start, and our resolve to keep fighting remains. +In June, the Frederick County school board in western Maryland passed and updated policies addressing discrimination, harassment, and bullying of transgender and gender non-conforming students. +These policies, among other things, affirm students’ right to access restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. +But in August, a parent and student sued the school district, claiming that their privacy rights are being violated by the policy. +Today the ACLU filed a motion to intervene on behalf of James van Kuilenburg, a transgender student in Frederick County, to defend the school board’s policy and stop members of the community from attempting to disrupt his and other trans students’ education by taking away their right to be treated with dignity as the gender they are. +As van Kuilenburg explained, the policy “gave me the ability to finally be myself and access all parts of my education.” +The consequences of being forced to go to school while being barred from boys’ facilities would be “devastating,” he said. +“There is an epidemic of trans students feeling unsafe, depressed, and suicidal,” and a reversal of the policy would “create a culture of fear and misunderstanding.” +Yet it’s the opponents of trans equality who say they’re the aggrieved ones, claiming that their right to privacy and freedom from discrimination is infringed when a transgender individual enters single-sex spaces. +In school districts across the country, including similar ongoing ACLU cases in Illinois to Pennsylvania, trans youth are under attack. +These attacks on trans rights, however, are factually and legally without merit. +Experts in law enforcement and gender-based violence have concluded time and time again that discriminating against transgender people does not make anyone safer. +On the contrary, excluding transgender people from public spaces consistent with their gender identity can have dire consequences for their health and wellbeing, especially for young people. +Fortunately, the courts are recognizing the frivolity of these claims. +In April, we intervened in a similar case in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, to defend transgender students’ right to use public spaces and pursue education free from discrimination. +In that case, the court issued an important ruling in our favor. +The Boyertown court recognized that “high school students… have no constitutional right not to share restrooms and locker rooms with transgender students whose sex assigned at birth is different than theirs.” +The court found Boyertown Area High School already had sufficient privacy protections for uncomfortable students and could not single out transgender students for disfavored and unlawful treatment in response to the discomfort of a small group of students. +The student and parent in Frederick County filed suit under an even more tenuous theory. +In this case, the plaintiff is a cisgender girl who has alleged she was videotaped in the restroom at school by another cisgender female student. +Somehow, the student has alleged that this violation of privacy will be remedied by excluding transgender students from the restroom and other single-sex facilities and programs. +Even more bewildering, this far-fetched theory is being raised in a context where she has not alleged ever encountering a transgender student at school, let alone in the restroom. +We can’t let this kind of fear-mongering stand. +Like the plaintiffs in Boyertown, the cisgender student in Frederick County is not asking for increased privacy. +Rather, she is demanding the right to change and use the restroom in spaces that excludes her transgender peers. +The Boyertown court appropriately recognized that the mere presence of transgender students in school locker rooms and restrooms does not violate anyone’s right to privacy. +According to the judge, the existence of private stalls and changing areas in the school facilities already demonstrated that administrators took privacy into consideration. +Furthermore, cisgender students who were uncomfortable even sharing space with transgender students could utilize separate single-user facilities. +During the hearing, a medical expert testified that adolescent discomfort with nudity could happen to anyone, anywhere, regardless of their gender. +As the court concluded, there is nothing offensive or invasive about the presence of transgender students in communal restrooms and locker rooms. +Indeed, many courts have recognized schools must treat transgender students consistently with their gender to comply with federal law. +The decision in Boyertown is an important victory as opponents continue to launch attacks on transgender students through the guise of privacy. +The message from Boyertown is clear—this harmful and unfounded reasoning will not stand. +That’s why we’re standing up for trans students in Frederick County, and we will continue to stand up for trans youth wherever they are being targeted. +This article is an expression of my personal opinion as a private citizen, and in no way reflects that of the United States Navy, the government, or affiliated agencies and organizations. +My name is Brock Stone. +I am a Petty Officer First Class in the United States Navy, and I have been serving for 11 years. +I’ve set foot in nine different countries, deployed to Afghanistan, and worked alongside some of the most amazing and diverse people our country has to offer. +I also happen to be a transgender man. +I decided to join the Navy in 2005, inspired by my father’s service and that of many other family members and friends. +Right away, I had my work cut out for me, as I had to work hard for several months to fit the physical fitness standards the Navy required. +I was finally able to join in 2006 at the age of 23. +It was an intimidating step into my future, but I had decided well before the day I was sworn in that I was going to serve for at least 20 years. +On my in-processing day, I recall very vividly signing a piece of paper acknowledging the “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy: a rule that stated the military agreed to not ask about my sexual orientation, but that I was not to be involved in any “homosexual behavior.” +I considered myself bisexual at the time, so I rationalized to myself that I was still left with some dating options, and signed on the line. +My gender identity, I’d already buried under a pile of denial in college. +That denial didn’t last long, however. +A few years into my service, and I was struggling with a lot of frustration and anger, and even after I stopped denying my gender identity I still had to stay closeted in public. +Even when DADT was repealed, trans people were left behind. +I turned to cosplay and geek culture to escape a little, but I often wished I didn’t have to wear my real self as a costume. +The one bright spot was my wife, whom I met at a convention in 2015, and who immediately accepted me for who I was. +Thanks to the DADT repeal, we were, at least, able to marry. +Despite the wide acceptance I enjoyed in my personal life and among my friends, I still lived in fear. +Telling the wrong person or posting the wrong thing on social media could mean the end of my career. +I hated the idea of living a lie. +Honor is a core value within the Navy, and hiding who I was didn’t feel honorable, even though it had no material impact on my ability to serve. +By the spring of 2016, I was almost at my wit’s end. +Although I excelled at work and received high marks in performance, being at work was becoming increasingly frustrating. +I was virtually living a double life. +Even though by then the power to discharge trans people had been removed from Navy unit commanders, I stayed closeted because it was still technically possible for me to be processed out. +Then on June 30, 2016, then-Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that the military was halting its ban on allowing service men and women who are transgender to serve. +I watched his press conference in my truck in a shopping mall parking lot, afraid to miss even a second of it. +It was a pivotal moment for me. +I was finally free, finally safe, finally able to fully excel without fearing for my career. +Moving forward with my transition is incredibly liberating. +I feel even more motivated at work, helping my Sailors, and serving my country. +While I don’t pretend to speak for all my fellow trans servicemembers, I have heard similar sentiments from many of them. +My unit, command, and fellow servicemembers have been incredibly supportive. +So, of course, it was shocking and hurtful to hear of the transgender service ban. +All the old fear and anxiety came flooding back, along with a sense of betrayal. +I had, in good faith, made myself known. +I had been granted license to be myself. +And then, just a little more than a year later, that was all taken back. +Now, I wonder whether I’ll be able to continue my career. +I must plan for a future that is uncertain and a course which could dramatically change in just a few months. +I worry for my family. +I remember the first time someone thanked me for my service. +I was flustered and didn’t know what to say. +Then, my father reminded me of something: It’s my privilege. +Privileges are something to be grateful for, something granted by others. +Privilege is also earned. +I am fully committed to the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging the ban allowing trans service men and women to serve, but it took some convincing for me to agree to be a plaintiff. +I never wanted a spotlight, I never wanted to be a hero. +But anyone can look at my service record, and the records of other trans servicemembers like me, and see that we have earned the privilege to continue serving our country so long as we continue to be fit for duty. +We are equal to the task, and it is our right to have an equal chance to take that task on. +On the morning of July 26, 2017, President Trump made an announcement on Twitter. +With his series of tweets, Trump not only compromised the livelihoods, well-being, and lives of transgender service members — he sent a dangerous and dehumanizing message to all transgender and gender nonconforming individuals that we aren’t wanted. +His tweets also contravened the Department of Defense’s own determination in 2016 that there is no reason to exclude transgender individuals from openly serving in the military. +Indeed, Trump’s declaration that he had consulted with his “Generals and military experts” was plaintly untrue. +In August, the president turned his Twitter ban into formal policy, officially directing that the military return to the pre-June 2016 policy of banning transgender individuals from serving in the military “in any capacity.” +The ACLU sued him immediately, and today we’re in federal district court in Maryland to seek an injunction to block the ban. +Without an injunction, transgender individuals would remain banned from enlisting in the military on Jan. 1, 2018, when the open transgender service for purposes of enlistment had been set to go into effect. +Beginning on March 23, 2018, transgender individuals already serving our country and meeting the rigorous fitness standards to do so, would be subject to discharge just because they are transgender. +Also on that date, medically necessary surgical care for transgender individuals would cease to be provided by the military. +Fortunately, the ban was dealt a blow last week when Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the federal district court of Washington, D.C. put the directives on hold in a lawsuit brought by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Advocates & Defenders. +She determined that “all of the reasons proffered by the President for excluding transgender individuals from the military in this case were not merely unsupported, but were actually contradicted by the studies, conclusions and judgment of the military itself.” +That court further concluded that the government’s reasons appear “to be based on unsupported, ‘overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences,’ of transgender people,” and that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the ban is unconstitutional. +We are seeking comparable relief to have Trump’s dangerous directives fully put on hold. +The bans threaten the careers, the health, and the dignity of transgender individuals who have devoted their lives to service of country. +To ensure that service members are protected from sweeping discrimination, having multiple court rulings will ensure that if one court running is put on hold or overturned, protections could be enforced in other federal courts. +The stakes could not be higher. +Our brave clients, who have risked a lot to serve their country, are taking on great risk in standing up against this injustice. +They do so not just for other trans service members and not just for the broader trans community, but also for anyone in the path of discrimination. +Allow transgender service members to serve with dignity and respect. +We’ve launched our latest ACLU camouflage socks in support. +In the past few weeks, I’ve spent considerable time, far more than usual in fact, reflecting on what Veteran’s Day means to me both now and at different times in the past decade. +Before joining the military, Veteran’s Day for me was what I imagine it to be for most Americans: a day to recognize the service that a portion of our population volunteered for and to thank the veterans and active duty service members I knew for serving and risking their lives for our country. +While I was on active duty, Veteran’s Day was mostly a time to tune out the noise and check in on fellow soldiers at home and abroad. +During this time, I developed a tradition of calling at least three soldiers I had served with each Veteran’s Day to say hello and see how they were doing. +I have now been out of the Army for nearly four and a half years and, in many ways, the day has taken on increasing significance with each passing year. +This year in particular, the day has taken on increased meaning in light of the initiatives coming out of the White House and the broader political climate. +Earlier this year, I wrote about about the Trump administration’s unnecessary and immoral ban on transgender soldiers. +As I explained then: “History has proven time and time again that restrictions against certain groups joining the military, such as African-Americans or Japanese-Americans, are self-defeating. +The results of lifting these arbitrary restrictions have always been the same. +The reasons given for the restrictions never came to fruition, were based on fear and prejudice, and the military was ultimately stronger based on a swell of new applicants and diversity in its ranks.” +Trump’s trans ban is antithetical to the core tenants of the military; it is destructive to our unit cohesion and military readiness; and it is just indefensible and wrong to target transgender individuals for discrimination in the military. +I have been heartened by the obstacles President Trump has faced in implementing them. +We cannot rest until the ban is struck down permanently and transgender individuals who are fit and ready to serve can both enlist and be retained in the military with full and equal access to all the benefits of service that the rest of enjoy. +Today I give thanks and honor the transgender service members who not only have taken on the duties and responsibilities, risks and sacrifices of service, but who have to do so with a target on their back from their commander in chief. +They have to serve with the knowledge that in an instant, all they have worked for could be taken away from them simply because of who they are. +This targeting of transgender individuals is part of a larger climate in which veterans and service members are being exploited and disrespected for political gain. +Recently, the discussion of veterans has seemed to present itself most frequently in the ongoing conversation surrounding the National Football League players who have chosen to kneel during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice. +Many have characterized the actions of these players as “protests against the anthem” or our country, which, to me as a veteran, is ludicrous. +The day I enlisted in the Army, I held up my right hand and swore to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” +And one of the most critical rights the Constitution’s Bill of Rights guarantees is “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. +There is simply no question that the right to peaceful protest is precisely what veterans fight to protect. +It is woven directly into the oath we all took the day we enlisted, just like our obligation to fight for equal protection of the laws and the equal dignity of our fellow Americans and soldiers. +Today I hope others will join me in resisting the urge to appropriate notions of what it means to be a veteran. +Instead, call a veteran you know to thank them for the sacrifices they made and the work they did to allow our flawed but beautiful democracy to survive. +Even better, work in defense of our rights — to protest, to equal protection, to justice. +That is what it means to serve, and that it what it means to honor service. +Every year, the transgender, gender nonconforming, and non-binary communities come together on November 20 to remember and honor lives lost to anti-trans violence. +Each year, the number of deaths increases. +Each year, it is mostly brown and Black trans women and femmes who are taken from us. +Transgender Day of Remembrance has historically focused on the stories of those killed in individually-perpetrated violence — the kind of violence in which the attacker can be prosecuted. +This is the type of violence that even Jeff Sessions can condemn. +But as we watch so many in the trans community suffer and die from homelessness, family rejection, incarceration, unemployment, and suicide, remembrance should reverberate across the stories of deaths less often told. +Our community remembers not only the young Black women killed in the street, but also the young students lost to suicide, the incarcerated bodies cut off from health care, the elders struggling to maintain their housing and preserve their histories, the many lost from neglect in a society unwilling to include, serve, and abide us. +While Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day for grief, it can also be a day to reflect on the rich history of trans resistance, a history that lives on in our storytelling and in the hearts of trans elders who witnessed that history. +One of these elders, Flawless Sabrina, died early Saturday morning. +Mother Flawless was an iconic drag queen and guide to generations of young LGBTQ people, many of whom found family and purpose in the bright path of her life and safe shelter in her apartment on Manhattan’s East Side. +Unlike so many we mourn today, Flawless lived 78 full years. +She saw, inspired, and lifted up LGBTQ people around the world. +She cried for those lost and devoted her life and soul to this community and taught so many of us to hold fast to our truths. +“Life is a learning situation...,” Flawless once recounted in an interview. +“I think my grandmother was right, in that you can walk down Madison Avenue with a cow on your head if you do it with confidence. +Accentuate the positive, illuminate the negative, and don’t mess with mystery in between. +You’re the boss applesauce, believe in yourself without question.” +In memory of Flawless and many others now gone, remembrance can be a step toward building a future from the paths they illuminated. +Earlier this week, media reports incorrectly reported that the Pentagon would begin allowing transgender people to enlist in the military despite President Trump’s opposition. +First, in a misleading tweet, the Associated Press reported that the “Pentagon says it will allow transgender people to enlist in the military beginning Jan. 1, despite Trump's opposition.” +The tweet and subsequent reports made no mention of the court orders requiring the Trump administration to permit transgender people to enlist or the government appeals seeking to stop enlistments from happening. +The suggestion that the Pentagon was defying the president or that there was some goodwill in the administration towards transgender individuals was inaccurate and grossly misleading. +The reporting has since been updated to reflect the actual state of pending litigation, but widespread misinformation about the status of the ban gave a false sense of security that trans people will be able to enlist in the military once the new year begins. +But in reality, the Defense Department is fighting back in court to stop transgender people from enlisting and continuing to try to implement the president’s discriminatory ban targeting transgender individuals who currently or intend to serve in the military. +%3Ciframe%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FN2ymLOyi3rk%3Fautoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%22%20thumb%3D%22%2Ffiles%2Fweb17-brockstonethumb-560x315.jpg%22%20width%3D%22560%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy statement. +This embed will serve content from youtube.com. +Three federal courts have now put a preliminary stop to President Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, which he first announced on Twitter in July of this year. +Courts in the District of Columbia, Washington, and Maryland have held that the president’s ban is likely unconstitutional and stopped its enforcement while the cases make their way through the courts. +Under existing court orders, the government cannot discharge service members just because they are transgender, must provide medically necessary health care to currently serving individuals who are transgender, and cannot bar enlistment into the military by transgender recruits beginning on January 1, 2018. +On Tuesday, the government filed an emergency stay application in the ACLU’s case seeking to continue barring transgender people from enlisting in the U.S. military into the new year. +Last week, the government filed a comparable motion in a District of Columbia case, which was rejected by that court. +The ACLU is fighting back every step of the way. +This week we are opposing the government’s efforts to put our victory on hold and we will continue to fight back through the courts, over the holidays, and into the future, until we can rest assured that we have obtained justice for transgender service members. +Our clients are men and women who are transgender who have been serving this country for years, some of whom want to commission as officers but would be barred from doing so by the president’s proposed ban on enlistments by transgender individuals. +While the president’s ban stigmatizes and threatens transgender service members every day, these brave individuals are continuing to fight for their careers, their fellow service members, and for the Constitution. +Many people use a driver’s license or other ID without giving it much thought. +We carry it with us when we drive and show it if we get pulled over. +We use it to get into a bar, board an airplane, or open a bank account. +We use it to rent a car, pick up prescriptions, buy beer, claim a senior citizen discount, or check into a hotel. +Sometimes we have to show it to enter an office building or make a purchase using a credit card or check. +In some places, like Alabama, we need it to cast a vote. +Unfortunately, Alabama is one of nine states that still demands proof of surgery from transgender people before issuing an accurate driver’s license. +For many transgender people, gender-confirming surgical procedures are an important, necessary form of medical care. +But not all transgender people need or want surgery, and others can’t afford to get the treatment they need. +That means that in Alabama many transgender people have no ID they can use safely. +Today, the ACLU and ACLU of Alabama filed a lawsuit challenging Alabama’s policy of restricting access to driver licenses for transgender people that accurately reflect their gender identity. +The government has no business dictating what treatment transgender people get, especially as a prerequisite for a basic government service. +After all, it has nothing to do with how people drive. +Learn more about the case For transgender people with IDs that do not match their gender, everyday experiences can become fraught with fear. +Each instance of showing ID could lead to inconvenience, embarrassment, discrimination, or violence. +In a 2010 report on transgender people in the South, Southerners on New Ground said that having ID with the wrong gender marker made transgender people afraid of calling the police and also made it harder for them to get jobs. +Darcy Corbitt, one of our three plaintiffs, thought she could leave that fear behind her after she changed the gender marker on her North Dakota license and U.S. passport. +But when she moved back to Alabama for graduate school, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency looked up her old records and refused to issue her a license that showed her female gender. +For Darcy, that means staying in Alabama long-term is not an option. +If she had to give up her North Dakota license and get an Alabama one under this policy, her safety and dignity would be compromised. +One of our other plaintiffs, Destiny Clark, has had to contend with Alabama officials seeking out ever more invasive information about her medical and surgical history, at one point even calling her doctor’s office without her consent to get detailed records. +And even with all that information, Alabama still refused to change the gender marker on her license. +As a result, Destiny has adapted her life to minimize her chances of needing to show her ID. +Choices that many non-transgender people take for granted, like heading to a club with friends or going out for a drink, are off limits for Destiny. +According to 2015 research from the National Center for Transgender Equality, around a third of transgender people have experienced mistreatment after showing an ID that did not match their gender, most commonly verbal harassment or denial of services. +Some — most commonly transgender women — were asked to leave an establishment after showing ID. +Sometimes people were even physically attacked. +As with all forms of discrimination against transgender people, this problem does not affect all transgender people equally. +Assault after showing ID that did not match their gender was twice as common for Black transgender people, three times as common for Middle Eastern transgender people, almost five times as common for Native transgender people, and almost eight times as common for undocumented transgender people, compared to transgender people overall. +In addition to endangering transgender people, Alabama’s policy — and other policies like it — violate the law. +All people have a right to make their own health care decisions free from government coercion. +They have a right to keep their personal information private. +They have a right not to endorse a message from the government with which they disagree. +And they have the right not to be discriminated against by the government for who they are. +Transgender people — like all people — deserve to live their lives without the government compromising their privacy, safety, autonomy, dignity, or equality. +That’s why Darcy, Destiny, and other transgender Alabamans have taken this stand, and that’s why they should win in court. +In Texas, transgender young people and their families have become accustomed to sustained attacks on their basic humanity. +Throughout the last legislative session, which concluded in May with most of the anti-trans bills failing to pass, trans Texans and their loved ones traveled to the capitol in Austin from across the state to plea for decency, justice, and the basic opportunity to participate in public life. +When SB6, the sweeping anti-trans bill modeled after North Carolina’s infamous HB2, was heard before a Senate committee in March, hundreds of bill opponents flocked to the capitol to speak out against the measure, which did nothing more than demonize transgender Texans. +The hearing lasted through the night and despite the heartfelt testimony from trans people and their families, the measure passed out of the committee 8-1 and went on to clear the Senate floor. +The bill then died in the House despite the relentless efforts of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to get an anti-trans bill heard on the House floor. +Now Texas lawmakers will return to Austin on Tuesday, July 18, to begin a 30-day special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott to, among other things, attempt to pass the anti-transgender legislation that failed to pass during the regular session. +Proponents of these anti-trans measures, like SB6 champion Sen. Lois Kolkhorst claim that they are designed to “find the balance of privacy, decency, respect, and dignity, to protect women, children, and all people.” +But they do nothing to serve privacy and safety. +They do not protect anyone’s dignity. +Rather they compromise the dignity of transgender people, gender non-conforming people, and the people who care for and love us. +As hundreds of domestic violence and sexual assault organizations explained in a public statement opposing these anti-trans measures last year, “discriminating against transgender people does nothing to decrease the risk of sexual assault.” +The statement went on to “oppose any law that would jeopardize the safety of transgender people by forcing them into restrooms that do not align with the gender they live every day.” +The organizations also made it clear that as advocates committed to violence prevention, they could not “stand by while the needs of survivors, both those who are transgender and those who are not, are obscured in order to push a political agenda that does nothing to serve and protect victims and potential victims.” +And while lawmakers continue to push this political agenda, transgender youth continue to be targeted, transgender women of color continue to be killed, and our communities continue to be decimated by the consequences of legitimizing a debate over our humanity. +In a viral video from Texas, Ken Ballard spoke about his support for his son, who is transgender. +“Was I going to be his bully?” he asks. +“Was I going to try to put him back in a box that fit the rules of my world at the time?” +After his son attempted suicide, Ballard understood that he had a choice between loving and supporting a joyful and happy son or grieving a dead daughter. +He chose to love his son. +He chose to celebrate his beautiful son. +After all, he reflected, “I didn’t have this kid to fulfill my dreams. +I had this kid to help him realize his.” +And the lives and dreams of our children are at stake. +Transgender young people experience epidemically high rates of suicidality, and over 40 percent of transgender people have attempted suicide at some point in our lives. +This is life or death. +In a recent New Yorker article, Texas’s Republican House Speaker Joe Straus said of these sustained attacks on transgender people: “I’m disgusted by all this. +Tell the lieutenant governor I don’t want the suicide of a single Texan on my hands.” +It is as simple and as dire as that. +There can be no compromise when it comes to people’s humanity. +There can be no appropriate amount of discrimination. +Straus knows that. +And he, and all of us who care about justice, must ensure that none of these deadly bills advance. +Our children are listening. +They are wondering what kind of world is out there for them and whether they can live their dreams — or even live at all. +No matter what happens in Texas in the coming weeks, we will never stop fighting. +And that means showing up at the legislature, in the courts, and in the streets. +In a series of tweets this morning, President Donald Trump unexpectedly announced a cruel and dangerous reversal in policy on transgender individuals serving in the military. +Claiming that “[o]ur military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory,” Trump falsely suggested that transgender individuals were too costly and disruptive to continue serving. +The announcement came as a surprise to everyone, including, it seems, the Pentagon. +Stop Trump’s Ban on Transgender Military Service +In fact, just a year ago, the Department of Defense ended the ban on open transgender service, explaining: “This policy was crafted through a comprehensive and inclusive process that included the leadership of the Armed Services, medical and personnel experts across the Department, transgender Service members, outside medical experts, advocacy groups, and the RAND Corporation.” +Apparently that extensive work over many years and across many areas of expertise was reversed in a matter of minutes — over Twitter. +Indeed, contrary to Trump’s suggestion on Twitter, retired Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified in Congress just last week that inclusion of transgender individuals in the military promoted readiness and caused no disruption or cost. +He explained that “[t]he military conducted a thorough research process on this issue and concluded that inclusive policy for transgender troops promotes readiness” and urged Congress “to respect the military’s judgment and not to breach the faith of service members who defend our freedoms.” +Congress ultimately rejected a proposal to ban health coverage for transgender servicemembers and dependents. +As Mullen noted, “Thousands of transgender Americans are currently serving in uniform and there is no reason to single out these brave men and women and deny them the medical care that they require.” +This is not about cost. +This is not about readiness or a strong military. +Today’s announcement is about targeting, demonizing, and endangering a group of people who are risking their lives every day for our country. +To the thousands of trans people currently serving in the military and to the thousands more who love and support them, we will not stop fighting. +If the military reverses its existing policies protecting trans service members in response to the president’s tweets, the ACLU is ready to act. +Contact us if you want to explore your options. +This morning, on the 69th anniversary of President Harry Truman desegregating the military, President Donald Trump announced via a series of three tweets that the United States will no longer allow transgender Americans to serve in the military. +As a reconnaissance platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne and executive officer in Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) who has deployed to Afghanistan, I can say with confidence that this reversal of policy is not only cruel and immoral — it’s also a violation of American values with no basis in facts. +One of the core aspects of the military is its openness to those who want to serve in something greater than themselves. +It is a path offered to those wishing, andwilling, to act on their patriotism. +To discourage or bar those who meet the physical and academic standards from having that choice is imprudent. +History has proven time and time again that restrictions against certain groups joining the military, such as African-Americans or Japanese-Americans, are self-defeating. +The results of lifting these arbitrary restrictions have always been the same. +The reasons given for the restrictions never came to fruition, were based on fear and prejudice, and the military was ultimately stronger based on a swell of new applicants and diversity in its ranks. +I served in the military while “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) was still the law of the land. +The effects were brutal. +Because the Army institutionally discriminated against gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans, a message was sent that homophobia and biphobia were acceptable. +Young soldiers coming in were exposed to this, and internalized oppression was validated and perpetuated. +And who could blame them as they looked up to leadership and the governing rules to learn how to properly conduct themselves. +Repealing DADT started to erode that phenomenon, helping to create an atmosphere of acceptance for gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members in the military. +Another reason to reject Trump’s transgender military ban is that it is antithetical to the core tenets of the military’s esprit de corps. +In my unit in the 82nd Airborne, the brigade and troop commander were both Black, as many as a quarter of the enlisted soldiers were Latino, and the general population of my troop was ethnically and religiously diverse. +I actually had to sit and think long and hard to remember the racial, ethnic, and religious makeup of my brigade. +That’s because when the pressure is on, you don’t care about the race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity of the soldier next to you. +That’s one aspect I loved deeply about the military. +That is what makes the military strong. +Banning a group from joining it damages that dynamic. +According to a White House official, Trump’s ban on transgender Americans serving in the military is a political ploy to help Republicans win seats in Congress. +But transgender people are not political puppets whose lives are to be played with. +(Full disclosure: my brother, Chase, is trans and a lawyer with the ACLU.) +This ban affects real people. +Over 15,000 transgender Americans currently serve in the military. +But now, their livelihoods are at stake. +And young Americans who want to bravely serve their country are being told that they aren’t deserving of that right simply because of who they are — people like my brother. +This only contributes to the existing stigma that drivesnearly half of transgender youth to attempt suicide. +This is not about politics. +This is not about military readiness or cost. +This is a calculated decision to discriminate against an already vulnerable group of people, one that will have devastating effects for countless Americans. +As a veteran, as a human being, as the uncle to my transgender brother’s child, I won’t accept this. +We can do better. +I learned as much through my service. +Yesterday, following Trump’s wishes, House Republicans approved $1.6 billion in border wall funding. +It’s off to the Senate now, where Democrats have said they will block it. +The ACLU opposes construction of the wall because it furthers Trump’s draconian and discriminatory anti-immigrant agenda and puts the rights of people who live near the border in jeopardy. +But a revelation made this move even more callous. +Now we know that Trump's short-lived victory was the work of rank discrimination against patriotic transgender service members. +This week, President Trump announced — in all but three tweets — that transgender people will be banned from military service. +Despite Trump’s false claim that his pronouncement was the result of consultation with “my Generals” and concerns over spending, it has become obvious that sound policy had nothing to do with his reckless decision. +A new report from Politico reveals that Trump decided to ban transgender service members as a way to secure funding for his proposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. +Several House members planned to vote against the “minibus” spending bill, which determines the Pentagon’s spending and also includes $1.6 billion for Trump’s border wall, if it did not include an amendment to prohibit funding for transgender health care in the military. +In an effort to appease his right flank, Trump — obsessed with the construction of a border wall — decided to not just target transgender health care but rather to issue a broad ban against all transgender people from serving in our Armed Forces. +Trump did not consult with the Joint Chiefs of Staff before making the announcement, according to CNN, and one of “the heads of the military branches was informed by a staffer of the President's tweets on transgender policy and had no idea it was coming.” +Trump did, however, consult his “faith advisers.” +Secretary of Defense Mattis, who just three weeks ago proposed giving the Pentagon six more months to study the impact of transgender troops on military readiness, was on vacation at the time Trump made his Twitter pronouncements. +Some military leaders, clueless that Trump was announcing a new policy on transgender service, reportedly worried that he was on the verge of tweeting a call for military strikes on North Korea. +In fact, as of today, there is still no new official policy on transgender service in the military. +Even White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders couldn’t offer any details on the status of the thousands of transgender service members. +Trump didn’t only mislead the public when he said that the ban was the result of close consultation with military leaders, but he also pushed the false claim that spending on health services for transgender troops was too burdensome. +While Trump cited the “tremendous medical costs” of transgender health care coverage in his tweet-storm, experts found that such expenses are minimal, and they are far less onerous than what the government spends on the president’s many trips to Mar-a-Lago or what the military spends on Viagra. +Trump’s own staff also undermined the case that the discriminatory ban was intended to improve military readiness. +One official bragged that the transgender ban was meant to help their party win key races in the midterm elections. +While the military’s trans-inclusive policy “was crafted through a comprehensive and inclusive process” that involved military leaders, outside experts, medical professionals, and transgender service members, Trump’s discriminatory ban was dictated by tweet, rife with falsehoods, and done without significant consultation with members of the military. +It appears that Trump will do whatever it takes to win financing for his ill-conceived and unwanted border wall, even if it means undercutting the military and denying thousands of patriotic transgender troops their right to serve — something Trump avoided five times during the Vietnam War. +How free speech protections fuel civil rights movements. +Milo Yiannopoulos trades on outrage. +He is a professional provocateur who has turned insulting different groups of people into a specialty. +He has claimed that the very existence of transgender people is the product of delusional thinking. +He has compared Black Lives Matter activists to the KKK. +And he has fostered both anti-Muslim bias and disdain for women in one breath, characterizing abortion as "so clearly bad for women's health that it falls second only to Islam.” +Here at the ACLU, we vehemently disagree with Mr. Yiannopoulos’ views. +We work hard, every day, with the very communities he targets, to fight for equal rights and dignity for all. +We recognize that his words cause grievous pain to many individuals, their families, and their loved ones. +Speech like his hurts. +Yet even though we know how wrong-headed Mr. Yiannopoulos’ speech is, the ACLU today filed a lawsuit to defend his free speech rights. +Say what? +We did not take this decision lightly. +We understand the pain caused by Mr. Yiannopoulos’ views. +We also understand the importance of the principles we seek to defend. +The constitutional principle here, of course, is that government can’t censor our speech just because it doesn’t like what we say. +But we’re not representing Mr. Yiannopoulos just out of an abstract principle. +We’re also representing him because free speech is crucial to progress in civil rights movements. +Without free speech protections, all civil rights advocacy could be shut down by the people in power, precisely because government doesn’t agree with the ideas activists advance. +That was true of the civil rights fights of the past, it’s true of the movements facing pitched battles today, and it will be true of the movements of the future that are still striving to be heard. +The case we filed today is a good illustration of what we mean. +The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, a government agency, prohibits any advertisements on its trains or buses that attempt to “influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions.” +Enforcing that rule, the WMATA told the ACLU that we couldn’t put up ads that show the text of the First Amendment (yes, really) in English, Spanish, and Arabic. +It also refused ads from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) urging people not to eat meat and another one from Carafem, a non-profit that provides abortion care and family planning services. +In Mr. Yiannopoulos’ case, it pulled ads for his book from its trains after passengers complained. +That’s quite a range of views that government decided to silence — from an organization promoting free speech, another advocating for reproductive health care, another urging protection of animals, and another peddling what the ACLU believes to be anti-trans, anti-Black, anti-woman, and anti-Muslim views. +That speaks to a core premise of the First Amendment: If government can shut down one of those views, it can shut down all of them. +And that would make it harder for any of us to engage in debate with the public and to try to change people’s minds about the issues that are dearest to our hearts. +Protecting the First Amendment rights of all of these speakers is crucial to the ability of civil rights movements to make the change we need to make. +When we’re talking about oppressed groups espousing what are often minority viewpoints, the danger of being censored is not just theoretical, it happens all the time. +Fighting against that censorship is part of how we ensure that the voices of the marginalized do not disappear from public view. +Consider the movement for LGBT rights. +In 2010, a Mississippi high school student, Constance McMillen, wanted to take her girlfriend to the prom and wear a tuxedo. +Both acts were inherently expressive, communicating that she’s a lesbian and challenging gender norms. +The school said no, asserting they needed to protect other students from these “disruptive” statements. +But a lawsuit we brought under the First Amendment ensured Constance could attend prom — as her true self. +In Delaware, Kai Short knew he was male from an early age, despite being assigned female at birth and given a traditionally female name. +While incarcerated, the state barred him from legally changing his name, but he argued that the First Amendment protected his right to do so. +Delaware ultimately changed the law, allowing Kai to be recognized as his authentic self. +If government can shut down one of those views, it can shut down all of them. +The First Amendment has also repeatedly ensured that advocates could organize and get their messages of protest out in support of the civil rights movement. +The Supreme Court relied on the First Amendment when it ensured that the NAACP could disseminate its message through an economic boycott of racist businesses in Mississippi. +And when Alabama tried to intimidate NAACP members — and effectively destroy the NAACP itself — by subpoenaing its membership records and exposing its members to retaliation by the state, the First Amendment shut it down. +The fight for women’s rights has also relied on free speech protections. +When Virginia made it a crime to publish an ad stating, "Unwanted Pregnancy – Let Us Help You. +Abortions are now legal in New York," it was the First Amendment that protected the right of the public to receive such information. +And in litigation now ongoing, it is the First Amendment that enables us to challenge an Indiana law prohibiting abortion providers from telling teens seeking abortions without parental consent about their options in other states. +I could go on, but you get the point. +In each of these cases, the Constitution's guarantee that we can speak our minds, regardless of what the government thinks about our views, has been crucial to our ability to be out about who we are and what we believe, to share our stories, and to build public support for our equality, dignity, and survival. +Allowing government the leeway to "protect" others from our views silences us. +And silence means an end to the progress we have been making across a wide range of issues, all over the country. +Some people may say that Mr. Yiannopoulos’ offensive speech sets him apart and doesn’t deserve to be defended. +But the sad reality is that many people think that speech about sexuality, gender identity, or abortion is over the line as well. +They’ll say that abortion is murder, civil rights advocates are criminals, or LGBT advocates are trying to recruit children into deviant and perverse lifestyles. +If First Amendment protections are eroded at any level, it's not hard to imagine the government successfully pushing one or more of those arguments in court. +That means that we, as a country and a community, have to put up with a hefty dose of pain from people like Milo Yiannopoulos. +But ask Constance McMillen, the NAACP, and women across the country if the First Amendment has advanced their equality. +We think so, which is why we need to keep protecting it. +Every day, I am confronted with antagonistic queries about why the ACLU would focus on trans rights work. +“How many trans people are there really?” +we are asked. +Or, “Isn’t this just a new niche issue that doesn’t affect a lot of people?” +The assumption is that trans existence is new, that trans people are so marginal as to be unworthy of advocacy, that discrimination against such a new and insignificant community should not consume our attention or resources. +None of this is accurate. +Trans people have always existed. +And while we have and continue to face rampant and deadly discrimination, so too have we built beautiful communities and movements of resistance and love. +A video released today by the ACLU in collaboration with Zackary Drucker, the Transparent producer and artist; Laverne Cox, the Emmy-nominated actress; and the creative team of Molly Crabapple, Kim Boekbinder and Jim Batt tells this story of trans history and resistance, which is as relevant and as urgent now as ever. +%3Ciframe%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20height%3D%22326%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FN-lhWEVByZo%3Fautoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%22%20thumb%3D%22%2Ffiles%2Fweb17-timemarchesthumb-580x326.jpg%22%20width%3D%22580%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy statement. +This embed will serve content from youtube.com. +Just two weeks ago, President Trump announced on Twitter that he wanted to reverse current policy and ban transgender individuals from military service. +Meanwhile, continued legislative efforts in states like Texas seek to ban transgender individuals from public restrooms. +The consequences of this discrimination from our government are deadly. +In one comprehensive survey of more than 27,000 transgender individuals, almost one third of respondents reported living in poverty as compared with only 14 percent of the U.S. population. +Over half of respondents reported being denied health care related to their gender transition. +A quarter indicated that they did not seek medical attention at all due to fear of discrimination. +And more than three-quarters reported experiencing harassment in school because they were trans, ultimately leading 17 percent of respondents to drop out of high school altogether. +All of this contributes to a cycle of discrimination and violence that leads to homelessness, incarceration, and ultimately, for many — particularly trans women of color — premature death. +Indeed, at least 15 trans people have been murdered in the country this year, almost all of them women of color. +The numbers are likely higher, but violence against trans individuals so often goes unreported, or the victims are inaccurately classified by their assigned sex at birth. +So while there is an increase in visibility and attention to trans people, the discrimination remains staggering. +And without accurate information about trans people, our lives, and our rich histories, the impulse to push us out of public life will continue. +But we continue to tell our vivid, vibrant, and critical story of trans resistance. +Time marches forward, and so do we. +Today we filed an amended complaint in Gavin Grimm’s lawsuit to reverse his school district’s discriminatory policy, which prohibited him and other transgender students from using restrooms consistent with their gender identity. +Gavin graduated from high school in June. +Rather than continuing to wait for a ruling on his request for a preliminary injunction (which was filed more than two years ago), we’re moving forward with his claim for damages and his demand to end the anti-trans policy permanently. +Gavin was banned from using the boys’ restroom in December 2014, when he was a 15-year-old sophomore at Gloucester High School in Virginia. +For the rest of his time at school, he was segregated from his peers and forced to use single-stall facilities that no other student was required to use. +Gavin continues on the legal path in seeking justice for transgender students. +In April 2016, Gavin won a landmark victory in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed him to use the boys’ restroom. +Following that ruling, three other courts granted preliminary injunctions sought by other transgender students against anti-trans restroom policies. +All three injunctions went into effect and none have been halted. +The plaintiffs in those cases have been able to attend school without being segregated and stigmatized. +But Gavin himself never got the same chance. +In August 2016, the Supreme Court blocked the appellate court’s ruling while it decided whether it would take up the case. +The Supreme Court did eventually decide to hear the case. +But after the Trump administration withdrew policy guidance issued by the Obama administration to clarify protections for transgender students, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit for further consideration. +As two of the Fourth Circuit judges noted, the Supreme Court’s actions meant that Gavin’s banishment from the boys’ restroom would be “an enduring feature of his high school experience.” +The fight, however, is not over. +We remain confident in the strength of Gavin’s case. +The withdrawal of the guidance does not change the fact that Gavin and other transgender students are protected under Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in schools, and that the school board’s bathroom policy violates that law. +This case has been down a long, winding road, but the journey continues. +As it works its way through the courts, it may yet reach the Supreme Court again. +Every step of the way — beginning with his first speech before his school board — Gavin has shown great courage in standing up for himself and for other trans youth. +As Judge Andre Davis put it, “By challenging unjust policies rooted in invidious discrimination, [Gavin Grimm] takes his place among other modern-day human rights leaders who strive to ensure that, one day, equality will prevail, and that the core dignity of every one of our brothers and sisters is respected by lawmakers and others who wield power over their lives.” +When President Trump took to Twitter on the morning of July 26 to issue a series of lies about transgender individuals serving in the United States armed forces and announce a ban on open transgender service, he disrupted the lives and careers of thousands of transgender troops. +His announcement came as a shock to almost everyone, including members of Congress, military experts, and the Secretary of Defense. +While he claimed to have consulted with his “Generals and military experts,” that was not the case. +Instead, he allied himself with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council who dismissed the service of transgender individuals as the “social experimentation of the Obama era that has crippled our nation’s military.” +We hoped that the ill-advised ban would languish on the president’s Twitter feed, but unfortunately, he turned the tweets into a directive banning open transgender service on August 25. +The new directive bars enlistment by transgender individuals, prohibits coverage for certain critical medical procedures, and bans those currently in the military from serving, with the Secretary of Defense given discretion to determine how to carry out that ban. +Today, we and the ACLU of Maryland filed a lawsuit to challenge President Trump’s cruel policy on behalf of Petty Officer First Class Brock Stone, Staff Sergeant Kate Cole, Senior Airmen John Doe, Technical Sergeant Tommie Parker, Airman First Class Seven Ero George, and Petty Officer First Class Teagan Gilbert. +Our lawsuit argues that the ban violates the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and substantive due process by singling out transgender individuals for unequal and discriminatory treatment. +Every justification that the president has offered in support of the ban has already been thoroughly reviewed and debunked by the Department of Defense itself when it adopted a policy permitting military service by transgender individuals last year. +Military, medical and legal experts have concluded that allowing open service by transgender individuals, many of whom have been serving in silence for years, does not disrupt military readiness or unit cohesion and imposes negligible costs. +By contrast, barring transgender individuals from joining the military and discharging those who are already serving is exceedingly costly and undermines national security and military readiness. +President Trump’s hateful and discriminatory agenda has nothing to do with military readiness. +As Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a combat veteran, explains: “When I was bleeding to death in my Black Hawk helicopter after I was shot down, I didn’t care if the American troops risking their lives to help save me were gay, straight, transgender, black, white or brown. +All that mattered was they didn't leave me behind. +If you are willing to risk your life for our country and you can do the job, you should be able to serve—no matter your gender identity or sexual orientation. +Anything else is not just discriminatory, it is disruptive to our military and it is counterproductive to our national security.” +This policy is just another attempt by the Trump administration to target transgender individuals and push us out of public life. +Our education, our careers, our health care, indeed our existence, is being jeopardized. +Those who are serving our country and relying on the benefits that they have earned deserve a commander-in-chief who will fight for them, not against them. +As my brother, a reconnaissance platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne and executive officer in Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) who has deployed to Afghanistan wrote at the time of President Trump’s initial tweets: “History has proven time and time again that restrictions against certain groups joining the military, such as African-Americans or Japanese-Americans, are self-defeating. +The results of lifting these arbitrary restrictions have always been the same. +The reasons given for the restrictions never came to fruition, were based on fear and prejudice, and the military was ultimately stronger based on a swell of new applicants and diversity in its ranks.” +President Trump can try to impose this transgender ban, but we will fight him every step of the way. +On Monday, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Susan Collins of Maine introduced a bipartisan amendment to the defense authorization bill that would block President Trump’s disgraceful and unconstitutional ban on transgender service members for those currently enlisted. +To be clear, the amendment would not halt every aspect of the ban — such as blocking transgender service members from receiving necessary transition-related health care — but it would lay down an important line in the sand. +Senators will now have a choice to make. +They can either stand up for the thousands of transgender service members who volunteered to defend this country and serve with distinction in the armed forces, or they can stand with the ugly discrimination of Trump’s ban. +Some have pointed to headlines like this from USA Today — “Mattis freezes transgender policy; allows troops to continue serving, pending study” — as a reason not to act. +However, the headlines are misleading. +The Pentagon cannot halt the ban. +Defense Secretary James Mattis has made this clear. +“The department will carry out the president’s policy direction,” he said, “in consultation with the Department of Homeland Security.” +The Palm Center further noted that, “Secretary Jim Mattis does not have discretion to ignore the President’s order to ban transgender troops and he has not frozen the process.” +Secretary Mattis is studying how to implement the ban, not whether to institute it. +That decision has already been ordered by the commander-in-chief. +Anyone hoping that the Pentagon will find a way to save the day is going to be sorely disappointed. +Now is a time for action in defense of transgender service members. +It is for this reason that the ACLU filed a lawsuit to challenge the ban on August 28, arguing that it violates the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and substantive due process. +It is also for this reason that Sens. Gillibrand and Collins are offering their amendment to the defense bill. +Transgender troops like those the ACLU is representing in our lawsuit need Congress to act. +Petty Officer 1st Class Brock Stone has served in the U.S. Navy for nine years, including a nine-month deployment to Afghanistan. +Staff Sgt. +Kate Cole has served in the U.S. Army for almost 10 years, including a one-year deployment to Afghanistan where she served as a team leader and designated marksman. +Senior Airman John Doe has served for approximately six year on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, where he was awarded “Airman of the Year” for his flight and hopes to serve in the Armed Forces for his entire career. +Airman 1st Class Seven Ero George is a member of the Air National Guard. +He is training as a nurse and intends to pursue commission in the U.S. Army. +Petty Officer 1st Class Teagan Gilbert has served in the U.S. Navy for 13 years, including a one-year deployment to Afghanistan, and currently serves as an information technology specialist. +Tech. +Sgt. +Tommie Parker served in the Marine Corps for four years and has served in the Air National Guard for 16 years, currently as a fuel technician. +Each of these individuals — and many others just like them — have proven that they have the courage and capacity to ably serve in the U.S. armed forces. +Now is the time for our political leaders to stand up for them by rejecting the unconstitutional discrimination that lies at the heart of Trump’s ban. +Imagine serving your country for over a decade in the armed forces — many of those years hiding the truth of who you are, but still showing up each day to fight for something bigger than yourself. +You put yourself on the line. +You depend on your service for your benefits, for your survival, for the survival of your family. +You plan your entire life around your career. +After years of committed service, the government finally changes policy and you can serve proudly and openly. +You can be who you are and continue to thrive in your work. +You don’t have to hide under the mask of an inauthentic self. +Then, in an instant, after you rely on assurances that your livelihood and existence will be safe, your government turns on you — in a tweet from your commander in chief, you are told that you cannot serve “in any capacity”; you are told that because you are transgender, everything about who you are and what you have done is irrelevant because you are not wanted. +The entire country watches as you are humiliated and demeaned, and everyone is sent a message that somehow you are unworthy of even basic decency because of who you are. +This is what happened to transgender individuals in the United States armed forces. +For years, transgender individuals were barred from open military service based on outdated and outright incorrect views about what it means to be transgender. +In 2016, after years of study and careful analysis, that ban on service was lifted, and a new policy allowing transgender individuals to serve openly in the Armed Forces was implemented. +But after a tweet from President Trump on July 26 and a subsequent directive signed on August 25, the Department of Defense was instructed by the president to reverse course and again ban transgender individuals from openly serving in the military. +The directive also included banning coverage for medically necessary medical procedures and beginning a process of subjecting currently serving individuals to separation just for being transgender. +Pensions are on the line. +Medical care is being cancelled. +Enlistments are prohibited. +People’s entire lives and careers are disrupted. +Trump’s decision was cruel. +It was directly inconsistent with the studied opinion of military experts. +It was and will be extremely costly. +And it is illegal. +On August 28, the ACLU sued the president and the Department of Defense for violating the constitutional rights of transgender service members. +Today we are filing a motion for a preliminary injunction asking the court to put an immediate stop to the President’s ban to ensure that the harms to our clients and the thousands of other transgender individuals serving our country are rectified immediately. +Individuals like our client Staff Sgt. +Kate Cole should not have to worry about whether their job, health care, entire life is on the line— not because of the risks inherent in the work she has so bravely taken on, but due to the political whims of her commander in chief pandering to a base that would like to see her very existence erased. +Staff Sgt. Cole has served in the military since she enlisted at 17. +She has deployed to Afghanistan, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. +This work, her service, is the only job she has ever known, and she has devoted her life to it. +Now her medical care has already been cancelled and she risks losing everything. +And for what? +Because the president decided to do the military “a favor” and end transgender service without having to study it. +Transgender people are not pawns in a political game. +Our lives, our health care, our work cannot be erased with a tweet. +We will not let that happen, and we are heading to court to stop it. +Hundreds of transgender Texans, alongside their families, friends, and colleagues, gathered in Austin on Tuesday to testify against Senate Bill 6 — a bill targeting transgender individuals. +The measure, which passed the out of the Senate State Affairs Committee after a hearing that went through the night, closely resembles North Carolina’s controversial law, HB 2, which was passed last year after a one-day special session. +The central purpose of the bill, like North Carolina’s, is to expel transgender people from common restrooms in schools and other public buildings. +Even though the proposed law has been condemned by businesses; major sports organizations, including the National Football League; and the hundreds of transgender individuals and their families who came out to testify in opposition, the measure advanced out of committee propelled by dangerous myths about transgender people. +Supporters of the bill claim it is necessary to protect women and children, but the experience of schools, cities, states, medical experts, domestic violence prevention groups and women’s organizations across the country has shown these measures do nothing to protect women and children. +Indeed, by expelling transgender people from public life and sending the message to transgender youth that they are unfit to share space with their peers, laws and policies like Texas’s SB6 contribute to the disproportionately high rates of harassment, bullying, and violence that transgender individuals — particularly transgender women and girls of color — face. +Plain and simple: mandating discrimination against transgender people protects no one. +And these bills aren’t really about protecting people. +At their core, measures like SB6 are predicated on a belief that transgender individuals are not real, that we are “confused” and “troubled” and simply incompatible with the social order. +Animated by this idea, the bills attempt to — and often succeed at — pushing transgender students out of school and all transgender people out of public life. +But as a group of unions representing millions of teachers across the country explained in a brief to the Supreme Court in support of transgender teenager Gavin Grimm, “Transgender people cannot be wished away. +Being transgender is not a fad. +It is innate; not a choice.” +Given this, the brief continues, “most educators and education policy makers understand that schools work best when they fully welcome transgender students into the educational community.” +There is such simplicity to this idea, which we have learned time and time again in our history — discrimination hurts us all. +Unfortunately, though, the movement on SB6 is just the latest in a series of setbacks over the past few weeks in the fight for transgender justice. +Wednesday morning’s committee vote in Austin came less than two days after the Supreme Court sent Gavin Grimm’s landmark transgender rights case back to a lower court to reconsider his win in a years-long fight just to use the restroom at his school. +The court’s action was tied to the Trump administration’s decision last month to rescind guidance documents that had been issued by the Obama Departments of Education and Justice clarifying protections for transgender students under Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools. +Neither the Supreme Court’s action in Gavin’s case nor the Trump administration rescission of the guidance changes the law or the legal protections that transgender students enjoy under Title IX and the Constitution. +But they do send a disturbing message to the transgender young people who are just trying to go to school and survive — that they are unworthy of the same dignity and respect as their peers and should be ashamed of who they are. +Thankfully, though, those cruel messages are being drowned out by the growing and stronger messages of love and support. +Reflecting on the “two crazy, stressful, busy, breathtaking, rewarding, beautiful, fantastic years” that he has been fighting his case, Gavin Grimm wrote on Tuesday: “[Today] I stand stronger and prouder than ever. +I stand not only with my family and friends, but with millions of supporters who stand with me. +I stand with so many wonderful people at the A.C.L.U. that I proudly call my family. +I know now what I did not know then; I will be fine. +Regardless of what obstacles come before me, regardless of what hatred or ignorance or discrimination I face, I will be fine, because I have love on my side.” +The fight for transgender justice is “bigger than me,” Gavin concluded. +“It is for all trans youth who are in school or one day will be. +It is for the friends and loved ones of these youth, who want these children to be happy and healthy, rather than at risk and in danger as so many trans people are.” +With yet another front in the fight for transgender justice emerging in Texas, Gavin’s call to defend the rights of transgender youth to be happy and healthy should mobilize us to act. +It is time to #showup4transyouth in Texas and around the country. +To #StandWithGavin is to carry this fight on until no transgender person fears violence or discrimination just because of who they are. +Following the Trump administration’s shameful decision last month to rescind guidance explaining the rights and protections of transgender students in schools, Democratic Senator Patty Murray from Washington and other members of the education committee sent Sec. +DeVos 11 detailed questions. +The questions seek clarity regarding how the Department of Education intends to enforce civil rights laws including Title IX, the impact of revoking the guidance on students and schools, and how the decision was made. +Title IX is a federal law that protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal funding, including all of our nation’s public elementary and secondary schools. +Secretary DeVos has not yet responded to lingering questions, including: How is the learning environment for transgender students made safer by revoking the guidance? +Are states and localities free to choose whether to comply with federal civil rights laws? +Did the Education Department consult with any advocates or transgender people before revoking the guidance? +Senators gave Sec. +DeVos until March 24 to respond in writing to their questions. +The deadline has now come and gone, and no answers have been provided. +In withdrawing this important guidance document, the Trump administration sent a terrible message to some of the most vulnerable young people in the country. +That Secretary DeVos now refuses to explain in detail how the Department of Education intends to protect the civil rights of transgender students is unacceptable. +What’s the holdup, Secretary DeVos? +Are you not prepared to state clearly that trans students are protected under Title IX? +Because they are. +Do you not understand how this critically important civil rights law protects trans students? +Because it does. +Is congressional oversight something you think you are free to simply ignore? +Because you aren’t. +Answers or not, the reality remains that this administration does not have the authority to undo legal protections for transgender students. +Trans students are protected by the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, and school districts across the country must still comply with the law. +Sometimes DeVos says the right things even if her administration’s actions tell a different tale. +“I consider protecting all students, including LGBT students, not only a key priority for the Department, but for every school in America,” she said in a statement rolling back the Title IX guidance for trans students. +“We owe all students a commitment to ensure they have access to a learning environment that is free of discrimination, bullying and harassment.” +But actions and answers speak louder than silence. +The ACLU remains deeply committed to the fight for trans equality, and we will continue our work to safeguard the dignity and rights of trans students. +What do they say about déjà vu all over again? +That is what seems to be happening in North Carolina where lawmakers are again rushing through a poorly thought-out, dangerous backroom deal under the guise of removing their hideous anti-LGBTQ law, HB2. +But behind closed doors, in the middle of the night, all we are left with is a claimed “compromise” to repeal HB2 that just further entrenches discrimination against LGBTQ North Carolinians. +Fight for trans youth You may remember North Carolina’s infamous House Bill 2 (HB2), the bill that has cost the state over $3.75 billion dollars, cost its former Gov. Pat McCrory his election, and cost thousands of LGBTQ North Carolinians their piece of mind and safety. +It has been a stain on the state compounding the disgrace of a General Assembly that had already systematically worked to disenfranchise Black voters and solidify power for those already seated in office. +Yesterday, as the legislature approached today’s deadline imposed by the NCAA to repeal HB2, newly elected Gov. Roy Cooper, Senate Leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore reached what they are calling a “compromise” repeal of HB2. +But let us be clear – this is no compromise. +This is no repeal. +This is HB2.0 and is perhaps more insidious in its targeting of LGBTQ – and particularly of trans and gender non-conforming – people. +It is a backroom deal that shows no input from the community, that shows no leadership from lawmakers, that shows a callous disregard for the basic humanity of the trans and gender non-conforming people that call North Carolina home. +The bill does repeal HB2, but it just replaces it with prohibitions on local government entities (including cities, towns, schools) from extending legal protections to LGBT people until 2020 and bans on protections for transgender individuals in restrooms and other single-sex spaces forever. +The bill makes it illegal to protect people from discrimination. +And worse still, it does so under a claimed interest in protecting “bathroom safety and privacy.” +No matter how many times these lies are restated, they will never be true. +Letting trans people use the restroom as we must and have always done harms no one. +Our bodies do not make others unsafe. +We do not infringe on the privacy rights of others by existing in the world. +Being unfamiliar or uncomfortable with us does not translate into a right to expel us from society. +And make no mistake, that is once again, what HB2.0 does. +This is another iteration of the same – and worse because it shuts down the momentum from the past year of work against HB2. +It derails the litigation, the organizing, and the public perception of what is happening. +Already in 2017, at least 8 trans women of color have been murdered. +Trans young people and their families are reeling from the loss of support from the federal government. +Trans people are forced to listen to people tell us we are unworthy of safety, of peace, of comfort, of simply surviving. +This is no time to play politics with our lives. +This is a time to be bold in the defense of justice. +Shame on you, Roy Cooper, and everyone in the North Carolina General Assembly pushing this dangerous and fake repeal. +We will not be fooled. +We will fight on. +The day I read that my children’s school district was getting sued over the fact that they allow transgender boys to use the restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity rocked my world. +I would like every person reading this blog to think about the moment they gave birth to or adopted a child. +If you are a committed parent like me, you immediately had immense love and vivid dreams for that child. +Hopefully you had a conversation with yourself that you would love that person unconditionally and without hesitation. +When that magical moment happened in your life, when that person was placed in your arms, someone informed you that person was either female or male. +You believed them, didn’t you? +Of course you did. +We all do. +Now imagine that as that child grows up, you realize things aren’t the way you projected them to be. +I have a transgender son. +When he informed me of this, I knew I had some work to do. +I had to educate myself. +I didn’t know anyone who was transgender. +Sure, I heard of it before, but I didn’t have a personal contact. +So off to the Internet I went to read up on what I had to do to help my son. +There I learned about the high suicide rate and the discrimination he may face. +I was scared. +I did not want to lose my child. +So I made the decision to support and love him no matter what. +The thought of school frightened me. +I was afraid of what he would face in school. +What would teachers say? +What would his friends say? +What supports would be in place to ensure his safety? +He asked me to homeschool him, but instead I suggested we meet with the school. +Thankfully, Boyertown counselors and administration met with us and told us that they would work with us every step of the way. +I was relieved to know that my son attended an affirming public high school. +They have worked very closely with my son and I throughout his high school career, affirming and supporting him every step of the way. +My son’s transition has not been automatic and quick. +This has been a five-year process since his announcement to me — but an entire lifetime for him. +Attending a public high school like Boyertown has been the highlight of the last three years. +Knowing that he can use the men’s restroom and locker room and that his teachers will use the correct name and pronouns made all the difference in the world. +My son walks the halls of Boyertown High School proudly being his genuine self. +He was on the Homecoming Court, and he finally got to run in a boy’s cross country meet. +When you click on the Boyertown website, you see the words, “To enable all students to succeed in a changing world.” +Boyertown lives by this statement. +Our world is changing and people are becoming more comfortable with who they are, regardless of what others think. +This is as it should be. +One of Boyertown High school’s jobs is to help prepare our children to be respectful, responsible, productive citizens. +This is exactly what they are doing when they affirm all types of students. +With the ACLU’s help, we’re seeking intervention in the lawsuit against our school district because my son deserves a chance to defend himself, and because his school should not be punished for doing the right thing. +The school deserves a medal, not a lawsuit. +On April 7th, the Fourth Circuit overturned Gavin Grimm's win from last year, based on the Supreme Court's decision last month not to hear the case. +Gavin had won the right to use the boys' restroom on the same terms as other boys but the school district appealed his win. +The Fourth Circuit will now hear oral argument later this year to determine whether Title IX protects transgender students independently of any federal guidance on the issue one way or the other. +Two of the three judges that considered Gavin's case, Senior Judge Andre Davis joined by Judge Henry Floyd, issued this moving opinion noting that Gavin's "journey is delayed but not finished" and recognizing Gavin's important role in the history of movements for justice. +-- I concur in the order granting the unopposed motion to vacate the district court’s preliminary injunction and add these observations. +G.G., then a fifteen-year-old transgender boy, addressed the Gloucester County School Board on November 11, 2014, to explain why he was not a danger to other students. +He explained that he had used the boys’ bathroom in public places throughout Gloucester County and had never had a confrontation. +He explained that he is a person worthy of dignity and privacy. +He explained why it is humiliating to be segregated from the general population. +He knew, intuitively, what the law has in recent decades acknowledged: the perpetuation of stereotypes is one of many forms of invidious discrimination. +And so he hoped that his heartfelt explanation would help the powerful adults in his community come to understand what his adolescent peers already did. +G.G. clearly and eloquently attested that he was not a predator, but a boy, despite the fact that he did not conform to some people’s idea about who is a boy. +Regrettably, a majority of the School Board was unpersuaded. +And so we come to this moment. +High school graduation looms and, by this court’s order vacating the preliminary injunction, G.G.’s banishment from the boys’ restroom becomes an enduring feature of his high school experience. +Would that courtesies extended to others had been extended to G.G. +Our country has a long and ignominious history of discriminating against our most vulnerable and powerless. +We have an equally long history, however, of brave individuals—Dred Scott, Fred Korematsu, Linda Brown, Mildred and Richard Loving, Edie Windsor, and Jim Obergefell, to name just a few—who refused to accept quietly the injustices that were perpetuated against them. +It is unsurprising, of course, that the burden of confronting and remedying injustice falls on the shoulders of the oppressed. +These individuals looked to the federal courts to vindicate their claims to human dignity, but as the names listed above make clear, the judiciary’s response has been decidedly mixed. +Today, G.G. adds his name to the list of plaintiffs whose struggle for justice has been delayed and rebuffed; as Dr. King reminded us, however, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” +G.G.’s journey is delayed but not finished. +G.G.’s case is about much more than bathrooms. +It’s about a boy asking his school to treat him just like any other boy. +It’s about protecting the rights of transgender people in public spaces and not forcing them to exist on the margins. +It’s about governmental validation of the existence and experiences of transgender people, as well as the simple recognition of their humanity. +His case is part of a larger movement that is redefining and broadening the scope of civil and human rights so that they extend to a vulnerable group that has traditionally been unrecognized, unrepresented, and unprotected. +G.G.’s plight has shown us the inequities that arise when the government organizes society by outdated constructs like biological sex and gender. +Fortunately, the law eventually catches up to the lived facts of people; indeed, the record shows that the 4 Commonwealth of Virginia has now recorded a birth certificate for G.G. that designates his sex as male. +G.G.’s lawsuit also has demonstrated that some entities will not protect the rights of others unless compelled to do so. +Today, hatred, intolerance, and discrimination persist — and are sometimes even promoted — but by challenging unjust policies rooted in invidious discrimination, G.G. takes his place among other modern-day human rights leaders who strive to ensure that, one day, equality will prevail, and that the core dignity of every one of our brothers and sisters is respected by lawmakers and others who wield power over their lives. +G.G. is and will be famous, and justifiably so. +But he is not “famous” in the hollowed-out Hollywood sense of the term. +He is famous for the reasons celebrated by the renowned Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shehab Nye, in her extraordinary poem, Famous. +Despite his youth and the formidable power of those arrayed against him at every stage of these proceedings, “[he] never forgot what [he] could do.” +Judge Floyd has authorized me to state that he joins in the views expressed herein. +See N. S. Nye, Famous: +The river is famous to the fish. +The loud voice is famous to silence,which knew it would inherit the earthbefore anybody said so. +The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birdswatching him from the birdhouse. +The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. +The idea you carry close to your bosomis famous to your bosom. +The boot is famous to the earth,more famous than the dress shoe,which is famous only to floors. +The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries itand not at all famous to the one who is pictured. +I want to be famous to shuffling menwho smile while crossing streets,sticky children in grocery lines,famous as the one who smiled back. +I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,but because it never forgot what it could do. +Any day now, the NCAA will announce which cities will host championship events from 2018-2022. +Through emails and petitions, tens of thousands of you have told the NCAA and its president Mark Emmert: Stay out of North Carolina. +Don’t condone discrimination. +Add your voice In late March, the Republican-led legislature and Democratic governor cynically came together to endorse House Bill 142, deceptively labeled a “repeal” of now-notorious anti-LGBT House Bill 2. +In fact, by permanently banning protections allowing transgender North Carolinians to use the right restroom — which is necessary to fully participate in public life — and by prohibiting all local nondiscrimination ordinances until 2020, the new law doubles down on discrimination. +Rather than rejecting HB 142 for what it was, the NCAA announced that the new bill created a “minimally” acceptable nondiscriminatory environment. +We didn’t know what that meant, so we submitted public records requests asking potential host cities and schools how they plan on ensuring safety for transgender students, fans, athletes, and coaches. +HB 142 has the potential to set a dangerous precedent for other states if powerful organizations like the NCAA give them their blessing. +Already, states like Texas are rushing to pass anti-trans bills like HB 2899, a virtual copycat of HB 142. +Despite misleading media reports, tens of thousand of you understood that the replacement bill still allows discrimination. +The NCAA would be wise to heed those calls and to listen to other credible voices telling them what the replacement bill means for transgender people: Team USA duathlete Chris Mosier, a man who is transgender, said, “HB142 creates an unsafe environment for those who are, or are perceived to be, transgender. +[HB 142] situates me as a transgender person as a threat … which I am not. +And transgender people are not.” +California Attorney General Xavier Becerra reaffirmed that it will continue to prohibit state-sponsored travel to North Carolina because HB 142 “does not cure” discrimination. +The Golden State joins Minnesota, New York, and Washington State, in addition to Atlanta, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C., in banning non-essential government travel because of HB 142. +We should also remind the NCAA that the day after its “reluctant” announcement, the North Carolina legislature introduced a bill that would enhance criminal penalties for transgender people simply using the restroom consistent with their gender identity. +That’s about as far from creating a safe environment as we can imagine. +Will the NCAA do the right thing? +Don’t sit on the sidelines. +Add your voice. +Last month, North Carolina lawmakers passed what they called a “compromise repeal” of the state’s notoriously costly and discriminatory anti-LGBT law, House Bill 2. +HB2 mandated statewide discrimination against trans people in schools and other government buildings and restricted the ability of localities from passing nondiscrimination ordinances protecting against sexual orientation and gender-identity-based discrimination. +But the HB2 replacement, House Bill 142, is no repeal — it is just a slightly restructured version of the same discriminatory mandates of its predecessor and once again singles out trans people for discrimination in both rhetoric and law. +Shortly after the passage of this fake repeal of HB2, both the NCAA and the NBA announced that they would again consider North Carolina to host events after they had pulled events from the state in 2016 — costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue — following the passage of HB2. +Showing just how quickly the defense of civil rights collapsed in the name of profit, the NBA and the NCAA have now further opened the door to new waves of discrimination in North Carolina and across the country. +Wasting no time, leading anti-trans lawmakers in Texas are now rushing to pass a clone of North Carolina’s HB142 — seizing on the tacit, if not explicit endorsement, of discrimination by the NCAA and NBA. +The Texas bill, House Bill 2899, is expected to be heard on Wednesday, April 19. +And like its clone in North Carolina, and the bill once again animated by the dangerous lie that it “provides clear direction to public schools and government institutions on how to protect privacy and safety by ensuring that men do not enter women's showers, locker rooms and restrooms.” +But make no mistake — this bill protects no one. +Texas’s HB2899 and SB6 — the HB2-like ban on trans people using restrooms that accord with their gender — and North Carolina’s HB142 are not about privacy or safety. +These measures are about cultivating fear of trans people in public space, and they ultimately seek to expel us from participation in public life. +The proposed laws and the support for them rely on and reinforce the idea that women who are trans are “really” men and that trans people, by living as our authentic selves, are deceiving others. +And the subtext is always that our mere presence in single-sex spaces compromises the safety and privacy of others. +But this is simply not true. +Most of these lawmakers have already shared restrooms with trans people, and it went unnoticed because like all people, we (trans) people go to the restroom to do our business and get out. +The only people who seem fixated on our presence there are the lawmakers seeking to bar us from the spaces we have been using for as long as we have existed. +And whether North Carolina, Texas, or any other state uses overt or covert tactics to restrict us from using the restroom that accords with who we are, the effect is the same and the message is clear: “You are not welcome here.” +In December of 2016, Roy Cooper, then governor-elect of North Carolina, rejected a proposed repeal of HB2 that was far less discriminatory than the fake repeal he signed last month. +Nothing changed in the meaning of the law or the dignity of trans people. +All that changed was that Cooper, the NCAA, the NBA grew tired of defending civil rights while profits waned. +Well, you know what is far more exhausting than holding a principled line against discrimination? +Living under relentless discrimination and the demonization of your existence. +That is happening to trans people in North Carolina, in Texas, and across the country. +And the costs are dire as trans women of color are being murdered in record numbers, trans students are wondering whether they will face state-sponsored bullying and harassment in school, and entire generations of trans people are hearing the message that we are not welcome in public life. +But thankfully, we are far more committed, have far more endurance, and far more principle than Cooper, the NCAA, and the NBA. +We will never cave when it comes to our rights. +We will never back down when it comes to defending our humanity and neither will our allies. +We will welcome back the NCAA, the NBA, and even North Carolina lawmakers should they choose to re-join us on the right side of history. +On Wednesday, we will show up in opposition to Texas’s HB2899 and every other anti-trans, anti-LGBT measure Texas puts up for consideration. +There is no such thing as compromising on civil rights. +As I have said elsewhere: “Compromise on justice is not a beginning — it is an end. +It does not build but forever changes the target away from our vision of decency and justice.” +There is still time for Texas to do the right thing. +We are watching. +We are fighting. +And we are not giving up. +Chelsea Manning almost died on our watch. +She suffered at the hands of our government, and the toll of her incarceration nearly killed her. +But she survived. +Through long stretches of solitary confinement, the systemic denial of health care, relentless abuse, and a lifetime of consequences, she will have a chance to live. +On Tuesday, January 17, 2017, President Obama commuted Chelsea’s 35-year prison sentence to time served plus 120 days. +With the commutation, 28 years were cut from her sentence, and her life was saved. +Instead of an anticipated release date in 2045, Chelsea’s prison term will end on May 17, 2017. +When she steps out of prison this week, she will walk into a different world than the one she left behind when she was arrested in 2010. +And she will walk as a different person than she was seven years ago. +Time, trauma, and survival have changed her and changed all of us. +“I am merely asking for a first chance to live my life outside the USDB as the person I was born to be.” +The first thing Chelsea always says when we talk about her freedom is that she wants to give back to the trans community — to fight for the many trans people, largely trans women of color, held in custody; to continue to connect with trans young people; to share our victories and our struggles; to continue to transform the public narrative about what it means to be trans. +She has an unrelenting sense of compassion and justice despite all that she has faced. +With her freedom, she will be leaving behind the abuses of prison but also the life she built there. +The family of other incarcerated people who kept her alive when she was cut off from the rest of the world. +In February after her commutation, Chelsea wrote to her friends inside: “I never would have made it without you. +Not only did you teach me these important lessons, but you made sure I felt cared for. +You were the people who helped me to deal with the trauma of my regular haircuts. +You were the people who checked on me after I tried to end my life. +You were the people that played fun games with me. +Who wished me a Happy Birthday. +We shared the holidays together. +You were and will always be family.” +Behind every violent system, there are the beautiful stories of resistance and survival. +Chelsea has those to share, and as she steps out of prison, we are all better off because we can share in those with her. +We can learn from her and watch her grow. +Chelsea closed her commutation request to President Obama, “I am merely asking for a first chance to live my life outside the USDB as the person I was born to be.” +And now she will get that first chance. +She will be able to occupy her body, express her gender, navigate the world, share and grow, love and grieve, on her own terms. +Nothing about the coming days or weeks or months will be easy — but they will be hers — and we will love her and support her and give her space to live. +Follow along in the coming days for more news. +Late Sunday, Texas lawmakers rushed to advance two anti-LGBTQ bills as the state’s regular legislative session winds down. +One bill, Senate Bill 2078, targets transgender young people in schools and the other, House Bill 3859, allows foster care agencies to discriminate against children in foster care and potentially disqualify LGBTQ families from the state’s foster and adoption system based on religious or moral beliefs. +Both bills take aim at vulnerable young people. +Both are animated by an investment in stoking fear of trans people and the entire LGBTQ community. +Both are part of a coordinated effort by powerful factions of the Texas government to send the message to LGBTQ people across the state that they are not safe or welcome. +For a few weeks, it appeared as though Texans might be spared a law targeting trans and intersex people when using the restroom with the House Speaker Joe Straus referring to such a measure as “manufactured and unnecessary.” +Indeed, former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory may have some thoughts from the unemployment line about just how costly and unnecessary such legislation is. +But under threat of a special session by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has made targeting trans youth a top priority, the House amended anti-trans provisions onto SB 2078 yesterday, a bill that deals with “multihazard emergency operations plans” in schools. +This is real life. +With all that we have to contend with in society, lawmakers are prioritizing rules that bar trans young people from the restroom at school. +Based on the rhetoric in Texas, it is clear that the existence of trans people is actually considered an “emergency” and the goal of this type of legislation is to legislate us out of existence. +Particularly cruel is the fact that the bill zeroes in on trans young people. +Now HB 3859 and likely SB 2078 — which still has to go back to the Senate for approval by that chamber — will land on the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature. +Hopefully, Gov. Abbott has gained some empathy for the young trans people in his state over the past year since he mocked the Obama Administration for clarifying federal protections for trans youth in schools, tweeting in May of 2016: +The governor may think it is funny to make a joke and undermine the existence of trans people, but for the trans people and their families who reside across Texas, his glib cruelty might have deadly consequences. +Transgender women and girls are women and girls, full stop. +When transgender women and girls use women’s restrooms, there are still no men in those restrooms. +The existence of transgender people threatens no one — not in the restroom, not in school, not in a locker room, not when walking down the street. +What is threatened, however, is the safety of the trans community. +This is particularly the case when lawmakers situate trans bodies as an emergency threat that needs to be managed and expelled from public space. +Trans youth are listening and watching, and what they are experiencing is an attack on their humanity. +Gov. Abbott has a choice to make. +He can sign SB 2078 and HB 3859, codifying discrimination and risking lives, or he can veto these measures and save lives and save his state money. +History will not remember him kindly if he acts on the side of discrimination and plays politics with the lives of trans youth and foster youth and young people struggling to find their way safely through the world. +At the end of the day, I hope Gov. Abbott does the right thing and vetoes SB 2078 and HB 3859. +But I am not going to count on that. +Instead, I am going to invest in and count on my community of LGBTQ people across Texas and the country who will continue to fight for justice. +Particularly to the trans young people in Texas and around the country watching this nightmare unfold, please know that we are here. +As I have written to you before, “As a trans person who has fought many demons to fight beside you today, I will never give up this fight. +We have existed through time and persisted through time. +Look to your elders and they will look to you. +Our future is bright even when they try to shut down the dreams that sustain us.” +You are beautiful just as you are. +Update: Victory! +The Hartzler Amendment was defeated: 214 No, 209 Yes. +The House of Representatives is poised to vote today on an amendment to prohibit transgender military service members and military dependents from receiving appropriate medical care. +The amendment — introduced by Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) to the National Defense Authorization Act, which is the annual defense policy bill — bars the Department of Defense from providing funds towards medical treatment “related to gender transition,” such as hormone therapy. +Hartzler previously offered an amendment — since withdrawn — that would stop the military from enlisting transgender members. +This amendment targets health care services that the nation’s leading medical institutions, including the American Medical Association, agree are medically appropriate and necessary for transgender individuals. +The ACLU is sending a letter to the House today to vote against this discriminatory and unconstitutional amendment. +The letter highlights the fact that denying access to care runs counter to scientific evidence and contemporary medical standards. +It puts the wellbeing of certain service members at risk, undermining the ability of doctors in the military to adequately care for their patients. +Despite the suggestion that this is just an attempt to reduce spending, the Hartzler amendment is discriminatory, plain and simple. +Hartzler made her hostility to transgender people clear when she compared transgender service members to members of ISIS, describing them as a “domestic threat.” +She also wrongly — and absurdly — claimed that transition-related care would cost over $1 billion. +Last year, the military officially ended its ban on transgender service, although under the Trump administration it has delayed its acceptance of openly transgender applicants. +According to the Williams Institute, there are over 15,000 transgender individuals serving in active duty or in the Guards or Reserves, and “an estimated 134,000 transgender individuals are veterans or are retired from Guard or Reserve service.” +Transgender troops deserve our respect and support. +Congress should reject this cruel and unwarranted attempt to deny necessary care to transgender Americans and harm those serving our country. +On September 16, ACLU filed a motion to intervene in Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell on behalf of the ACLU of Texas and the River City Gender Alliance. +In this three-part blog series, we examine why this case matters from a transgender rights, reproductive rights, and religious freedom perspective. +The religious right spent the past 20 years trying to stop same-sex couples from marrying. +But after losing that fight last year, they are now engaged in a sustained legal attack on the rights of transgender people. +A lawsuit filed last month, Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell, that the ACLU has just intervened in is the latest in a series of attempts to codify discrimination against transgender people into law. +Through this lawsuit, a group of states and religiously affiliated organizations are asking a judge to strike down a regulation from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services protecting transgender people from discrimination in health care. +Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act prohibits insurance companies or health care providers receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. +The HHS regulation makes clear that insurance companies and health care providers cannot deny health care services to trans people, deny insurance coverage to medically necessary gender-confirming care, or discriminate against trans people at their facilities. +This new lawsuit opens up a new front in the battle that the religious right has been fighting to roll back protections for trans people. +Last year, cookie-cutter bills were introduced in states across the country that would prohibit transgender people from using public restrooms and legalize discrimination against them, but even these efforts only succeeded in two states — and both of those bills have been blocked by federal courts. +Unable to win in federal court or the court of public opinion, the religious right adopted a new tactic. +With the assistance of the Texas attorney general, whose office is stocked with former attorneys from the same legal organizations that fought to prevent same-sex couples from legally marrying, they are using a courthouse in Wichita Falls, Texas as the launching pad for a sustained attack on the rights of transgender people across the country. +The majority of the nation’s federal appeals courts have held that discrimination against transgender people is a form of sex discrimination under our country’s civil rights statutes. +But by filing suits in Texas, the Texas attorney general’s office is trying to evade those precedents and ask a single district judge in the Fifth Circuit — one of the most conservative courts of appeals in the country — to issue injunctions affecting the rights of trans people nationwide. +The first target was the Department of Education’s guidance regarding the obligations of schools under Title IX, a statute prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education. +The Department of Education has advised that schools are authorized to provide separate restrooms for boys and girls, and that they must let all boys and girls – including boys and girls who are transgender – use them. +Even though the Department of Education has issued similar types of guidance documents for decades, Texas argued that the guidance regarding equal access for trans kids was invalid because it was not adopted through formal notice-and-comment rulemaking that is necessary for formal regulations. +In an unprecedented decision, Texas and other states obtained a nationwide injunction that directly conflicts with the Fourth Circuit’s decision and blocks the Department of Education from protecting transgender kids under Title IX. +The day after the court in Texas issued a nationwide injunction, Texas and three other states followed up with a second lawsuit filed in the same court – the Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell lawsuit focused on health care access. +Unlike the guidance from the Department of Education, the HHS regulation went through full notice-and-comment rulemaking. +But that has not stopped the states from arguing that the HHS regulation is invalid too, because ultimately these lawsuits aren’t motivated by concerns over rulemaking procedures – they’re driven by an ideological opposition to the very concept of being transgender. +As people across the country are rejecting attempts to discriminate against transgender people in the name of religion and as courts across the country are holding that trans people are protected by our nation’s civil rights laws, these requests for nationwide injunctions represent the last gasp of organizations seeking to codify their own religious disapproval of LGBT people into law. +That’s why the ACLU has filed a motion to intervene in this latest assault on transgender rights — Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell. +No one should have to live in fear of being denied medically necessary health care simply because of who they are. +States and health care providers don’t have the right to insert a religious litmus test into the doctor’s office. +The ACLU is ready to defend those principles in every part of the country — including Wichita Falls, Texas. +On September 16, ACLU filed a motion to intervene in Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell on behalf of the ACLU of Texas and the River City Gender Alliance. +In this three-part blog series, we examine why this case matters from a transgender rights, reproductive rights, and religious freedom perspective. +Last week, the state of Texas, along with others, sunk to a new low. +They filed suit in federal court challenging a federal regulation implementing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits health care entities from discriminating based on race, national origin, sex, age, or disability. +The states and health care providers that brought the case are demanding the right to be able to discriminate against transgender individuals who seek health care. +The lawsuit also seeks a court order allowing them to discriminate against individuals who seek reproductive health care, including in state programs, like public hospitals. +Texas’s position is so extreme that they want to be able to discriminate against women by turning them away from their hospitals after they’ve had an abortion and are experiencing complications from the procedure. +You don’t need to reread that last sentence. +That’s really the state’s position. +It’s no surprise that Texas would want limit access to reproductive health care — at every opportunity they have tried to do so by enacting law after law that restricts abortion. +It did come as a surprise to see Texas’s justification for bringing this lawsuit, however. +The lawsuit claims that Texas brought the case because it “zealously protects the physician-patient relationship through numerous laws and regulations ensure [sic] that physicians honor their duties to their patients and exercise appropriate medical judgement when treating patients under their care.” +Seriously? +They clearly forgot to include a footnote to say “except when the medical treatment is abortion.” +The onslaught of bills restricting reproductive rights has been going on for years in Texas, and in 2013, the state tried to eliminate abortion access altogether when it passed the notorious H.B. 2. +That law had multiple components, including a requirement that abortion providers have a business relationship with a local hospital that would allow them to admit patients and that abortion facilities meet hospital-like requirements related to the way their building must be configured. +These requirements, and the others that came before it, were aimed to decimate access to abortion and close clinics. +Fortunately, the Supreme Court eventually struck down the requirements, finding that they served no medical benefit and would harm women. +But by the time the Supreme Court reached its decision, H.B. 2 had already wreaked havoc. +Clinics closed, and they will not reopen. +Women faced, and will continue to face, extraordinary obstacles. +Women have been forced to carry to term against their will or have felt no choice but to try to induce an abortion themselves. +The effects of H.B. 2 have been disproportionately felt by Latinas and other vulnerable populations. +And in a tragic turn, the mortality rate for pregnant women in Texas has doubled in recent years. +The other states that have joined the case also have dismal records when it comes to restricting access to abortion: Wisconsin (received a D+ from NARAL), Nebraska (received an F), Kentucky (received an F), and Kansas (also received an F). +So Texas and friends: You’re really concerned about government intrusion on the provider-patient relationship? +Then how about you stop passing laws that prevent providers from providing women with access to abortion? +In the meantime, we’re jumping into Texas’ latest salvo against women’s rights. +Everyone should be able to access health care without facing discrimination, and laws that protect that access should be lauded, not challenged by hypocritical state governments. +On September 16, ACLU filed a motion to intervene in Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell on behalf of the ACLU of Texas and the River City Gender Alliance. +In this three-part blog series, we examine why this case matters from a transgender rights, reproductive rights, and religious freedom perspective. +Yet again, opponents of critical civil rights measures are trying to turn back the clock and undo important equality gains under the guise of religious liberty. +This time, the main targets are transgender people seeking health care and women seeking reproductive health care. +But while the details may change, the underlying principle doesn’t: Religious freedom is an essential right, but it shouldn’t be a license to discriminate. +The latest civil rights assault comes in a new lawsuit filed in Texas by five states and several religiously affiliated health care organizations, Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell. +The groups are challenging a federal regulation implementing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bars insurance companies and health care providers from discriminating on the basis of race, national origin, sex, age, or disability. +Among other things, the regulation clarifies that health care institutions can’t discriminate against transgender people or deny them insurance coverage or medically necessary health services. +It also clarifies that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on pregnancy and termination of pregnancy. +This week, we joined the case to help defend the regulation against baseless attacks that would distort, and ultimately undermine, true religious liberty. +Battles over rights of conscience in the U.S. are hardly new. +Since the founding of the nation, we’ve struggled to realize our deep, abiding commitment to religious freedom. +Our country has made great strides to ensure that religious liberty can thrive, without governmental interference or favoritism. +The right to practice one’s faith, or to follow no faith at all, remains among our most precious, zealously guarded freedoms. +Along those lines, we at the ACLU have been working for nearly a century to secure the right to religious exercise and expression. +Just last month, for example, we went to court in Alabama to protect a devout Christian woman’s right to wear her religious garb in a driver’s license photo. +But time and again, our society has rejected efforts to transform religious freedom from a shield into a sword to attack the rights and well-being of others. +In the past, when employers insisted on a religious right to pay women workers less than men, based on a biblical view of husbands as heads of the household; when restaurant owners invoked their faith to refuse to serve African-American customers; or, more recently, when county clerks sought to deny eligible same-sex couples the right to marry; the courts have said no, recognizing that religious liberty doesn’t confer an unfettered right to discriminate against the underserved and vulnerable. +The answer should be the same in the Texas case. +And the stakes here are enormous. +The organizations and states involved run a vast array of hospitals and health care facilities, and they employ hundreds of thousands of health care workers. +By its own account, one of the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, a large Catholic-affiliated hospital system, gets about $900 million annually from the federal government in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, performs four million outpatient services, and treats more than 80,000 inpatients every year. +In these circumstances, allowing discrimination against trans people — or against women seeking reproductive health care— would have far-reaching, potentially devastating consequences. +While religious liberty deserves ample breathing room to flourish, it’s not a blanket excuse for smothering the rights of others. +Hopefully, when the dust settles in the misguided lawsuit in Texas, that basic ideal will prevail once more. +“I have several birthdays, all of them near October 25th. +I am 74 or 75 years old, and I’m still f**king here.” +Miss Major Griffin-Gracy spoke to a crowd of several hundred people last night — mostly queer and trans people, women and femmes of color — who had come to the New School in Manhattan to honor her birthday, her life, and her vision and watch a screening of the film that tells her story, “MAJOR!” +The film chronicles Miss Major’s life from childhood in Chicago to surviving on the streets of New York City in the 1960s to Stonewall to Attica to Oakland to becoming the mama and grandmother to so many trans women. +Miss Major is our movement’s rock. +After the film, Miss Major and other Black women elders in the community spoke to the crowd about survival, resistance, and hope. +It was energizing at the same time that it was somber. +So many trans people of color have been lost too young as the film documented — at the hands of violence from partners, strangers, or the extended violent neglect of all the systems that have failed to care for or about them. +Through her work, Major has given her emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual labor to care for thousands of trans people who needed love, touch, food, shelter. +As former executive director of the Transgender Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project, she supported hundreds of trans people in prison and jail across California and the country. +“I just want my girls to be okay,” she explained repeatedly throughout the film. +When so many people in the trans community are still not okay because of the relentless and systemic discrimination they face, Miss Major called on the crowd to continue the fight to keep her community — our community — alive, loved, supported. +“I’m tired,” she says at one point in the film. +Of course she is. +This is not a new fight for justice. +Miss Major has been fighting for over 50 years. +Now, at a new peak of trans visibility, there are swirling questions about the nature of the fight for trans justice. +Opponents of trans equality are playing on fears about who trans people are, what our bodies look like, and what our existence means about the nature of gender to sabotage legal protections for our community and impose new discriminatory mandates like North Carolina’s anti-trans law, HB2. +From the pages of The New York Times to the halls of legislatures across the country to the presidential campaign trail, nontransgender people have taken up a so-called “debate” over whether legal protections for transgender people can be extended to places like locker rooms or restrooms without compromising the “safety” and “privacy” of nontransgender people. +Our response is clear and unequivocal: Protecting transgender people from discrimination threatens the privacy and safety of no one. +And it is not really about restrooms or locker rooms or nudity but about fear and disgust of trans people. +It is about whether transgender people can engage in public life and exist in public space. +This fight to expel trans people from societal structures might be invigorated but it is not new. +The bodies and lives of transgender people — particularly women and femmes of color — have long been targeted and criminalized through anti-crossing dressing laws, police profiling, and antiloitering laws. +Unless and until we push back against the very idea that the existence and bodies of trans people are the problem, fragmented legal gains won’t protect the most vulnerable among us. +Now is the time to take on the full fight for transgender people — for the whole community and without compromise. +We owe it to our elders who have carried this fight for decades with few resources and no public support. +We owe it to our youth who deserve to imagine a more beautiful future. +We owe it to the entire community, and we will not stop fighting. +Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old boy in rural Virginia, just needs to pee. +That wouldn’t be the focus of much attention, except that Gavin is transgender. +With the permission of the school principal, he used the boys’ restroom for nearly two months without any problems. +But after some parents complained, the school board passed a new policy prohibiting him from using the boys’ restroom and forcing him to use the girls’ room or a single-user restroom constructed especially for him. +Gavin didn’t think it was right for him to be treated differently than all the other boys at his school — singled out as unfit to share common spaces with his peers. +Gavin sat through two long school board meetings where parents and community members called him a safety risk, a “young lady,” and a “freak.” +Then, Gavin had the strength to stand up in front of the crowd and explain, “All I want to do is be a normal child and use the restroom in peace,” emphasizing that, “I am just a boy.” +With the ACLU’s help, he challenged the school district’s restriction as discriminatory. +Back in April, a federal appeals court ruled for Gavin, holding that schools that bar students from using restrooms that match their gender discriminate based on sex in violation of Title IX, a federal law against sex discrimination in education. +The school board asked the Supreme Court to review Gavin’s win, and today the court said it would take up the case. +We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree that excluding transgender students from using the common restrooms used by everyone else is sex discrimination and that it’s wrong. +Gavin’s case, and the so-called restroom debates more broadly, are about much more than just restrooms. +This is a chance for the country to get to know our transgender family, friends, colleagues, and community members. +This case will put Gavin’s story before the public and the justices who will be deciding what equality for transgender people means. +What should become clear is that restroom restrictions bar transgender people from full participation in public life by making it challenging or even impossible to go to work, to school, to the movies, or a restaurant. +And that letting transgender people use the restroom doesn’t intrude on anyone else’s privacy or safety. +Gavin — and so many other transgender people all across the country — are living proof of that reality. +Now that the court has accepted this case, the restroom issue, which has been percolating in national discussions for years, has a face: Gavin Grimm. +We are so grateful to Gavin for the strength he has shown in standing up for himself and others as well as for the bravery of transgender people all across the country who are fighting to ensure that the type of dehumanizing treatment that Gavin endured doesn’t happen to anyone else. +Together, we can achieve equality. +At 10:20 a.m. yesterday morning, the North Carolina Legislature convened a special session designed to repeal the state’s hateful anti-LGBT law it passed in a hurry last March. +But by day’s end, the dysfunctional body couldn’t agree on the repeal and closed the session. +The discriminatory law is still on the books and still causing harm to North Carolinians every single day. +Despite the paralysis in Raleigh, there is a clear political lesson here for the rest of the country: The public doesn’t like anti-LGBT laws. +Yet other state legislatures are likely to consider bills similar to North Carolina’s HB2. +So as state legislatures gather to start their sessions in early 2017, they should take note: Hate doesn’t sell. +There is no way to describe HB2 as anything but a sweeping attack on the LGBT community. +The law stripped away existing LGBT nondiscrimination protections in North Carolina cities and counties that had them, and it prevented any additional jurisdictions from enacting them. +In other words, the North Carolina Legislature went out of its way to authorize discrimination in employment, housing, and by businesses based on sexual orientation and gender identity. +But the law goes further than simply preventing cities and counties from protecting LGBT people. +It also mandates discrimination against transgender people. +The law requires transgender people to use restrooms and other single-sex spaces that matched the gender listed on their birth certificate rather than their actual gender that they live every day. +This forces transgender men into women's restrooms and transgender women into men's rooms in all state buildings, from schools to government office buildings to highway rest stops. +This rule is about more than restrooms, though, as it effectively excludes many trans people from full participation in public life. +If you work for the state government, how do you go to work with no access to a restroom? +If you’re a student at a public school, how do you go to class? +If you’re just a regular citizen, what do you do when you’re at the DMV, or in court, or filing a complaint with the police? +Joaquín Carcaño, lead plaintiff in the ACLU and Lambda Legal lawsuit over HB2, is one of those government workers directly affected by the law. +Joaquín works for a health care institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. +He’s a man, but because Joaquín is also transgender, HB2 requires him to stay out of the men’s room. +In a daily reminder of how threatening the state found his very existence, Joaquín had to go down several floors to the basement to use the one single-user restroom in his office building. +And for many other students and workers across the state with no single-user restrooms available, the law means avoiding restroom use for entire days. +The public reaction to the law was swift and relentless. +PayPal canceled an expansion that would have brought 400 jobs to the state. +Deutsche Bank froze plans for 250 new jobs as well. +Conventions canceled left and right. +Performers from Bruce Springsteen to Pearl Jam to Cirque du Soleil to Maroon 5 to Itzhak Perlman canceled shows. +And then the sports leagues weighed in: The NBA pulled the 2016-17 All-Star Game from Charlotte. +The NCAA moved all seven of its 2016-17 championships out of North Carolina. +And the Atlantic Coast Conference moved all of its 2016-17 championships out of the state as well. +That’s backlash at a cultural level. +The economic cost of all of that is hard to quantify, but estimates reach many hundreds of millions of dollars. +And beyond the financial harm, the state’s very brand and identity were seriously tarnished. +It developed a reputation as a place more focused on excluding people than on creating a positive business climate or humane conditions for North Carolinians. +Worst of all is the cost to the LGBT North Carolinians who felt displaced in their home state and rejected by the leaders elected to govern and protect them. +In late August, a federal court ruled that HB2 likely violates federal law and barred the University of North Carolina from enforcing HB2 against the individual plaintiffs who sued over the law. +Despite the public backlash and the court rulings, Gov. McCrory stood by the discriminatory law. +In November, in significant part because of HB2, North Carolina voted him out of office in an election that otherwise went overwhelmingly for Republican candidates. +We believe that the courts will strike down HB2 in time, but no one should have to wait for justice, especially when the cost of that wait is putting your life on hold because you cannot freely or safely travel or work or go to school. +With the repeal effort having failed, Joaquín Carcaño’s case will continue to trial, and we will secure relief for transgender people all across the state. +But while we wait for the courts to do their job, governors and legislative leadership in every state should take note of the response to HB2 in North Carolina. +Unless you want your state to experience the kind of national outrage and derision that the American public has aimed at the Tar Heel State, don’t advance those anti-LGBT bills. +Across the country, before state legislative sessions have even convened, lawmakers are making clear that transgender people will again be the relentless targets of discriminatory legislation. +Last year, lawmakers introduced more than 200 anti-LGBT bills in 34 states. +At least 50 of those bills targeted transgender people specifically. +We were able to defeat the overwhelming majority of these proposed laws. +The two most sweeping anti-LGBT bills to become law, HB 1523 in Mississippi and HB 2 in North Carolina, we promptly challenged in court. +In North Carolina, the passage of HB 2 has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue to the state, costly litigation, and former Gov. Pat McCrory’s defeat at the ballot in November. +But it seems lawmakers are not heeding the lessons of North Carolina. +In Alabama, Texas, South Carolina, South Dakota, Washington, and more, bills have been pre-filed or lawmakers have announced their plans to file bills that target transgender individuals for discrimination. +Unconstitutional, unenforceable, and harmful, these bills send the message to trans people that our very existence is a problem for the lawmakers charged with protecting us. +Leading the charge of anti-trans rhetoric is Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has included anti-trans legislation among his 2017 legislative priorities. +While the Texas Association of Business has warned that Patrick’s proposed bill, SB 6, could cost the state $ 8.5 billion, Patrick has dismissed those concerns and doubled down on his discriminatory proposal. +His law, as he explained in an interview with the Houston Chronicle, will only expel women who are trans from women’s restrooms and not trans men from men’s restrooms because “men can defend themselves.” +Riddled with constitutional violations, the proposed bill is nonetheless another terrifying attack on an already vulnerable group of people. +Patrick and others are playing on fears of trans people — the type of fears that contribute to the epidemic of violence against and suicide within the trans community — to push legislation that will result in expelling trans people from public life. +Women and girls who are trans are frequent targets of harassment in schools, violence on the street, and widespread discrimination in all facets of life. +By claiming that discrimination against transgender women is necessary to protect the safety and privacy of “women and girls,” Patrick is reinforcing the idea that women and girls who are trans are not “real” women and girls. +These proposals suggest that the very existence of a trans person undermines the privacy of others. +This is not true. +The work of combatting these bills and the misinformation that animates them must center the voices and lived experiences of trans people. +And what we know from experience is that: The existence of trans people does not threaten the privacy of anyone else. +We exist. +Some people may be uncomfortable with us, but discomfort with difference is not the same as infringement of privacy. +Trans women and girls are women and girls. +Full stop. +They are not “biological males” or “men pretending to be women” — no qualifications needed. +The same is true for trans men and boys, who are men and boys. +Extending legal protections to transgender people, including when it comes to using restrooms and locker rooms, does not threaten the safety of anyone else. +This has been proven time and time again despite the ongoing rhetoric to the contrary. +Policing of gender or genitals in restrooms is bad for everyone. +There is no way to actually enforce these anti-trans bathroom laws except by exposing us all to intrusive questioning about our bodies, our gender, and our government documents. +Anti-trans laws are not really about restrooms, locker rooms, safety, or privacy but about expelling trans people from public life. +Those most impacted by these laws have been and will always be trans people who are already subject to the most policing and violence — particularly trans women and femmes of color. +From Washington to South Dakota to Texas to North Carolina, the humanity of trans people is being attacked. +But in the face of these attacks, trans people have shown our resilience. +If what these lawmakers are asking is that we simply not be trans, as writer Imogen Binnie once explained, “most trans people have tried that and it didn’t work.” +Our lives and identities are real, and we are not going away. +No matter what lies ahead, the ACLU will be there every step of the way. +We will fight to stop discriminatory bills from becoming law, we will keep fighting in court, and we will continue to stand in solidarity with the trans advocates on the front lines. +In the fourth piece in the series, “Waking Up in Trump’s America,” Deirdre Grimm explains the anxieties of being the parent of a transgender teenager as anti-trans animus and legislation revs up nationally after the election of Donald Trump. +Across the country, states are gearing up to push bills that are explicitly aimed at rejecting the humanity of transgender people. +Of course, discrimination against trans people is nothing new. +I’ve watched it happen to my own son, Gavin Grimm, ever since his school board singled him out for discrimination and refused to let him use the boy’s restroom. +But the 2016 election results threaten to worsen the situation. +When public officials use their power to bully and demonize people, everyone notices. +And they follow that example. +That’s why it’s so incredibly important for President Donald Trump to set a good example for the rest of this country and makes an effort to respect the rights and humanity of all people, regardless of their race, class, gender, or sexual orientation. +Unfortunately, it feels like we’re instead waking up to a different vision for America. +In explaining why he felt emboldened to introduce another discriminatory, anti-transgender bathroom bill, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick explained that, “Starting in 2017, we will have a friend in the White House.” +My son and the millions of other transgender people in this country deserve a friend in the White House, too. +It broke my heart to see my own child targeted by the institutions meant to protect and help him, and it sickens me to think that many now feel even more emboldened to target transgender people for discrimination. +When Gavin first came out to me as transgender, I didn’t fully understand what that meant. +But I knew I was going to be there for my child no matter what. +When I saw the staggeringly high rate of suicide among transgender people, I began to fully understand just how important it was to support Gavin in who he is. +Everyone deserves to live their life as their most authentic self. +Policies that affirm the rights of transgender people to be treated like everyone else can literally save lives. +I cannot express how happy we were when the Obama administration issued guidance reiterating the rights of transgender people to use the bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. +If the incoming administration follows through on promises to reverse those policies, they will do untold damage to trans people across the country. +My child deserves to be treated with the same dignity and respect as any other kid. +As a parent, the only thing I’ve ever wanted for my children is for them to live healthy, happy lives. +And as a parent of a transgender child, I can’t help but feel nervous as we look to see where this country goes next. +My child deserves to be treated with the same dignity and respect as any other kid. +It’s been so rewarding to watch my son grow into such a self-assured, confident young man even while being put under scrutiny that is hard to fathom at times. +Gavin’s a fighter, and he has a strong sense of what is right. +So he stood up to his school board and demanded that he be respected as a boy at school. +This fight will make its way to the Supreme Court in March. +I’m so incredibly proud of my son for fighting on behalf of transgender kids all across the country. +Those kids deserve to live in a country where their president stands up for their rights and accepts them for who they are. +Nobody knows for sure what these next four years will bring. +And to be certain, discrimination against transgender people was happening long before Donald Trump even thought about running for president. +But we’ve made strides. +The love and support that my son has received during his fight for equal rights have given me hope for the future. +The way in which people around the country rallied around opposition to North Carolina’s discriminatory anti-trans law, H.B. 2, has helped awaken people to the challenges that trans people face in trying to live their lives. +But progress can be fragile. +Like many people, I’m anxious about what the future holds. +If the president turns a blind eye towards the discrimination that transgender people face simply for trying to live their lives, it can literally mean the difference between life and death for many people. +Only President Trump can answer for how he’ll grapple with that responsibility. +One thing’s for sure: He can’t have friends like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. +In a new video featuring ACLU client Gavin Grimm and his mom Deirdre Grimm, the two reflect on Gavin’s fight to be treated with dignity and respect by his school board in Gloucester County, Virginia — a journey that has taken them all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States where his case will be heard on March 28. +Gavin is a 17-year-old boy. +But because he is transgender, his school board passed a policy barring him from sharing facilities with the rest of his peers. +Rather than use the boys’ restroom that all other boys use, Gavin is forced into a converted utility closet or another, separate, stigmatized space every time he needs to use the restroom during the day. +This decision to segregate and stigmatize Gavin was not the school’s initial reaction to learning he was transgender. +Before the start of his sophomore year, Gavin and his parents informed the school that Gavin is a boy and that, consistent with his medical treatment, needed to be treated as a boy for all purposes, including when using the restroom. +The principal and others at Gavin’s school agreed. +As educators, they likely recognized the critical importance of showing all kids that their school is on their side and won’t model and authorize bullying of kids who may be seen by their peers as different. +Consistent with the principal’s recommendations, Gavin was fully integrated into the school community and used the boys’ restroom like the rest of his male peers for two months without any issues. +As far as Gavin knows, his peers never complained; the faculty never complained; the administrators at the school never complained. +Every one treated it like the non-issue it was, and Gavin was accepted and integrated into the school community. +For the first time in his life, he felt like he was living as his authentic self. +It wasn’t until adults in the community began to complain to the Gloucester County School Board that his restroom use became the subject of public controversy. +With pressure from residents of Gloucester County — some of whom threatened to vote members of the school board out of office if they did not expel Gavin from the boys’ restroom — the Gloucester County School Board passed a policy barring kids with “gender identity issues” from restrooms that matched their gender. +This meant that Gavin was banished from the restrooms that his peers used, publicly humiliated before his community, and essentially told he was unfit to be an equal member of his school. +Challenging the board’s policy as a deprivation of his rights to equal educational opportunities under federal law and his constitutional right to equal protection, Gavin filed a lawsuit at the end of his sophomore year. +Now in his senior year, Gavin has spent his entire high school career fighting just to be treated like any other boy. +He has endured public mockery and rejection. +He has listened to adults shame him and his body, compare him to a dog, and call him a freak. +And through it all, he has persisted in believing that he is deserving of dignity, humanity, and respect even in the face of opposition to his very existence. +Imagine the fortitude and resilience it would take to navigate high school under these conditions. +Gavin is a model of bravery and will be remembered as a hero in the fight for justice for trans people. +Now, Gavin’s case has reached the Supreme Court, and the justices are poised to decide the scope of legal protections for Gavin and transgender people across the country. +Though often framed as a “restroom case,” this case is about so much more, and the stakes could not be higher. +The court’s decision will impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of transgender people across the country. +If transgender people are not protected under the law, if we cannot safely go to restrooms that match who we are, then we cannot have jobs, we cannot go to school, we cannot participate in public life. +That is what is at stake. +Reflecting on her son’s case, Gavin’s mom explains: “I didn’t even know what transgender was when this all started. +One of the first things I read was that almost 50 percent of these kids try to commit suicide. +As a parent, that is all you really need to know to support your child.” +That’s all any of us should need to know to support kids like Gavin. +This case will affect trans people for generations, and we need to stand together between now and March 28 and show the court that we will not accept rolling back the clock on progress and decency. +We have been here before. +In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld criminal bans on sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex in Bowers v. Hardwick. +“None of the [constitutional] rights announced in [our precedent] bears any resemblance to … claimed constitutional right of homosexuals to engage in acts of sodomy,” wrote Justice Byron White. +“No connection between family, marriage, or procreation on the one hand and homosexual activity on the other has been demonstrated.” +The decision was a blow to the dignity, humanity, and, indeed, the very survival of the LGBT community. +In 2013, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in Lawrence v. Texas, invalidated the Bowers’ decision. +“Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today,” he wrote. +“It ought not to remain binding precedent. +Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled.” +But for 17 years, that wrongly decided case justified sweeping, legally sanctioned discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. +It affected a generation or more of people who struggled to navigate a society that justified the criminalization of the very essence of who we are as people. +Now the court is considering another case that could authorize legally sanctioned discrimination for decades. +Opponents of trans people are urging that the rights trans people demand are so far outside of what the law protects — that we are freaks, that we seek special rights, that our bodies are incompatible with society. +None of that is true. +We seek simply to be protected from discrimination and afforded the same dignity and rights of our peers and colleagues. +We have heard this all before. +It was wrong it 1986, and it is wrong today. +Let’s not repeat our mistakes. +Let’s #StandWithGavin. +Late in the day on Friday, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department – now headed by Jeff Sessions – announced that it would drop a challenge to a nationwide injunction against guidance issued last year by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice on the rights of transgender students under Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. +Many now fear that the administration may be preparing to revoke the guidance entirely and change its stance on what those critical federal protections mean for trans students. +This latest action sends a terrible message to some of the most vulnerable young people in the country that the Trump administration does not care about protecting them from discrimination. +It was only several weeks ago that the White House proudly announced that “President Trump continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights, just as he was throughout the election.” +But actions speak far louder than words, and the early signs from Trump’s Justice Department are not good. +It is important for trans students across the country and their parents to know this: The law is on your side, and we at the ACLU will fight to make sure you are protected. +The Trump administration does not have the authority to undo legal protections for trans students. +Trans students are protected by the U.S. Constitution and Title IX. +School districts across the country must still comply with the law. +Schools that have done the right thing by treating trans students with dignity and respect should continue to do so. +Schools that discriminate against trans students will continue to face liability in court. +Barring trans students from single-sex spaces like restrooms and locker rooms that are consistent with the gender the student lives every day, is a violation of that student’s constitutional and civil rights. +The ACLU is deeply committed to the fight for trans equality, and we will continue our work to safeguard the dignity and rights of trans students. +Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Gavin Grimm’s transgender rights case. +Gavin is a 17-year-old boy whose Virginia high school has forced him to use separate restroom facilities from all other students because he is transgender. +The ACLU sued the school district on Gavin’s behalf, and a lower federal court held that the school board’s actions were unlawful sex discrimination. +The school board continued to fight against Gavin’s right to use the restroom all the way to the Supreme Court. +If the Trump administration will not step up to defend trans students, the ACLU will. +Every student deserves the right to a quality education that is free of discrimination. +To President Trump and Attorney General Sessions, we say this: Trans students deserve better. +Thank President Obama for protecting transgender rights Decades from now, I’m going to look back at the second week of May 2016 as a historic turning point for transgender equality. +I have little doubt that it will be remembered as the week transgender Americans had their rights recognized and that our crawl toward equality found surer footing. +This morning, the federal government finally released guidelines for public schools on how Title IX protects transgender students. +It’s actually pretty simple: Title IX is a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. +When schools force transgender students into the wrong bathroom or tell us we have to use a separate bathroom that is sex discrimination plain and simple. +But for some reason, state governors and lawmakers just don’t get it — or don’t care. +The new guidelines issued by the Departments of Justice and Education remind them of what they should already know: discriminating against transgender students is against the law. +These guidelines should send a clear message to lawmakers who ignore the rights of transgender students like me and single us out for harmful discrimination at school, the place where we should all feel most comfortable. +Transgender Americans scored another victory today when the federal government announced that medical care for transgender people, including care related to gender transition, cannot be denied under the Affordable Care Act. +Transgender people no longer have to worry that we won’t get the healthcare we need simply because of who we are. +The victory, however, didn’t just protect the transgender community. +The new rule also protects women – cis and trans - and all LGBT patients who previously had no protection from the federal government against discrimination in health care. +And last but certainly not least, the federal government announced they would challenge North Carolina’s harmful anti-transgender law in federal court. +In a historic show of support for the transgender community, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she will stand with us in our fight to stop Gov. Pat McCrory and the North Carolina Legislature’s attack on transgender people. +North Carolina is on the wrong side of history, and the law should be repealed so that transgender North Carolinians can comfortably use the restroom they have always used without fearing they will be targeted for harassment or even arrest. +Attorney General Lynch said it best: “What we must not do — what we must never do — is turn on our neighbors, our family members, and our fellow Americans, for something they cannot control, and deny what makes them human.” +A lot has happened since I worked with the ACLU to convince South Dakota’s governor to veto what could have been the country’s first statewide, explicitly anti-transgender law. +My home state made the right decision, but transgender students in states like North Carolina were not so lucky and needed the federal government’s protection. +No matter where we live, all transgender students deserve to be treated just the same as our classmates. +That’s why I am so happy the federal government is beginning to make that clear to public schools all across the country. +After a long, painful fight, our lawmakers are finally starting to realize that it’s time to put the awful history of injustice against transgender people behind us. +My generation will soon be the leaders of this country and they understand that equality is one of our most sacred values. +While the struggle is far from over, I believe this week proves that we are entering a new era where transgender people are treated like human beings with our civil rights firmly in place. +Like any good attorney, I enjoy winning and being right. +However, as a transgender attorney watching the fallout from antitransgender legislation across the country spin out of control, this is one time I wanted to be wrong. +I wanted to be wrong about the prediction that antitrans legislation and rhetoric would spur further discrimination and hostility towards all people, not just trans folks. +Sadly, this hatred of trans people has had the exact result we anticipated: increased harassment of all people in bathrooms as well as continued pernicious violence against trans women. +Reports are rolling in from across the country of nontransgender women being policed and harassed in bathrooms. +A 22-year-old Connecticut cisgender woman was harassed in a Wal-Mart bathroom this week because someone thought she was transgender. +In Texas, where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been unapologetic in his transphobia, a Texas woman trying to use a women’s restroom in a hospital was accosted by a man twice her size trying to make sure she was “going in the right place,” all because she was wearing a baseball hat with short hair. +And, of course, the violence and harassment of trans women has not stopped or decreased. +Earlier this month, trans woman Reese Walker was murdered in Wichita, Kansas, a state that proposed legislation awarding students a $2,500 bounty if they reported trans people in the restroom. +In Florida this last week, beloved trans woman Mercedes Successful was found murdered in a huge blow to the LGBT community in Haines City, Florida. +In Washington, D.C., this week, where transgender people are protected from discrimination under city law, a trans woman was assaulted by a security guard at a Giant grocery store. +“You guys cannot keep coming in here and using our women’s restroom,” the guard told her as she pushed her out of the store. +“They did not pass the law yet.” +Also, in New York City, trans woman Pearl Love was verbally and physically attacked by a nontranswoman on a subway train in a video that went viral and prompted a response from presidential candidate Hilary Clinton. +It seems like things are going to get quite worse for trans people before they get better. +Just last night, Oklahoma lawmakers introduced SB1619, which requires schools to provide students a “religious exemption” if they are offended by trans students in school bathrooms. +The real kicker to this bill is that a reasonable accommodation for transphobic students is not a single-user bathroom — like trans students have been forced to use — but rather a multi-user “trans-free” restroom, again demonstrating that at the heart of these bills is a devaluation of trans youth’s very existence. +Despite the fact that actual problems face many state legislatures, states like Georgia and Tennessee are going out of their way to arrange special sessions to discuss barring trans people from bathrooms in schools and public places. +And in Washington State, a hateful ballot initiative is gathering steam that, among other things, would nullify state laws protecting trans people from discrimination and allow students to sue schools for up to $2,500 if they encounter a trans person in a bathroom. +If the whirlwind of 2016 has taught us anything, it’s that transphobia hurts all of us. +It makes our communities and schools less safe and more heavily policed; it continues to assure the public that violence and exclusion of trans people from public life is the status quo; and it prevents all students from focusing on their education — an education that should arguably include values such as acceptance and compassion. +We must continue to fight back against these hateful messages and realize supporting trans people means supporting everyone’s right to dignity and justice. +Over the past year, as public policy debates about transgender rights have deepened — and anti-trans rhetoric has escalated — in state legislatures and in the courts, our nation has started learning more about who transgender people are — our neighbors, our co-workers, our fellow students, and our family members. +The national discussion often focuses on what restroom transgender people should use, even though the range of issues affecting the community is much broader. +When it comes to single-sex spaces and activities, the ACLU has a clear position: Transgender people can use facilities and participate in activities that match who they are. +We believe it is not only the right answer from a human point of view, but it is also legally required by statutory and constitutional bans on sex discrimination. +We have taken that position while fighting anti-transgender bills in at least 17 states this past year as well as in court, where we represent transgender people in all three of the current cases challenging bans on transgender individuals’ use of restrooms consistent with their gender identity (in Virginia, North Carolina, and Illinois). +The ACLU’s position derives from our core commitment to equality and reflects our decades-long work to fight sex discrimination, including on behalf of women, transgender people, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. +Everyone has to use the restroom. +Transgender people live their lives consistent with their gender identity (the internal sense we all have of our gender). +When transgender individuals are barred from using restrooms that match who they are, they are essentially closed off from participating in public life. +A transgender woman is a woman. +To tell her (as to tell any woman) that she must use the men’s room undermines her identity. +In addition, it subjects her to a real risk of violence. +Similarly, a transgender man is a man. +To tell him (as to tell any man) that he must use the women’s room undermines his identity and subjects him to a risk of violence and harassment. +In addition, for many transgender people, living their gender in all parts of their lives, including when using single-sex spaces, is part of the medical treatment that is prescribed for them — it alleviates what would otherwise be significant distress. +It’s no accident that this issue is surfacing now, as protections for transgender people increasingly become part of the national conversation. +Restrooms have been center stage in prior civil rights fights, including for African-Americans, for men and women around the Equal Rights Amendment, in the context of fighting for access for people living with disabilities, and during the peak of the AIDS crisis, when homophobia fed fears of gay people using restrooms. +Opponents of transgender equality are seeking to exploit the public’s lack of knowledge about transgender people to incite fear and stop any further progress for transgender rights or more broadly for LGBT rights. +We’re in the midst of a major civil rights battle, one that’s likely to continue for some time. +Thankfully, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education are fighting for equality with us. +The ACLU’s work on behalf of transgender people, including educating the public about who trans people are through our communications and advocacy work, is far from over. +American singer-songwriter Joe Walsh announced he will give a portion of the proceeds from two upcoming shows in North Carolina to the ACLU to support its lawsuit fighting the anti-LGBT law House Bill 2, which removes protections for LGBT people and prohibits transgender people from using facilities that correspond to their gender identity. +Net profits from Walsh’s June 30 show in Charlotte and August 9 show in Raleigh will also go to Equality North Carolina. +Both groups will be on site at the show to engage with attendees and enjoy Joe Walsh’s timeless classics. +In March, Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and the ACLU of North Carolina filed the lawsuit on behalf of LGBT clients in North Carolina who have been targeted by this discriminatory law. +Statement from ACLU of North Carolina Policy Director Sarah Preston: “Now more than ever it’s important that we stand together to uplift LGBT people and to fight measures that threaten to harm us. +Joe Walsh is using his music and his influence to demand equality and justice for all who are LGBT, and we couldn’t be more grateful for his courage and his generosity. +Defeating dangerous legislation like North Carolina’s House Bill 2 takes bold action and sustained commitment. +And that’s just what he’s bringing to this fight.” +Statement from Joe Walsh: +I have a few shows coming up in North Carolina: June 30th in Charlotte at the PNC Pavilion on my tour with Bad Company and August 9th in Raleigh at the Red Hat Amphitheater as part of my solo run. +North Carolina has been in the news lately because of the new legislation passed (HB-2) that dictates which bathrooms transgender individuals are to use and overrules LGBT anti-discrimination measures passed by local governments in the state of North Carolina. +It also deprives the rights of LGBT persons to fight back when their rights are denied in the workplace. +This legislation is deeply disconcerting and offensive to me and it hits close to home because, in addition to my diverse friends and peers from all walks of life, I have a gay stepson of whom I am very proud and that this legislation would directly affect. +Because I am against discrimination of any kind, I encourage a full repeal of this law. +I believe that music is a language that connects people – without bias – and that my shows are a place where all are welcome and all can feel safe. +This is why I have chosen to proceed with concert dates as planned in North Carolina and will be donating my net profits to Equality NC and the ACLU. +Both of these organizations will be on site at my show passing out information and collecting donations. +You can also find links to their pages on my website where you can get more information or make a donation. +Please consider contributing to these organizations who are working to repeal HB-2 and join me in coming together to protect equal rights for everyone including our LGBT children today and for years to come. +With gratitude and love, Joe Walsh More from Joe Walsh, including upcoming shows More information about the lawsuit +Today is Trans Day of Action. +In New York City, people are gathering in Washington Square Park this afternoon. +They’ll march through the city streets, calling out for justice for the trans community. +This day of action is organized annually by the Audre Lorde Project’s TransJustice group. +It’s a day to honor transgender women of color who catalyzed the movement for LGBT rights — like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who sparked the Stonewall Rebellion but have largely been erased from movement history. +It’s a day to uplift transgender and gender non-conforming people of color who continue that legacy, leading movements from coast to coast to uproot violence and discrimination. +They are tackling police profiling, racism, homelessness, and poverty — and the many other issues transgender people of color face every day. +Trans Day of Action is also a space to heal. +Health practitioners are offering free services in the park like reiki, giving priority to trans people of color. +This is especially important as our communities continue to grieve for the victims of the mass shooting in Orlando — a painful reminder of the violence and discrimination that LatinX and Black LGBT people disproportionately face. +And as we process this year’s record-high number of trans women of color murdered — a tragedy that rarely makes media headlines. +It’s a good day to reflect on the hard work people across the country are keeping up to fight anti-trans bills from South Dakota to North Carolina. +And to take stock of what we still need to do. +In solidarity with Trans Day of Action, I asked a few of the ACLU’s transgender clients and advocates of color why they are on the frontlines for transgender justice — and why Trans Day of Action is important to them. +Here’s what they told me: Meagan Taylor, ACLU Client Being a Black transgender woman, you have to deal with things like sexism, racism, and harassment on a daily basis. +Transgender people struggle on a daily basis, and we’re striving to make a change. +My message for other Black transgender women is to stay strong. +Change is coming really soon. +Stay positive and continue to do what you have to do for yourself. +Joaquin Carcaño, ACLU Client By standing up for transgender justice, we honor the work of those who came before us — trans women of color like Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera — and we continue their legacy of liberation. +The entire LGBTQ community has benefited in endless ways from their energy and work and sacrifice. +We have come so far, but liberation is a continuous fight. +And the best way I believe I can show my appreciation for the life I am able to live as an out Latino transgender man is to contribute to the work for collective transgender justice. +Our lives continue to be challenged, and we need to create not just communities of safety but communities of empowerment. +Trans Day of Action is important to me because we need the platform of dedicated days like this to leverage our voices and highlight those in the fight, especially because our oppressed communities are underrepresented and often spoken for during the conversations that directly involve or attack our livelihood. +Our stories matter. +Our stories are valuable. +As members of the transgender community, we are also part of other marginalized groups — we are also people of color; we are the working class; we are immigrants and women — we face violence on many levels, against our many layered identities and we are connected by this fight. +This fight — for our livelihood, for existence, for fulfillment, for ownership of our bodies and identity — is exhausting and can be very isolating. +We need each other. +We need reminders that we are a large community and family. +Our solidarity is a powerful community force, and this day is an opportunity to showcase our resiliency and strength. +Lara Americo, ACLU Action Advocate Trans* and queer people of color are marginalized every day, and until we have equality everywhere, we have to take action. +I live in North Carolina. +I’ve been leading rallies all over the state to call for the repeal of HB 2 and to stand up for LGBT people’s right to live free of discrimination and violence. +As a transgender woman, I know personally what’s at stake here. +I should be able to use the bathroom, ride the train, go out to lunch, and everything else that any other woman is able to do without harassment and discrimination. +Since I’ve been organizing in North Carolina, I have been moved beyond belief by the outpouring of support I have seen from people across the country. +That's why ​ Trans Day of Action is important to me. +*The word trans* is an inclusive, non-binary umbrella term to describe the many trans and gender-non-conforming expressions and identities. +Read more about the term’s etymology. +Imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning received a document from Army officials informing her that she is being investigated for serious new charges related to her July 5th attempt to take her own life. +If convicted of these “administrative offenses,” she could be placed in indefinite solitary confinement for the remainder of her decades-long sentence. +Since she was first taken into custody in 2010, Chelsea, a transgender woman being forced to serve out her sentence in an all-male prison, has been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement and denied medical treatment related to her gender dysphoria. +These new charges, which Army employees verbally informed Chelsea were related to the July 5th incident, include, “resisting the force cell move team;” “prohibited property;” and “conduct which threatens.” +If convicted, Chelsea could face punishment including indefinite solitary confinement, reclassification into maximum security, and an additional nine years in medium custody. +They may negate any chances of parole. +In addition to these new charges, The Army continues to deny Chelsea access to basic health care, including inadequate medical treatment after her suicide attempt. +Chelsea dictated the complete contents of the charge sheet to a supporter over the phone; the transcription can be found here. +More on Chelsea's case +Today marks a pivotal fight in the restroom wars. +This morning, we will ask a federal judge to suspend North Carolina’s hateful anti-transgender law, known as HB2, which requires transgender people in all public buildings to use restrooms that accord with the gender on their birth certificate, regardless of their gender identity. +Simply put, the law bars transgender people from participation in public life. +For our client, Joaquín Carcaño, a project coordinator at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, HB2 means he can’t use the men’s room at work. +As a man, Joaquin can’t use the women’s room without causing confusion and consternation among the women there, as well as undermining his very identity. +But because he is transgender and lives in North Carolina, HB2 requires that he use a restroom that matches his birth certificate – the female restroom. +So, like many other transgender people, Joaquin avoids drinking liquids during the day so he doesn’t have to pee at work. +Imagine trying to do that. +Joaquín is one of several plaintiffs in Carcaño v. McCrory, the legal challenge to HB2 brought by the ACLU, the ACLU of North Carolina, and Lambda Legal. +Today the judge hears argument on our motion for a preliminary injunction, and trial is set for November. +The restroom debates are not just a battleground for the LGBT movement, they are an opportunity. +For a long time, LGBT advocates avoided conversations about single-sex spaces. +But we must engage America about restrooms if we’re going to make progress on protecting transgender people from discrimination. +This is our chance to explain to the country who transgender people are, why restroom restrictions bar them from full participation in public life, and how no privacy or safety interests are violated in the process. +That’s where Joaquín and his fellow plaintiffs come in – they can humanize this issue and help people get the problem. +The ACLU is fighting the restroom wars on several fronts. +Earlier this year, we helped defeat over 40 anti-trans restroom bills in state legislatures. +We are working to educate the country about the issue. +And we are suing, not just in Carcaño, but in these other cases as well: GG v. Gloucester County School Board – The ACLU represents Gavin Grimm, who is about to start his senior year in high school in Gloucester, Virginia. +The school board barred him from using the men’s room, but a federal appeals court ruled in April that the exclusion violates federal sex discrimination law. +The school board is asking the Supreme Court to review the case, and we’ll find out this fall whether it does. +Students and Parents for Privacy v. U.S. Dep’t of Education – The ACLU represents Student A, a girl attending high school in suburban Chicago. +Because she is transgender, the school refused to let her use the girls’ locker room with the rest of her sports team. +In response to our complaint, the U.S. Department of Education ordered that Student A have access to the locker room, but then a group of students and parents have sued the district, arguing that their privacy rights have been violated. +Jesse Vroegh v. State of Iowa – Jesse Vroegh has worked as a nurse at an Iowa prison for seven years. +The prison has refused to let him use the men’s restroom or to cover his medically necessary transition-related health care, so Jesse, with help from the ACLU, has filed a complaint of gender identity discrimination before the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. +Texas v. United States – Officials in 11 states, led by Texas, have sued the U.S. Department of Education over its guidance that school districts should allow transgender students to use single-sex facilities consistent with their gender identity. +The ACLU and several other LGBT advocacy groups have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the Department of Education. +This conversation is just starting in earnest, but it’s already headed in a good direction. +And it’s essential for reaching full equality for transgender people and, more broadly, for the entire LGBT community. +The Supreme Court granted an “emergency” stay yesterday to stop Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Virginia, from using the boys’ restroom at school. +Gavin has facial hair, a deep voice, and a state ID that identifies him as male. +In every aspect of his life outside school, he is recognized as the boy that he is. +But when Gavin goes back to school for his senior year of high school, he will be singled out from every other student and forced to use a separate single-stall restroom that no one else is required to use. +According to his school board, Gavin’s mere presence in the boys’ restroom is a violation of other boys’ privacy. +No one, including the school board, thinks it would be appropriate for a boy like Gavin to use the girls’ restroom. +So the school board converted a couple of old utility closets into single-user restrooms that Gavin must now use to “protect” other students from his mere presence. +He has been shamefully forced to use a separate restroom or the restroom in the nurse’s office for the past two school years. +With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Gavin bravely took his school district to court, arguing that the school board’s policy violates Title IX, the federal statute that protect students from being excluded from school programs and resources on the basis of sex. +The United States Department of Education and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed with Gavin as well. +As a result of the fourth circuit’s ruling, Gavin was preparing to begin his senior year with a fresh start. +He would finally be able to use the restroom without being isolated. +Sadly, that won’t happen. +Even if the Supreme Court ultimately decides to let the lower court’s decision stand, Gavin will have had to spend most of his senior year forced to use a separate restroom from the rest of his classmates, simply because of who he is. +If you ask the school board why they are going to all this effort just to stop one kid from using the restroom, they will tell you that this is about more than Gavin. +It is about what happens when a transgender student uses the locker room (even though Gavin doesn’t take gym and transgender students across the country use the locker room all the time without incident) or a transgender student wants to use the showers or about stopping a non-transgender boy from pretending to be a transgender girl to sneak into the girls’ restroom (even though schools administrators across the country report that this doesn’t happen). +They will say this is really about a host of fears, and hypotheticals, and far-fetched scenarios. +They will say it is about anything else +but Gavin. +Try telling that to a 17 year-old kid who was just told by the United States Supreme Court that the prospect of him using a toilet in the “wrong” restroom was an emergency that could cause irreparable harm. +This piece originally appeared in The Advocate. +Every year at about this time, my office gets calls from anxious parents concerned about whether their kids will have access to a safe and fair learning environment when they start school in the fall. +One year, it was a grandfather raising a transgender teen whose small-town high school was intent on suspending her for how she dressed (which was, incidentally, exactly like every other girl at her school). +Another time, it was the mother of an elementary school child whose teachers were refusing to call the child by her correct name and gender pronouns, wreaking havoc among classmates, who recognized the child as female. +Then there was the high school senior barred from going to prom on the same basis as other kids because of the rules about what students must wear and whom they could bring as dates. +We hear about taunting and bullying that is ignored — or even initiated — by teachers and school administrators. +We meet kids locked out of the formative experiences of youth that many of us take for granted, like attending school dances or participating in band or cheerleading. +And we hear from kids who put their health at risk daily rather than endure the humiliation and stigma of using a restroom that doesn’t correspond to their gender identity. +Some days, we’re all in tears — parents and lawyers alike. +But here’s the thing. +Even in Texas, a rock-solid red state with an off-the-charts religiosity score, we also see transgender kids thriving in school districts committed to treating all students with dignity and respect. +In fact, many of the largest school districts in the state have had nondiscrimination policies that include gender identity and gender expression for years. +Like school districts around the country, they’ve navigated the supposedly thorny issues of dress codes and team sports and bathroom access in a way that supports their transgender students and creates the conditions for their success. +And when parents and transgender kids courageously step forward to advocate for better policies at school, more often than not they succeed. +I cannot help but be humbled and inspired by what transgender kids and their families have shown all Texans about how to make government accountable to the people. +So I am dismayed that the state of Texas seems hell-bent on relegating transgender students to permanent second-class status under the law. +I suspect that most of the politicians hailing a recent ruling by a federal court in Wichita Falls, Texas, that blocks Department of Education guidance on transgender students don’t know these kids — the ones demanding the dignity and respect they deserve at school or the ones blossoming into their potential because they have the support of their school community. +In fact, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a chief architect of the litigation, admitted that he hadn’t spoken with any transgender students or their families before bringing the case. +How else could Paxton and the other state leaders argue that transgender kids ought to be excluded from the protections of Title IX, a federal law that is supposed to ensure everyone has equal access to educational opportunity? +In the short term, except for sowing confusion among school administrators, the legal effect of the decision is minimal. +The order temporarily prevents the Obama administration from acting on the guidance. +But school districts in Texas and around the country that already have good policies to protect their transgender students are free to enforce them. +School districts considering such policies are free to adopt them. +And parents and kids who want to challenge how their schools treat trans kids are free to advocate — and to bring suit if necessary. +In the longer term, advocacy organizations like mine will keep fighting discrimination until everyone is legally protected. +Indeed, there are cases in the pipeline that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court as early as next year. +But the effects of what is happening in that Wichita Falls courtroom reverberate beyond the law books and legal precedents. +The headlines fixate on bathroom access, and local TV stations have broken out their B-roll of those iconic stick-figure signs that distinguish the men’s and women’s restrooms. +We’re once again hearing the refrain of “no men in women’s bathrooms” from those organized against equality. +The word is going out from pulpits that our faith calls us to take a stand. +Candidates for office are staking out policy positions. +People are taking sides in the larger debate. +Are we a people who single out transgender men and women for different treatment under the law? +Or are we a people who make determined — if painstakingly slow and unsteady — progress toward realizing the high ideal of equality upon which our county was founded? +What does this legal assault on vulnerable children tell us about the direction we’re going? +The answer matters a great deal. +School is starting again here in Texas. +Our phones are ringing. +Parents are worried. +Kids are determined. +And I’m holding my breath. +Next week, Congress will be back in session in our nation’s capital. +With the election right around the corner, we can expect to see a frenzy of legislative activity. +The past several weeks have served as a reminder for why reforming the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) should be on the agenda of every Member of Congress who supports LGBT equality. +In 2013, Amiee Stephens gave her employer — R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes in Detroit — a letter explaining that she is a woman and would transition to presenting full-time as a woman. +The letter explained that Amiee would soon start to dress in appropriate business attire at work, consistent with her female gender identity. +Two weeks later, the funeral home — which had employed Amiee since 2007 — fired her, saying that her gender transition was “unacceptable.” +In 2014, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit on Amiee’s behalf, alleging that her former employer’s actions resulted in sex discrimination in violation of federal law. +The ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the EEOC’s lawsuit. +Unfortunately, on August 18 of this year, a federal judge held that the RFRA entitled the funeral home to fire Amiee. +Invoking the Supreme Court’s deeply troubling decision in Hobby Lobby, the court reasoned that RFRA required the EEOC to accommodate the funeral home owner’s discriminatory religious beliefs by requesting that the owner adopt a gender-neutral dress code instead of holding the funeral home accountable for its unlawful discrimination. +By allowing the funeral home to completely escape liability for its actions, the court’s decision gives employers a dangerous new religious exercise argument to justify discrimination against transgender people. +Last week, emboldened anti-trans forces once again invoked RFRA, this time in a lawsuit seeking to discriminate against trans people by denying them health care. +On August 23, Texas and four other states — along with the Franciscan Alliance, a Catholic hospital system — filed a lawsuit challenging regulations from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that, in part, prohibit discrimination against transgender people in health care. +The rule ensures that trans people can access medically necessary treatment and procedures, have those procedures covered by insurance, and be respected for who they are in medical facilities. +Arguing that these protections violate RFRA, the states and organizations who filed the lawsuit object to providing services (or even referrals) for transition-related care or providing insurance that covers such care. +Those opposed to trans rights specifically — and LGBT equality more broadly (not to mention reproductive freedom) — now see in RFRA a way to undermine and attack laws and regulations that prohibit discrimination. +While this was not the intention of those who supported RFRA’s passage in 1993, it is what the law is too often used for today, thanks in large part to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling. +Representatives Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.) have introduced legislation in Congress — the Do No Harm Act — that would place a much needed limitation on RFRA to ensure that it can only be used as a shield to protect religious exercise (something the ACLU strongly supports) and not as a sword to harm others. +The Do No Harm Act would prevent RFRA from being invoked to justify discrimination, denial of health care, or other harms. +We need to continue to build support for this legislation. +As the struggle to win full equality for LGBT people under the law continues, we cannot allow RFRA to continue to be used as sword for discrimination. +Earlier today, ACLU attorney Chase Strangio wrote a note to South Dakota legislators, urging them not to sign HB 1008, which targets transgender students in South Dakota. +They didn’t listen. +Now it’s up to South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard to veto HB 1008 and make sure the government stops hurting vulnerable kids. +Sign the petition to tell Gov. Daugaard to protect South Dakota students. +I am now 33 years old, and I have an incredible job and a loving family. +I am proud of who I am and all that I have been able to accomplish. +But if I were a student in South Dakota right now, chances are I would not survive into adulthood. +I didn’t realize that I was transgender until after college, but I struggled through high school. +I felt a disconnect from my body and a feeling of shame that prevented me from fully embracing the world. +I struggled with thoughts of suicide, drug use, and self-harm. +I am so thankful to be alive today. +And I am alive, in part, because even in a time that was far less accepting of LGBT people, I never got the message in high school that being transgender was shameful. +I was not ready to come out to myself during those years, but I am thankful that my teachers, administrators, and government representatives never sent me the message that I was so disgusting that I didn’t deserve to share space with my peers. +That message would have pushed me over the edge. +That message would have found its way inside my already self-hating consciousness and prevented me from finding the strength that I ultimately did find to survive. +Last weekend, Sen. Omdahl said of transgender young people, “I’m sorry if you’re so twisted you don’t know who you are,” but we need a bill to protect other people from them. +I keep hearing those words, imagining what it would have been like for 15-year-old me to hear them. +I would have been heartbroken. +Legislators in South Dakota voted on House Bill 1008, which required transgender students to be separated from their peers and forced into separate bathrooms and locker rooms. +If this bill is signed, I have no doubt that there will be many transgender South Dakotans who will face bullying, harassment, and perhaps even death. +We live in a time of crisis where messages like Sen. Omdahl’s contribute to an epidemic of suicide in the transgender community. +Almost half of all transgender individuals attempt suicide at some point in our lives. +I have lost too many friends to suicide and watched too many transgender young people take their own lives. +I urge South Dakotans and people across the country to take seriously what it would be like to be a young transgender person being told you are so freakish that others must be protected from you. +Growing up is painful and isolating at times no matter who you are. +The last thing we need is the government to take part in the bullying of our vulnerable kids. +I was lucky enough to survive, and to fight on behalf of my community. +I hope today’s vote doesn’t prevent future advocates from growing into adulthood. +For the past five days, Republican South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard has considered whether to sign or veto the anti-transgender bill that passed the South Dakota Legislature last week. +Today he vetoed the bill and sent an important message to all South Dakotans — and particularly to the estimated 1,300 transgender students in South Dakota — that his state won’t let fear and ignorance of difference dictate state law. +The bill, HB 1008, targeted transgender students and proposed assigning them to separate bathrooms. +Horrible things were said about transgender young people by South Dakota lawmakers as the bill made its way through the state’s legislature. +At the same time, brave South Dakotans and allies from across the country fought back and stood behind the transgender young people who are just fighting to be themselves. +As transgender student Thomas Lewis explained in The Washington Post: “Transgender students like me are just looking for a chance to access the same things that everyone else does — an education, a job, a safe place to pee.” +During the floor debate in the Senate, Republican Senator Deb Peters recognized that, explaining of the bill, “When I’ve been elected these past 12 years … my whole goal has been cause no harm, do no harm and this instance I cannot vote for this particular piece of legislation because I believe it does more harm than good.” +While supporters of the legislation insisted that it was needed as a “preventative” measure, the truth was, as another Republican lawmaker explained, the bill just caused “unnecessary fear.” +Though he at first indicated support for the measure and admitted to never having met a transgender person, Governor Daugaard later decided to meet with transgender students to hear about their experiences. +Of the meeting with the students, Daugaard explained, “It helped me see things through their eyes a little better and see more of their perspective.” +At the end of the day, our common humanity and decency united us. +Hopefully Daugaard’s message and action will be received beyond South Dakota. +The transgender community continues to need the support and love of allies willing to stand up to discriminatory measures that threaten our safety. +The transgender young people who bravely spoke out in South Dakota changed the course of their own political lives and set an inspiring example for the rest of us. +We should not all have to be so brave, but we honor and thank those young people who take on so much to make the world a better place for us all. +Transgender people are used to be told that we are freaks, that we don’t belong, that others need to be protected from us. +The constant discrimination can be emotionally draining and, for many, creates a climate of constant fear of physical violence. +So it was a really big deal when, on Tuesday, Republican South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard vetoed HB 1008 – a bill that would have forced transgender students into separate restrooms from their peers and invited invasive scrutiny into the medical information and bodily characteristics of all students. +In his veto message, Governor Daugaard recognized that the proposed law “d[id] not address any pressing issue concerning the school districts of South Dakota” and explained, “[a]s policymakers in South Dakota, we often recite that the best government is the government closest to the people. +Local school districts can, and have, made necessary restroom and locker room accommodations that serve the best interests of all students, regardless of … gender identity.” +For a moment, it seemed that trans people were seen and heard in all our humanity. +This win on the side of justice for transgender people was hard fought, particularly by the brave students in South Dakota who told their stories. +As important as this victory is, though, the fight to protect transgender people has never been more urgent. +Transgender people are still under attack in state legislatures across the country and in our daily lives. +Particularly for transgender women of color, a walk down the street, or the process of checking into a hotel can lead to harassment, arrest or even violence. +Meanwhile, instead of fighting back against that discrimination, lawmakers are contributing to it. +Next week, another bill targeting transgender students will head to committee in Tennessee. +The bill forces students to use restrooms that match the gender listed on the student’s birth certificate and offers no accommodations for transgender students whatsoever. +This means that transgender students could be forced into restrooms based on their assigned sex at birth despite living and presenting in another gender. +The bill is particularly concerning given that Tennessee is the only jurisdiction in the United States that by statute prohibits a person from ever updating a birth certificate to match the person’s gender. +In Washington State, a ballot initiative was filed this week to undo the state Human Rights Commission’s rules protecting the use of restrooms and locker rooms in accordance with a person’s gender. +The group supporting the ballot measure – the same group thought sought repeal of marriage equality at the ballot in 2012 – is stoking fear of transgender people in a way that could contribute to violence against the community in Washington and beyond. +As Danni Askini, executive director of the Gender Justice League explained of the anti-trans bills heard before the legislature this session, “It is doing very real damage to the trans community, especially to trans youth, to hear this endless testimony that trans people are dangerous and associating us with pedophiles and perpetrators of sexual assault.” +And of course these measures come on the heels of a year of record-breaking violence against the transgender community. +Last year, at least 22 transgender women were killed, almost all of them women of color. +That trend is sadly continuing this year. +It is devastating and dangerous when fear of difference guides policy. +My message to the transgender community in Tennessee and Washington and across the country is that: you are brave and beautiful. +The world is better because you are in it and we will never stop fighting for you. +A few weeks ago, an amazing, young advocate for transgender people in Washington State died from cancer and he told me that he knew he would be leaving amazing people behind to pick up the fight for transgender justice. +His partner of many years shared this, his favorite quote from Howard Zinn, after his death: “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. +It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. +And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. +The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now, as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” +Today our marvelous victory is standing by each other to defeat South Dakota’s anti-trans measure. +Tomorrow, it is bringing that fight and our voices to Tennessee, Washington and to support each other as we strive to live without the constant threat of interpersonal and state violence. +ADD YOUR NAME TO REPEAL HB2 +Apparently the most urgent need in the state of North Carolina involves stopping transgender people from using bathrooms. +For North Carolina lawmakers, the urgency was so great that they felt compelled to call a special legislative session — costing taxpayers’ $42,000 a day — to pass the most sweeping piece of anti-LGBT legislation in history, which Gov. Pat McCrory signed the same day. +The reason for this extreme and unusual action by state lawmakers: The city of Charlotte dared to pass a nondiscrimination ordinance that extended legal protections to LGBT people. +Though the ordinance did many things, it was dubbed the “bathroom ordinance” by opponents who falsely claimed that protecting transgender people from discrimination would somehow threaten the privacy and safety of others. +But in actuality, it’s a myth that has instead served to justify and perpetuate violence against the transgender community for years. +Animated by this distorted rhetoric about privacy and safety, state lawmakers moved HB2 through the state legislature swiftly. +After he signed the legislation, Gov. McCrory disingenuously proclaimed it necessary to prevent “men from using women’s bathrooms.” +In addition to repealing the Charlotte ordinance, North Carolina’s new, hateful measure also: Forces transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that accord with the gender listed on their birth certificate, whether or not that matches how they identify Forces transgender individuals to use bathrooms and locker rooms in any government building, including public universities and colleges, that accord with the gender listed on their birth certificate, whether or not that matches how they identify Prohibits local governments from passing LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination protections It is a dangerous law and a disgrace. +It is also unconstitutional. +And today, we are suing to strike it down. +Nothing about Charlotte’s nondiscrimination law or any other law or policy in North Carolina would have allowed men into women’s restrooms. +As The New York Times explained on Friday: “That threat exists only in the imagination of bigots.” +This imagined threat, however, is what prompted Gov. McCrory to become, as the Charlotte Observer wrote, “a 21st century governor who joined a short, tragic list of 20th century governors. +You know at least some of these names, probably: Wallace, Faubus, Barnett.” +The law is intolerable and puts the most vulnerable among us at risk of discrimination, harassment, and violence. +But as I wrote to lawmakers last week when this law passed: “Whether through our families by blood or by choice, [trans people] have community. +We will not be forgotten and the reverberations of your actions, lawmakers, will be felt and responded to with vigorous reminders that you are on the wrong side of history. +And perhaps someday you will realize that someone you love was harmed by your ignorance and your inability to see our beautiful and common humanity +and maybe then you will regret your vote. +Until then, I care less about you, hateful lawmaker, and more about my beautiful community. +You are all loved +and I will never stop fighting for you.” +Today, the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and Equality North Carolina are fighting in court for the trans folks who have been targeted relentlessly in North Carolina and for the entire LGBT community who is harmed by this regressive and discriminatory law. +This is just one tool among many to counter the horrible rhetoric that has led to the passage of this law and the introduction of many others in state legislatures across the country. +Unless and until we embrace the humanity of our trans community members, we will continue to see this hateful rhetoric and legislation. +In court, on the streets, in schools, and across the country, we will be saying, “Enough is enough.��� +Onward. +Add your name to take action “What if it was your daughter who was the target of this bill?” +For a moment a few weeks ago, it seemed like lawmakers in Tennessee had really heard the brave testimony of a transgender young person and her parents. +A mother’s simple ask to legislators about what they would do if it was their child who was transgender hit a nerve, and the anti-transgender bill was sent to a summer study session, seemingly killing it for this year. +But that was two weeks ago — a lifetime ago, it seems, in light of all that has happened since — and that bill is back. +But that’s nowhere near the worst of it. +Apparently in a bid to outdo each other, lawmakers in North Carolina and Mississippi have passed and signed sweeping anti-LGBT legislation into law over the last two weeks. +North Carolina’s HB 2 was rushed through a special legislative session on March 23 and signed the same day by Gov. Pat McCrory. +The bill, which we have since challenged in court, not only repeals local ordinances extending protections to LGBT individuals and prohibits the passage of any such ordinances in the future. +It does something far worse: It mandates discrimination against transgender people by government agencies and schools. +Not to be outdone, yesterday, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law HB 1523, another sweeping piece of legislation, which authorizes discrimination based on sincerely held religious beliefs that: The bill will further entrench discrimination against LGBT people, unmarried people who have sex, and anyone else who doesn’t conform to expectations about gender and gender roles. +It will (or aims to), among other things: prevent the government from taking any action if LGBT kids are forced into conversion therapy by foster parents allow counselors practicing conversion therapy, including school counselors, to keep their licenses allow single mothers to be turned away by a government-funded homeless shelter, food pantry, or day-care program permit government employees to refuse to issue marriage licenses or solemnize marriages for same- sex couples allow medical providers to turn away transgender patients or restrict access to health care related to gender transition In both Mississippi and North Carolina, the most vulnerable in the community will be targeted — homeless people, foster youth, kids. +Lawmakers claim the laws are necessary to respect people’s religious beliefs or privacy, yet so many will suffer as a result of these unprecedented new measures. +In fact, so many are already suffering. +As Mississippi lawmakers sent HB1523 to the governor on Monday, James Dixon plead guilty to manslaughter in the death of Black trans woman Islan Nettles in New York City. +He killed her in August of 2013 on the street in Harlem after he realized that she was transgender. +When police questioned him about Islan’s death, he explained that he had recently been “fooled by a transgender” and was “blinded” with rage at the idea that he could be fooled again. +So he killed her because he didn’t believe in her humanity or womanhood. +Like the more than 22 transgender women — almost all of them women of color — who were murdered last year, Islan died in a world that treated her in life as less than human. +The same beliefs that motivated James Dixon to kill Islan on that street in Harlem — the belief that transgender women are not women and that transgender people are less than human — animate the anti-trans legislation that is now codified into law in Mississippi and North Carolina, and which is at risk of becoming law in Tennessee and elsewhere. +We must sit with that harsh and disturbing reality and react with urgency as these bills continue to make their way through state legislatures. +Today lawmakers in Tennessee will again consider HB 2414/SB 2387, a measure targeting transgender students. +Proponents of the bill are claiming this bill marks a critical fight in the “New Civil War” over “the truth about human sexuality, or perhaps more fundamentally, what it means to be human.” +Meanwhile, brave, young transgender people and their families will again stand up to lawmakers and ask that the bullying, harassment, and fixation on bathrooms stop. +Enough is enough. +In states across the country, transgender young people have had to listen to their government speak about them as “twisted” and try to cast them out of public space. +Despite all the vitriol, the trans community continues to show up and lead the fight to stop these bills. +But we’re not alone in this fight. +Powerful businesses and religious leaders are speaking up, telling lawmakers that discrimination is unacceptable. +Some have even halted investments, in addition to condemning these inhumane laws. +We may not yet stop them all, but we are telling our stories. +And in the end, we will win this fight. +Join us. +This piece originally appeared at The Huffington Post. +If social conservatives in Tennessee get their way, the state will soon become the second in the nation to use the coercive power of the government to force people into bathrooms that violate their very sense of self or risk punishment. +Legislation targeting trans students pending in both houses in the state’s legislature would require public school and university students to use a bathroom or locker room that matches the sex recorded on their birth certificate. +Limited-government it’s not. +Tennessee legislators, though, aren’t original in their bigotry. +North Carolina controversially passed an even broader law in March, and at least 30 similar bills have been introduced in a total of 16 states this year alone. +Proponents of these discriminatory anti-trans bathroom bills have advanced many arguments for why they are necessary. +Most are absurd “urban legends.” +Some argue these bills are necessary to stop predatory men from dressing up as women, entering the female restroom, and then attacking unsuspecting women. +The more restrained say it will stop men from just trying to sneak a peek. +Not surprisingly, these are solutions in search of a problem. +There is neither evidence that anyone has used the fictional “transgender defense” for illegal conduct nor reports of any increase in public safety incidents in any of the hundreds of jurisdictions that have extended legal protections to transgender people. +But let’s get real, these bills aren’t motivated by privacy concerns — they’re motivated by ignorance, misinformation, and fear. +The argument getting the most traction, however, is the idea that compelling trans people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their assigned sex at birth protects the privacy of non-transgender boys and girls and men and women. +“Letting boys into girls’ restrooms and changing areas, for example, is an invasion of privacy,” said Matt Sharp, a lawyer with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, in defense of Tennessee’s bill. +One of the stated purposes of Florida’s defeated bill last year was “to secure privacy … for all individuals using single-sex public facilities.” +North Carolina legislators this year went so far as to name their anti-trans bathroom bill, the “Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act.” +As a threshold matter, no one is proposing letting boys into girls’ bathrooms. +Preying on misinformation about transgender people and calling trans girls boys, advocates for these harmful measures decry the fictitious end of sex-segregated spaces altogether. +But even beyond the absurd distortions peddled in state legislatures across the country, these purported privacy justifications for unconstitutional government discrimination aren’t remotely persuasive. +It does not infringe anyone else’s rights to share public space with those who are different. +People just don’t get naked in the restroom, and we should all just keep our eyes to ourselves, anyway. +Like previous efforts to expel people of color, people with disabilities, and others from communal space, these arguments for privacy just mask a fear of difference. +And as courts have repeatedly recognized, those who are uncomfortable with sharing such spaces can seek out private spaces for themselves rather than force transgender people to be forever stigmatized and isolated. +The privacy argument for these anti-trans bathroom bills falls completely apart when it comes to enforcement. +Who exactly will have the authority to verify who is “male” or who is “female”? +Will there be pee police? +What will happen to androgynous men and women who don’t conform to the police officer or bureaucrat’s notion of what “real” maleness or femaleness is? +For legislators trying to protect privacy, the unintended or ill-considered consequences of these bills seem to undermine their purpose. +But let’s get real, these bills aren’t motivated by privacy concerns — they’re motivated by ignorance, misinformation, and fear. +Many people, particularly social conservatives, find transgender people, at best, curiosities, and, at worst, less than human, even if the more political hide their disgust with carefully crafted language. +The bill’s sponsor in Tennessee, Republican Rep. Susan Lynn, called her measure “very friendly.” +Trans students may mistake her kindness for cruelty because forcing transgender people to use the wrong restroom will have terrible consequences for their very real privacy interests as well as their safety. +Transgender people, whether people know it or not, are already using the bathrooms they have a right to, and doing so without incident. +In fact, hundreds of localities and school districts across the country have created more welcoming environments for all, including transgender people, and mayors and law enforcement leaders and others have said nondiscrimination protections actually make their cities safer. +Laws like North Carolina’s and bills like Tennessee’s, if enacted, mean transgender people will have to make the impossible decision of breaking the law or revealing their private medical information. +Not to mention the obvious risk of harassment and violence that comes with forcing transgender women into men’s restrooms and transgender men into women’s restrooms. +The fear of violence is already a daily reality for transgender people, and bills like these could very well make it unsafe for trans people to go out in public if they become law. +Sometimes legislators have fantasized about committing such acts of violence. +In 2012, Tennessee State Representative Richard Floyd, who introduced his very own anti-trans bathroom bill that year, described just what he’d do if he discovered a transgender woman in the same bathroom or dressing room as his wife or one of his daughters. +“I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry,” he told The Chattanooga Times Free Press. +“Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk.” +That state lawmakers feel so emboldened to threaten trans people with physical violence is a testament to the hostile and scary world in which trans people live. +These proposed laws and the conversations about them contribute to the climate in which almost 50 percent of transgender people attempt suicide in their lives and transgender women of color are increasingly the target of deadly violence at the hands of partners and strangers. +It is quite clear whose privacy and very lives are really at risk if state legislatures continue to succumb to anti-trans fear and hatred and give it state sanction. +A federal appeals court weighed in yesterday in the nation’s ongoing conversation about restrooms and transgender people, ruling squarely in favor of transgender people and equality. +Gavin Grimm is a junior in high school in Gloucester, Virginia. +He’s a boy, but because he’s also transgender, his school told him he couldn’t use the boy’s restroom at school, but would have to use the girl’s room or single-user restrooms. +Gavin didn’t think it was right for him to be treated differently than all the other boys at his school, so (with the ACLU’s help) he challenged the district’s rule as discriminatory. +Yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed with Gavin. +It held that schools that bar students from using gender identity-appropriate restrooms discriminate based on sex in violation of Title IX, a federal law against sex discrimination in education. +The court sent the case back to the trial judge for further proceedings. +The ruling is a big deal on many levels. +It’s the first federal appeals court ruling on the issue and backs up the interpretation of Title IX from the federal Education Department, which has been a true leader on this issue. +The decision applies directly to North Carolina and South Carolina, not just Virginia. +That means that the requirement in North Carolina’s recently enacted law, that schools and government buildings force transgender people into the wrong restrooms, is now clearly unlawful sex discrimination that violates federal law. +And it should send a strong message to South Carolina, where another anti-transgender bill is being considered, that it’s time to put these harmful measures to bed for good. +Perhaps most importantly, the ruling should mean that Gavin himself — and so many other transgender people all across the Fourth Circuit and all across the country — should no longer have to be humiliated by having his very identity disrespected and undermined day after day when he — like all of us — has to use the restroom. +We still, though, have some work to do to help educate America about who transgender people are and why the bathroom predator myth is just the extreme right’s most recent strategy for curbing LGBT equality. +It’s their last ditch effort after they lost the marriage fight. +The good news is that the public is catching on. +The more people learn that Gavin is in fact just a boy who needs to use the bathroom like his peers, the more these bills will die quietly. +This good news follows another win for transgender students this week. +Two days ago, the Tennessee state legislature lay to rest a bill that would have forced transgender students to use the wrong restroom. +Pressure from LGBT advocacy groups like the ACLU and leadership from transgender students on the ground in Tennessee helped to put the nail in the coffin of that harmful measure (at least for this year). +Unfortunately, there is another bill in Tennessee that already passed and is awaiting the governor’s veto or signature in the coming days. +The bill would allow therapists to turn gay and transgender patients away with claims that treating them would violate their religious beliefs. +A similar but perhaps even more threatening measure in Missouri would enshrine in the state’s constitution the right to discriminate against same-sex couples and turn them away from wedding services in the name of religion. +These states should look to the economic fallout in Mississippi and North Carolina as a warning about what could happen if they ram these bills through. +All in all, it’s been a roller coaster of a ride for LGBT rights recently. +We’ve seen some big wins and big losses these past few weeks, and we’re likely to see yet more in the weeks to come. +What we know for sure is that the moral arc does indeed bend towards justice, and we will continue to fight with all our might until we’ve achieved full equality. +For decades transgender people have been fired or turned away from jobs just because of who they are. +Courts and federal agencies are finally starting to recognize this for what it is — illegal sex discrimination — and they’re holding employers accountable. +But now, a Michigan funeral home is trying to turn back the clock by claiming that this country’s religious freedom protections give it a license to discriminate against transgender employees. +As we explain in our recently filed friend-of-the-court brief, religious freedom doesn’t give employers a free pass to evade our civil rights laws, whether those laws are being used to remedy discrimination against women, people of color, or transgender individuals. +Aimee Stephens had worked for nearly six years as a funeral director at R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes when she informed the funeral home’s owner that she is a transgender woman and planned to start dressing in appropriate business attire for a woman. +She asked for understanding and support. +The owner fired her two weeks later, explaining that it would be "unacceptable" for her to dress and present as the woman she is. +After learning what happened to Aimee, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the funeral home for sex discrimination. +At first, the funeral home tried to argue that transgender people aren’t protected under federal workplace antidiscrimination laws. +They raised this argument because we don’t have a federal law, nor in most states do we have a state law, that explicitly prohibits employment discrimination based on a person’s gender identity or transgender status. +As a result, people in 30 states can be fired or denied a job just because they are transgender, without recourse to a law that explicitly prohibits such discrimination. +Fortunately, a number of federal courts and the EEOC have recognized that the federal law against sex discrimination in employment protects transgender people. +In Aimee’s case, the court held that her employer can’t discriminate against her for dressing consistently with her gender identity. +After losing its motion to dismiss the case, the funeral home raised religion defenses under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. +The funeral home isn’t affiliated with any church; its articles of incorporation don’t mention any religious purpose; and it employs and offers services to people of all faiths and no faith. +In fact, the EEOC observed that the funeral home “gave no indication that its religious beliefs were being violated until litigation had been underway for nearly eight and a half months.” +Now, however, the owner claims that having to employ transgender people would impermissibly infringe his business’s religious exercise. +As we pointed out in our brief, these arguments aren’t new. +In the 1960s, business owners objected to civil rights laws integrating restaurants and other public accommodations because they sincerely believed that God wanted the races to be separate. +Later, religiously affiliated universities prohibited students from engaging in interracial dating, because their religious beliefs opposed interracial relationships. +And employers insisted that they should be allowed to pay women less, because they had a sincere religious belief that men should be the primary breadwinners. +In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration and equal pay were not attacks on religious freedom, but necessary measures to ensure a fair society for everyone. +The same is true here. +Our country has a long and painful history of sex discrimination directed at transgender people. +According to one study of anti-trans violence, between 25 and 50 percent of transgender people have been victims of physical attacks because of their transgender status. +And, in a recent national survey of transgender people, more than a quarter of participants reported that they had lost jobs because of their transgender status, and nearly half reported experiencing some form of workplace discrimination. +The states should be preventing this kind of discrimination, but they often encourage it instead. +In the last several months, we’ve seen a whole slew of bills and ballot measures encouraging or even requiring discrimination against transgender people, such as North Carolina’s HB2. +And we’ve seen other bills allowing religion to be used to discriminate against transgender people, as well as lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, such as Mississippi’s HB 1523. +With several states in thrall to these hateful measures, we have to make sure that transgender people enjoy the full protection of federal antidiscrimination law. +That’s why Aimee’s case is so important. +Religious freedom in America gives everyone the right to their religious beliefs, but it doesn’t give employers a license to discriminate against their employees. +As courts have recognized for many years, civil rights protections are much too important to allow employers to use religion to evade them. +That is especially true here, where the state laws and policies applicable to transgender people have been going from bad to worse. +We hope the court agrees. +Over the course of the past few weeks, we have witnessed an escalation of anti-trans rhetoric, which is saying a lot for state legislative season that has fixated on where trans people go to the bathroom. +Amidst the vitriol and lies being thrown around about trans people, I worry that a few basic principles have been lost. +Here are five things to remember when talking, writing, or thinking about trans people: The existence of trans people does not threaten the privacy of anyone else. +We exist, and you may be uncomfortable with us but discomfort with difference is not the same as infringement of privacy. +Trans women and girls are women and girls. +Full stop. +They are not “biological males” or “men pretending to be women” or some other hateful qualification. +Same is true for trans men and boys being men and boys. +Extending legal protections to transgender people, including when it comes to using restrooms and locker rooms, does not threaten the safety of anyone else. +This has been proven time and time again despite the ongoing rhetoric to the contrary. +Policing of gender or genitals in restrooms is bad for everyone. +There is no way to enforce anti-trans bathroom laws except by exposing us all to intrusive questioning about our bodies, our gender, and our government documents. +Anti-trans laws are not about restrooms, locker rooms, safety, or privacy but about expelling trans people from public life. +Those most impacted by these laws have been and will always be trans people who are already subject to the most policing and violence – particularly trans women of color. +Unfortunately, conversations about trans people often end up repeating harmful lies put forth by groups that have long worked to destabilize support and protections for LGBT people. +When we repeat and reinforce these lies, we contribute to the social and political context where trans people face harassment, arrest, and violence for simply existing in the world. +We must look behind the rhetoric that claims that protecting vulnerable trans young people is somehow threatening the safety and privacy of non-transgender women and girls. +As a coalition of every major sexual assault and domestic violence organization in the United States explained in statement opposing anti-transgender laws: “These initiatives utilize and perpetuate the myth that protecting transgender people’s access to restrooms and locker rooms endangers the safety or privacy of others. +As organizations that care about reducing assault and violence, we favor laws and policies that protect transgender people from discrimination, including in accessing facilities that match the gender they live every day.” +In defense of North Carolina’s anti-transgender law — HB2 — and in opposition to the Obama administration’s claim that the law clearly violates federal anti-discrimination law, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina issued the following statement: “To use our children and their educational futures as pawns to advance an agenda that will ultimately open those same children up to exploitation at the hands of sexual predators is by far, the sickest example of the depths the Obama Administration will stoop to ‘fundamentally transform our nation.’” +There is no agenda being advanced here except the movement to ensure that no group of kids is needlessly the target of bullying and harassment by lawmakers or others in their communities. +By allowing young people to have access to the full educational opportunities available to their peers, we do not open children up to “exploitation at the hands of sexual predators.” +That is precisely the lie that organizations working to end sexual violence have dispelled. +If we are concerned about predation in bathrooms, we should worry about young people of all genders and take steps to understand why and how adults in power — like former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, to choose just one example — exploit their power to hurt young people in their care. +But sadly, none of this is really about protecting children. +This is about demonizing difference. +And we should call it out as such, instead of pretending this is a reasoned debate between two sides about where people should go to the bathroom. +It has been five years since Chelsea Manning was arrested and charged with various offenses in connection with her release of documents and other materials to WikiLeaks, including the Collateral Murder video. +It has also been five years since Chelsea was first diagnosed with gender dysphoria by the military. +In the two years she has been incarcerated at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Chelsea has been fighting to be treated as female and have her serious medical needs addressed by the military. +Last September, she filed a lawsuit with the ACLU against the Department of Defense and various defense and Army officials demanding that she be treated for her severe gender dysphoria. +As a result of that lawsuit and her persistence in fighting for her medical care, she is now being treated with hormone therapy and permitted some cosmetics to feminize her appearance. +But despite repeated recommendations from her military doctors, this September the military doubled down on its position that it would not permit her to follow female hair length and hair grooming standards. +The decision means she is forced to have her hair cut every two weeks in a “masculine” fashion that may not exceed two inches. +Chelsea described the effect of these forced haircuts in a post on Medium: “I felt sick. +I felt sad. +I felt gross — like Frankenstein’s monster...” +“After five years — and more — of fighting for survival,” she went on, “I had to fight even more. +I was out of energy.” +She amended her lawsuit last month to renew her challenge to the enforcement of these male standards against her. +The amended complaint argues that Chelsea is being denied equal protection of the law and is subject to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. +Now, the government has moved to dismiss her lawsuit, arguing among other things that “permitting Manning to wear a feminine hairstyle present[s] unacceptable risk.” +“[E]ven if Manning herself is unconcerned about this risk,” the government argues, “her view does not reduce the USDB’s responsibility to guard her safety...” +Though the government undoubtedly must keep Chelsea safe while she is in incarcerated, that obligation does not absolve them of their simultaneous obligation to treat her serious medical needs. +Sadly, this type of argument has become commonplace with corrections agencies using the Prison Rape Elimination Act as a sword to harm vulnerable prisoners instead of a shield to protect them. +Like the federal government in Chelsea’s case, the Idaho Department of Corrections in its PREA directive connects its ban on feminine appearance in men’s facilities to its obligation to prevent sexual violence: “To foster an environment safe from sexual misconduct, offenders are prohibited from dressing or displaying the appearance of the opposite gender. +Specifically, male offenders displaying feminine or effeminate appearance and female offenders displaying masculine appearance to include, but not limited to, the following: Hairstyles Shaping eyebrows Face makeup Undergarments Jewelry Gender opposite clothing” +Perhaps telling of the culture of corrections we have come to accept, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted this about a pending case concerning labor practices in the Washington Department of Corrections: “Amazingly, one of the Union's experts offered the following view: Female inmates cannot be shielded from the world in which we live. +If they are to reintegrate into society, they have to be taught how to deal with abusive staff, male or female. +They have to be taught what constitutes a healthy interaction and what does not. +They cannot learn those skills if they are sheltered from contact with males in a position of authority. +Sexual abuse is present in all areas of our society: in schools, (at all levels), business, government, military and families. +Just as females have to be taught how to deal with those abuses in the larger society, female inmates must be taught as part of the rehabilitation process how to deal with all abusive staff: males and females, custody staff and civilian staff.” +No person — male or female, transgender or cisgender — should have to deal with sexual abuse while incarcerated. +That does not mean, however, that to prevent sexual abuse we should tolerate prisons denying any prisoners their right to medical care under some tenuous argument about security. +It is only if we have accepted that prisoners retain no dignity and no humanity that we could even consider these arguments. +If that is where we are as a society then we have a problem. +We mustn’t accept the cruel and inhumane treatment of our incarcerated community members. +Not only is it unconstitutional, it is unconscionable. +It has been a particularly violent year for the transgender community. +At least 21 transgender people have been murdered in the United States so far this year. +Eighteen of them are transgender women of color. +These murders have been perpetrated against the backdrop of a particularly vitriolic political climate in which the idea of trans equality has prompted organized campaigns to denounce the dignity and humanity of transgender people. +Today, on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, we mourn the losses in our community. +We remember those who have died not only at the hateful hands of others but also by suicide, untreated illness, incarceration. +But we don’t just mourn today. +We also honor the fight and the beauty of our community. +At the ACLU, we thank our fierce transgender clients who are taking on the powerful and fighting for a more just world for transgender people and everyone else. +Thank you to: Chelsea Manning, who is fighting the military for her health care while incarcerated at the United States Disciplinary Barracks where she is serving a 35-year sentence for convictions related to her release of documents to WikiLeaks. +Meagan Taylor, who is bringing a civil rights action against the Drury Inn in West Des Moines, Iowa, after hotel staff called the police complaining that “two men dressed as women” had checked-in and they suspected prostitution when she and another Black trans friend came to the hotel. +Gavin Grimm, who is suing his school district for refusing to let him use the boys’ bathroom like other boys only because he is transgender. +Shane Ortega, who has been leading the fight for open military service for transgender people. +Student A in District 211, Illinois, who filed a civil rights complaint against her school district for forcing her into a separate locker room and denying her access to the girls’ locker room solely because she is transgender. +Patricia Dawson, who sued her employer for firing her because she is transgender. +Monica Jones, who challenged the criminalization and police profiling of transgender women of color. +Emani Love, Code Stone, Tina Seitz, and our other clients, who are challenging Michigan’s refusal to issue corrected licenses to transgender people without a court order. +And to so many other ACLU clients who took on great personal risk to change the world. +You inspire us, and to honor those we have lost, we will keep fighting by your side. +Update as of June 28, 2016: +Meagan’s complaint has been settled to the satisfaction of the parties. +“911, what’s your emergency?” +There are a lot of situations that may warrant calling 911. +But seeing a transgender person is not one of them. +But that’s exactly what a hotel manager in West Des Moines, Iowa, did when Meagan Taylor and her friend, both Black transgender women, checked into the hotel. +A few weeks ago, we shared Meagan’s story of being arrested after hotel staff called the police when she and her friend checked into the Drury Inn on their way to a funeral. +Meagan wrote about how awful it felt to be targeted and humiliated just because of who you are: “As a Black trans woman, I am used to unfair and discriminatory treatment, but this was extra upsetting because we were paying customers at a hotel and on our way to a funeral. +I felt like I had no rights.” +Her story is haunting. +When we filed a complaint on Meagan’s behalf with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, I wrote: “Just the fact of their blackness and their transness prompted hotel staff to call the police to report suspected prostitution. +This…is all too common for transgender women of color who are regularly suspected of engaging in sex work when just walking down the street or going about their daily routines. +It is this type of profiling that leads 47 percent of Black transgender women to be incarcerated at some point in their lives.” +Since the initial filing of the complaint on Meagan’s behalf, the ACLU and the ACLU of Iowa have obtained the audio recording of the 911 call placed by Drury hotel staff after Meagan and her friend checked in. +You can listen here. +There was no emergency. +Just two young women stopping for the evening at a hotel. +The caller complains that they are “unusual” because they are “two males, but they’re dressed as females with ‘male IDs’ and ‘dressed a little over the top.’” +Even the dispatcher is somewhat incredulous that this would prompt anyone to call 911. +She questions why the caller is suspicious and the caller explains, that “I just want to make sure they’re not hookers either.” +Meagan and her friend were not men dressed as women. +They are women who triggered a set of racialized and gendered assumptions about who is appropriate and welcome in public space — still not transgender people of color in far too many places. +“When this all happened,” Meagan wrote. +“I knew exactly what it was: the racial profiling, the transgender profiling, the harassment…I knew why it was happening, and I knew it wasn’t right. +I knew something had to change. +To experience so many levels of discrimination makes you feel like less of a person. +I want to stand up for myself and other Black and transgender people. +And so I did.” +Meagan’s story should be a galvanizing reminder of the tremendous amount of work to be done to end discrimination against and violence toward transgender people. +We need explicit laws protecting trans people from discrimination in public accommodations, employment, credit, and housing like the law in Iowa that is enabling Meagan to take legal action against the Drury Inn. +We need to end barriers to obtaining accurate identification so people like Meagan are not outed to discriminatory strangers when they present their IDs. +We need to end the profiling of transgender women of color as sex workers by law enforcement and civilians and disrupt the cycles of poverty, incarceration, and violence that are killing too many in the trans community. +All my life, I've known I was different. +My mother really wanted a girl, and as far as she knew, she got one when I came along. +Except she didn't. +By the time I was five, I knew I wasn't a girl. +It drove her crazy that she couldn't get me to wear anything but pants, that I only wanted to play with “boys' toys,” that I had the gall to insist that a doll given to me by my grandmother was a boy. +But that was in the mid-1950s, and the concept of “transgender” wasn't even on the radar. +I'm 63 now. +I've spent the years in between trying to survive, working hard to make life bearable as a gender-nonconforming woman, and it hasn't been enough. +I've fought depression all my life, and a few years ago I collapsed from the misery of it, and so did the woodworking business it took me 20 years to start and build. +I was lucky, though. +I had support from friends and family, and Minnesota’s public healthcare program, Medical Assistance, covers mental health and non-surgical forms of transgender health care. +I made it out of the depression alive, came to terms with being transgender, and began to transition to male. +I started hormone therapy (testosterone) almost two years ago, and I legally changed my name and gender a few months ago. +I'm now seen as the man I am. +It feels great. +I sort of wish I weren't going bald, but if that's the price of living comfortably in this world, I'll gladly pay it. +The testosterone has done a lot to alter my appearance, but it hasn't alleviated the pain of living in a female body. +In fact, as I've become more at ease in a male identity, the incongruence I feel between self and body has increased. +For transgender people who feel this level of dysphoria, the next step is surgery to align the body with the mind. +Transition-related surgery can include chest surgery, removal of reproductive organs, genital reconstruction, and other procedures. +Medical Assistance excludes them from coverage, even though decades of research have shown these surgeries to be medically necessary. +Nearly all of these surgeries are covered for people with other diagnoses, but they're denied for gender dysphoria. +This is harmful to the mental and physical health of many transgender people, and it's also unjust: Transgender people have the same right to health care as everyone else. +This is why, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Minnesota, I'm challenging Minnesota’s ban on Medical Assistance coverage of this important part of health care for transgender people. +It's hard to disentangle the physical, emotional, and social consequences of untreated gender dysphoria. +The distress of gender dysphoria and the stigma attached to being transgender are each enough to lead to all sorts of emotional problems. +Our suicide rates are alarmingly high: The best-known study found that over 40 percent of trans people had attempted suicide at some point, compared to less than five percent of the general population. +This rate goes down dramatically among people who receive medical treatment for dysphoria, and the farther along they are in their transitions, the lower it goes. +Many trans people, especially transgender women of color, go about their business literally in fear of their lives: They're assaulted and murdered frighteningly often. +I long for the day when we'll be accepted as we are, and I know I'm fortunate compared to these sisters of mine. +In fact, I'm sometimes taken aback at being treated like a white male, with the privilege that entails: People listen to me. +They don't judge me on my looks, and I feel pretty safe in my daily life. +But without surgery, I can't escape the dissonance between my body as it is and the way my brain insists it should be. +If I had a flat, firm chest instead of the weight and softness of breasts, I could hold my head up and stand tall and proud. +I could look in the mirror and be at peace with my own image. +I could, maybe, learn to love my whole self. +Evie Priestman — a transgender high school student in Arlington, Virginia — was cited in Southern Poverty Law Center’s amicus brief on behalf of Gavin Grimm with the Southern Poverty Law Center. +This is his story. +I like to play guitar and tennis during my free time. +I want to go to a liberal arts college and study to be a neurologist — and I am also transgender. +I always felt like a boy in elementary school. +In those days, everyone knew me as a tomboy, which was comfortable for me. +I felt most at home when my hair was short +and I wore athletic clothes, which worked until middle school. +Things were confusing for a few years. +I didn’t know what to do about how I felt inside versus how I looked on the outside. +But then I learned about other kids who were transgender, and I realized that this was my identity as well. +I came out as male in the second week of freshman year. +I expected the reactions to my coming out and saying who I was to be negative, but people accepted me. +I’m lucky because my mother has been very supportive and the reaction at school has been mostly positive. +It takes people time to understand it. +Most people have never met a transgender person before, which is why I did a TEDx Talk and contributed an article to The New York Times’ series “Transgender Today.” +People don’t understand what they don’t know, and I want to help increase their understanding about the transgender community. +When I first came out I had to go to the nurse’s bathroom, which was far away from most of my classes. +I didn’t like it. +I felt like I had to go out of my way just to use the bathroom, but there really wasn’t a good reason for me to do that. +I had to do this only because I was transgender, which really did not make any sense to me. +At the beginning of sophomore year, I talked to my school counselor, who talked to the principal. +He raised the issue with the leadership at Arlington Public Schools. +Now I can go to the bathroom that fits my gender. +It’s not a big deal, and none of the other guys in the bathroom care. +Just a few days before finishing this article, I received a notification announcing that the Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance was giving their 2015 Equality Award to the Arlington County School Board for adding gender identity to the nondiscrimination code for students and employees. +(More information here.) +I am very lucky to attend a school in a district with this policy. +I can use the bathroom that fits my gender identity without a problem. +When I heard about Gavin not being able to use the bathroom at his school in Virginia, I wanted to help. +Transgender youth can face a lot of obstacles, so I felt we should be able to do something as simple as using the bathroom that reflects our gender identity. +I hope Gavin’s case allows him to enjoy this simple right, just as I am. +It didn’t take long for last night’s 73rd annual Golden Globes Awards to mock transgender people for existing. +Within five minutes, host Ricky Gervais referred to Caitlyn Jenner by her old name, joked about how much she had changed, and then shifted gears to ridicule Jeffrey Tambor’s transgender character in the television show, “Transparent.” +Later, the onslaught continued with jokes about Eddie Redmayne’s transgender character in “The Danish Girl.” +There is nothing new about transgender jokes. +From “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” to “Family Guy” to “The 40-Year -Old Virgin,” transgender characters in television and film are often used as a plot twist or joke to get laughs out of hapless main characters, whether they’re being duped into sex with a transgender woman or to simply reinforce the idea that transgender people are gross and deceptive. +In fact, it is difficult to make it through an hour of comedic television without jokes about trans people and last night’s Golden Globes was no different. +But what about the fact that this year has been heralded as the “year of transgender stories,” and last year TIME magazine declared that we were witnessing the “Transgender Tipping Point”? +What about all that progress? +Despite attention to trans existence and the emergence of some fierce trans leaders and icons, no trans people made it up on the Golden Globe award stage last night. +The only mention of trans people last night came from Ricky Gervais’s relentless reminder that to many, it is hilarious and even disgusting that trans people exist at all. +The night’s jokes were especially painful because we are just days into 2016 and the trans community is still reeling from the most violent year on record for our community. +At least 22 transgender women were murdered last year, almost all of them trans women of color, and Gervais’s cheap jokes just reinforce how precarious and uncertain trans justice and survival really are. +Navigating systemic discrimination in health care, housing, and employment; profiled by police as sex workers when walking down the street; and subjected to near-constant harassment and violence at the hands of strangers and close contacts alike, transgender people, particularly transgender women of color, are fighting just to see another day. +The dysphoria that we experience and the discrimination and ridicule we encounter are not funny: They lead to 41 percent of trans people attempting suicide at some point in our lives and a reported life expectancy for Black transgender women of just 35 years of age. +At the end of the day, Ricky Gervais and the relentless jokes about our bodies and our lives that we have long-confronted in public discourse aren’t the biggest problem the trans community faces. +These jabs may be painful and exhausting, but they can also galvanize those of us able to fight to be more visible, to demand more justice, and to tell our own stories of trans beauty and survival. +And there is no better time to mobilize. +With the 2016 legislative session starting up in the states, there will be more anti-transgender vitriol like we saw in Houston. +The message has and will continue to be that we just exist to “inflict” ourselves on the world and make other people uncomfortable – that we are less than human and undeserving of legal protections or basic decency. +These messages organize and infiltrate every aspect of our lives and take away hope from trans kids and adults struggling to survive in a hostile world. +As bleak as it can feel, the time to share transgender people’s stories in our own voices is now. +For those of us in prison, the fight for trans justice at the ballot, in state legislatures, and in our public discourse can feel far away. +As trans prisoners, sometimes we have to focus on just getting through the day. +But these important fights to recognize and affirm the dignity of trans people impact us too. +Despite the recent successes for gay and lesbian rights 2016 promises to be one of the most difficult years that the LGBT community as a whole has ever faced. +Groups opposing equality are mobilizing. +Exploiting the deep-seated confusion about who trans people are and the animosity towards us, these opponents have developed a simple, scalable, and easily replicated strategy. +They wish to capitalize on the anger of opponents of LGBT rights who feel defeated following last year's Supreme Court ruling making marriage equality the law across the country. +The model from which to push their agenda could be seen in full display in the effort that defeated a nondiscrimination ordinance in Houston, Texas. +A simple but distorted message of “no men in women’s bathrooms” led to the repeal at the ballot of a progressive ordinance that would have protected Houston residents from discrimination based on gender identity and 14 other protected classes. +Their new target: your local and state government. +We are seeing bills targeting trans people — particularly trans young people — creep up in state legislatures across the country. +Many of these bills attempt to regulate bathroom access based on a person’s genitals or “anatomical sex.” +Regardless of the fear-mongering rhetoric and images of predators exploiting nondiscrimination laws to access women's bathrooms to hurt non-transgender women and girls, the reality is that prohibiting discrimination does nothing to undermine public safety. +Obviously, such predatory behavior is not legalized or promoted by laws and ordinances protecting trans people. +The laws being proposed to stop trans people from using the bathroom raise several serious questions over privacy, fairness, and liberty. +One Virginia bill tries to make students who use the “wrong” bathroom pay a fine. +But how would that work? +Would these students have to physically “prove” their sex as male or female? +The fact is you can’t know someone’s anatomical sex by simply looking at them. +Certainly, nobody wants police officers who stand guard in public bathrooms, interrogating or physically inspecting everyone who enters. +Nor do I believe anyone wants to install body scanners or other draconian technology measures to verify the gender of everyone who enters. +We need to consider ways to stay one step ahead of such shameful strategies. +Most importantly, we need to remind people that very real, very human trans folks are the targets of this campaign. +Trans folks who are more likely to commit suicide and who are being murdered at a historic high in the United States. +The country needs to see us — the trans community — as human. +Let’s start by standing up against these laws that hurt us all. +After last year became the most violent in history toward the transgender community, 2016 is off to an inauspicious start with anti-trans rhetoric heating up in the states. +Bills are being introduced in state legislatures, from Washington state to Virginia (and everywhere in-between), aimed at dehumanizing and discriminating against LGBT people. +In many, transgender people bear the brunt of the most extreme proposals. +In Virginia, for example, we are witnessing the most anti-LGBT legislative session in the state’s history. +So far, 9 anti-gay and anti-trans bills have been introduced. +Some of the bills reveal a fixation with determining the “anatomical sex” of students to ensure that trans students are expelled from communal bathrooms. +One goes so far as to impose a $50 civil penalty on any student who uses the “wrong” bathroom. +Others seek to prevent trans people from updating their Virginia birth records to match their gender and limit nondiscrimination protections based on sex to people whose gender matches the gender assigned to them at birth. +Another bill that the Virginia legislature will be considering next week would allow individuals and corporations to discriminate based on, among other things, a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction that the terms “man” and “woman” only refer to “an individual's immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics of the individual at the time of birth.” +And as bad as things are in Virginia, it’s not alone. +Across the country legislators will consider bills that would authorize countless forms of discrimination against transgender people. +Next week in South Dakota, legislators will consider a bill to force transgender students in public schools across the state into separate restroom and locker room facilities. +Indiana has taken the discrimination a step further, proposing a bill that would fine transgender people up to $1,000 and sentence them to up to a year in jail for using the bathroom or locker room that corresponds to their gender. +These proposed measures have and will continue to devastate the transgender community. +While adults in power vote to dehumanize trans young people, suicide, bullying, and abuse continue to decimate the community. +And no matter the distorted rhetoric these legislators hide behind, the message to the transgender community is clear: You are less than human. +You are undeserving of protection and dignity. +You are not wanted here. +As one mother of a transgender girl explained to the New York Daily News: “We g[et] hate calls and threats. +… Grandfathers saying they would stand outside the bathroom and teach her to be a man. +The principal told me … she could (not) protect my child. +It got so bad we had to move.” +But where will people go with so many bills being introduced? +Imagine what it feels like to be a transgender young person in Indiana, Virginia, or countless states across the country. +You like studying science and playing soccer with your friends on the weekend. +Though self-conscious about the truth you realized at a young age, you started to gain confidence once you began to live as the girl or boy you truly are. +Then all of a sudden you hear that your legislators are calling you a freak. +There is a bill pending that would send you back to the girls room and make you pay $50 if you keep using the boys room. +There are grown-ups in the community threatening you and your family. +Your mom is sad. +Your friends start to distance themselves from you. +All of a sudden your life seems different. +You wonder what, if anything, your future holds. +Is this the message we want to be sending trans kids? +Stop the trend of anti-transgender legislation. +Don’t let a kid in your community be the next one to take his own life. +Join us in telling trans young people that they are beautiful and worthy of support and legal protection. +Whistleblower. +Traitor. +Transwoman. +Freak. +Hero. +Chelsea Manning has been called many things and is recognizable to many. +She has informed the public of United States military activities across the globe and continues to speak out against government secrecy and in defense of transgender rights. +Her words and actions have powerfully transformed national conversations, but since her arrest in 2010 on charges related to her release of information to WikiLeaks, few have had a chance to actually see and hear from Chelsea herself. +Today, Chelsea is telling her story through an Amnesty International podcast. +You can listen here. +“I feel like I've been stored away for all this time without a voice,” she says through the voice of transgender actress Michelle Hendley, who sounds eerily like Chelsea. +“I feel like there's so much of a contribution to society that I could be making. +I spend every day looking forward to the hope that one day I can give that a go.” +During the podcast, Chelsea recounts her early childhood and young adulthood struggling with her gender and homelessness. +She talks about her decision to enlist in the military in October of 2007 as well as her arrest and brutal torture while in confinement at Quantico. +She finishes up her story describing her incarceration at the Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. +The story is in Chelsea’s own voice, with the earnest thoughtfulness that I have come to appreciate as quintessentially Chelsea. +As her lawyer, I am one of a few people who can speak to and visit Chelsea. +I have had the privilege of hearing her voice and learning about the strong and resilient person that is behind the many public narratives and labels. +With today’s podcast, Chelsea hopes to share that side of her with others. +Even though she is not permitted to use her actual voice, having another trans woman tell her story was critical to her as she continues to try to build human connections beyond the prison walls. +At the end of the podcast, Chelsea reflects on her younger self: “I've … imagined a few times what it would be like if I could travel back in time and speak to myself as a teenager. +I know what she was feeling deep down inside. +I know all the fears that she had, and all the vulnerabilities she was hiding. +I would want to grab her by the hand and tell her that everything is going to be okay. +I would tell her that there is nothing wrong with you, and that you are more loved and appreciated than you realize. +I would tell her that she can be a happier and healthier person if she stays true to herself, like I have finally been able to figure out.” +One of the amazing things about Chelsea is her ability to find beauty and love, even in the most desperate circumstances. +It comes through in her story and leaves you hopeful for a more just world — a world where we can break down the isolation and violence of incarceration and build up the humanity and decency of our fellow human beings. +It’s official: We’re seeing a pattern of extremes emerge in the first legislative session following the national recognition of marriage equality. +The 2016 legislative session is well underway and the most-ever anti-LGBT bills have been introduced in states across the country. +Dozens of bills in half the states threaten the livelihood of LGBT people. +In many states, vulnerable transgender young people are singled out for discrimination. +The measures range from allowing someone to be turned away in the name of religion because they’re a same-sex couple, to singling out transgender individuals and forcing them to use separate facilities, or else subjecting them to invasive examinations just to use the bathroom. +We’ll give you the good news first. +In the first full month of state legislative sessions, we’re seeing many of these bills defeated. +In the past two weeks alone, the voices of LGBT people and our allies have helped to squash harmful measures in Indiana, Washington, Virginia, to name a few. +Our collective voice is louder than ever, and, the majority of the country is with us on our right to marry and to live free from discrimination. +The bad news is that there are plenty more scary measures that may continue to advance in the chambers. +Just today, a senate committee in South Dakota passed HB 1008, a bill that would single out transgender students and make them use separate restrooms and locker rooms from everyone else. +This just days after a South Dakota Senator said of the bill and transgender young people: “I’m sorry if you’re so twisted you don’t know who you are — a lot of people are — and I’m telling you right now, it’s about protecting the kids.” +We need to raise our objections and tell South Dakota that we won’t stand for this anti-transgender rhetoric. +We need our leaders to stand up for and protect all kids, which includes LGBT students. +South Dakota legislators should learn from their counterparts in Virginia and Washington State. +Earlier this week, both states considered similar legislation to South Dakota’s HB 1008. +There, legislators listened to their constituents and heard the stories of transgender people who would be impacted by the legislation. +And, in both states, bipartisan majorities voted against bills targeting the transgender community. +There should be no debate when it comes to what we know to be true. +Attacks on LGBT people are attacks on everyone. +Not only does discrimination against LGBT people harm us all socially and fiscally, many of these bills would open the floodgates to discrimination against others. +For example, another bill in Tennessee that would allow counselors to turn patients away if they didn’t agree with their beliefs just passed with a strong majority in committee and may move on to the Senate floor. +Not only would this allow counselors to turn LGBT people away, it opens the door to their turning anyone away –a pregnant teen, an unwed couple, a single mom. +And more bad measures loom in Georgia, Florida, West Virginia and elsewhere. +Efforts to chip away at our hard-earned freedoms are far from over. +In fact, we’re likely to see many more attacks on our right to equal access to housing, employment, and public accommodations. +We’re likely to see the increasingly out of touch voices of fear and ignorance speak up even louder to try to defend their turf. +If we continue to stand together, though, and make enough noise, we will win. +The cost of not winning is too great for the most vulnerable among us. +As the great Pastor Jean Marrow from Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ in South Dakota said of that state’s targeting of transgender young people, “The same babies we baptize with great hope are the kids we bury because of horrendous discrimination.” +Stand with us and demand that those who claim to represent us stop carrying these harmful measures that threaten to undermine LGBT equality. +As we mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it is a good time to state clearly and unequivocally that voting rights is an LGBT issue. +The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy and the fundamental right upon which all our civil liberties rest. +Congressional action to restore the landmark law and remedy key voter protections lost in the Supreme Court’s disastrous Shelby County decision is of immense importance to the LGBT community. +Voter suppression tactics are often used to silence some of the most vulnerable members of the LGBT community. +In particular, voter ID laws that require voters to present a photo ID that matches their gender identity can block many transgender and gender nonconforming people from voting. +Many transgender individuals find obtaining an updated ID that accurately reflects their gender identity to be incredibly difficult. +And, many transgender individuals fear the stigma they will face at the polling place if they do not have the “proper ID.” +Asher Schor, a former ACLU client in Pennsylvania, is one of those people. +The photo on his ID was taken before his transition and the official sex still read “female” and Asher worried that the discrepancy between his identification documents and his gender identity could lead to confusion and a higher level of needless and potentially embarrassing scrutiny from poll workers. +He decided to challenge the Pennsylvania voter ID law because he wanted to make sure his vote counted and that other transgender individuals could vote in peace. +Pennsylvania’s law was ultimately struck down, but similar laws in other states that discriminate against the transgender community still remain on the books. +Congress now has two bills on the table – the Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Voting Rights Amendment Act – that would restore the Voting Rights Act. +Congress needs to act to pass legislation that will enhance the ability of federal courts to order a state or jurisdiction to have its voting changes pre-approved if the court finds any violation of the Voting Rights Act based on discriminatory intent or result, including those resulting from photo ID laws. +This week a coalition of LGBT groups and the ACLU announced support of the Voting Rights Advancement Act, because too many eligible transgender and gender nonconforming voters like Asher Schor face being left out of the democratic process due to onerous and discriminatory efforts to suppress the vote. +Restoring the Voting Rights Act is an essential first step towards the eradication of these discriminatory efforts and one step closer to a more inclusive electorate. +For Chelsea Manning the last five years have been a fight to survive. +She has faced the death penalty and endured the brutal torture of solitary confinement in Kuwait and again while awaiting trial at Quantico in Virginia. +She has come out as a trans woman and fought for her voice and her health care. +She still fights for both as she also continues her long legal fight for freedom. +Through it all she has continued to send messages of hope to others. +Her voice has become central to our movements for government transparency and transgender justice. +But she is now facing another fight that threatens to silence her. +On July 9, military officials confiscated several items from the convicted WikiLeaker and trans advocate’s cell at Fort Leavenworth. +The “prohibited” items included copies of Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover issue, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “Torture Report,” and an expired tube of toothpaste. +At the time, Chelsea was not informed why these items were taken. +Her cell was searched, and they were removed when she was placed in solitary confinement for 24 hours following an investigation into allegations that she was “disrespectful” to an officer. +For almost a month, Chelsea, an ACLU client, awaited clarity about the charges and requested that her reading materials be returned to her. +But the military denied those requests. +Now Chelsea will go before a disciplinary board on Tuesday, during which she will face charges for disrespecting an officer, misusing medication, and possessing prohibited items. +But the more details that emerge about these charges, the more concerning this all becomes. +The alleged encounter that prompted the “disrespect” charge involved Chelsea requesting a lawyer when she realized that she was being accused of wrongdoing. +As for “misusing medication,” that charged is based solely on possessing toothpaste that expired in April of this year. +And the “prohibited” property she had in her possession included, among other things, issues of Vanity Fair, OUT magazine, the Advocate, and the Cosmopolitan issue that included her own interview. +If all that wasn’t bad enough, the possible punishment for these alleged infractions includes indefinite solitary confinement. +Since supporters learned of these charges and started a campaign to have them dropped, the military has responded with assurances that Chelsea’s treatment will be “fair and equitable.” +But subsequent to that statement Chelsea was inexplicably denied all access to the law library as she prepares to go before the disciplinary board. +Because she is not entitled to have counsel present at her board, this access is especially important. +Hopefully with public pressure and increasing scrutiny, the charges against Chelsea will be dismissed, and she will not be subjected to the torture of solitary or any other punishment that further restricts her access to public engagement and the support systems that she has cultivated from prison. +But regardless of the ultimate outcome, the fact that she has had to face this discipline at all is a concerning reflection of how our incarceration systems attempt to isolate and dehumanize those held behind prison walls. +Even though experts agree that solitary confinement is a form of torture, we continue to hear reports of people being sent to solitary for alleged infractions as absurd as having an expired tube of toothpaste or praying in a group of three, having “too many” stamps, or cheering too loudly during the Super Bowl. +For transgender prisoners like Chelsea, solitary often becomes a default placement for “safety” reasons in an inherently unsafe system. +Incarceration is itself a form of isolation — a mechanism for cutting people off from their families and support systems and taking them out of the community. +Within that isolation, the added disruption and harms that flow from solitary and other disciplinary mechanisms cannot be overstated. +For Chelsea, her books, magazines, and reports are a part of her and they help build her voice. +And this voice is her connection to a network of people who uplift her and are uplifted and inspired by her. +If Chelsea loses her reading materials permanently, or if she is sent to solitary, or if she is otherwise disciplined because she asked for a lawyer or had old toothpaste or wanted to read about Caitlyn Jenner or the Senate Torture Report, then we all lose. +We lose a piece of her voice in our public discourse, and we lose another fight against a disruptive and dehumanizing system of so-called justice. +After a routine visit to the gynecologist, I received a letter from my insurance company billing me for almost $2000. +The letter explained that the procedure I needed was a “gender specific code +[and s]ince the referenced code is inconsistent with the Member’s gender, [the company] is not responsible for any additional payment on this claim[s].” +Basically, an already very unpleasant experience was going to cost me $2,000 because I was listed as male under my insurance. +My existence and my body were literally incompatible with the health care system. +The inability of the insurance company to process the idea that a man could need a pelvic exam was going to cost me $2,000. +For others, for whom these financial costs and the confused stares and discriminatory judgment of medical providers cause the avoidance of preventative care altogether, the incomprehensibility of trans existence in our health care regimes literally costs people their lives. +As a trans person I am very familiar with being denied coverage for medically necessary health care. +In law school I took out $10,000 in loans (on top of my educational loans) to pay for care that my insurance company excluded from coverage under a blanket exclusion. +Since then, I have been employed in various legal jobs with excellent insurance and still have to navigate regular coverage denials for both transition-related care and care that is deemed “gender specific.” +For me, this has ranged from humiliating to inconvenient to enraging but because of my access to legal information, supportive employers and family, and resources, it has been manageable. +For many other trans people, these types of coverage denial lead to negative health outcomes and in tragically too many cases, death. +The data from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 28 percent of the more than 6,000 transgender respondents postponed medical care due to discrimination and another 48 percent did so because they could not afford it. +The same survey found that 41 percent of transgender individuals had attempted suicide at some point in their lives compared with 1.6 percent of the general population. +The delays and discrimination literally kill people. +This type of systemic discrimination also contributes to the violence that transgender people experience on the streets when others receive the message that our bodies and our lives are disposable. +Particularly for transgender women of color, surviving into adulthood remains elusive. +As #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Alicia Garza explained, “when the average life expectancy of a Black trans woman is 35 years old in this country, we have a lot farther to go.” +With attention finally being paid to the crisis in our community – a crisis that is disproportionately felt by Black transgender women – policymakers and media outlets are asking what can be done. +Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) offered a transformative answer to the health crisis facing the transgender community. +A proposed rule implementing the non-discrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act (Section 1557) includes critical guidance for improving the health outcomes and lives of transgender people. +Though the rule only covers insurance plans purchased on healthcare exchanges and entities that receive federal funding, it has the potential to establish changes in the provision of health care even more expansively. +The proposed rule mandates insurance coverage for “medically appropriate health services” regardless of “sex assigned at birth, gender identity or recorded gender.” +It clarifies that care may not be denied based on it being “gender specific” offering for example that “coverage cannot be denied for an individual for whom a pelvic exam is medically appropriate based on the fact that the individual either identifies as a transgender man or is enrolled in the health plan as a man.” +Further, the rule makes explicit that no plan may include blanket provisions excluding coverage for care related to gender transition. +As I wrote after Caitlyn Jenner came out on the cover of Vanity Fair: “Health care for transgender people remains highly stigmatized and largely unavailable for the majority of trans people. +Both private (i.e., employer) and public (i.e. Medicaid) insurance plans continue to have blanket bans on coverage for health care related to gender transition. +Even where there has been progress on coverage generally, insurance coverage for care that trans women need is still elusive. +For example, the facial feminization surgery that Caitlyn describes in Vanity Fair is almost universally excluded from coverage. +This means that most trans people, particularly trans women of color, cannot access the basic care that they need. +It means that going to the doctor feels like a battle — if a trans person can get there at all. +It means that trans people participate in criminalized economics like the drug and sex trades to pay for the health care they need or seek the care from friends or unsupervised black markets. +It means that trans people die seeking the care they need to live.” +The rule proposed would completely transform the landscape of trans health care and we should be fighting to make sure the final rule includes these critical protections. +A few minutes ago, we filed our opening brief in our appeal of Gavin’s case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. +I wrote about Gavin’s case last July, when we argued on behalf of Gavin in federal court in Norfolk, Virginia. +I was proud to stand with Gavin then, and I’m even prouder to stand with him today. +Gavin is a 16-year-old boy at Gloucester High School in Virginia. +He is transgender and is undergoing hormone therapy; he has legally changed his name; and his state identification card identifies him as male. +In all aspects of his life, he uses the boys’ restrooms, just like any other boy would. +But at school, Gavin is singled out for different treatment. +Even though Gavin had been using the boys’ restrooms for almost two months without any problems, the Gloucester County School Board decided to debate Gavin’s rights to use the restroom. +The board ultimately passed a new policy that prohibits Gavin, and any other student with “gender identity issues,” from using the same restrooms as the rest of his peers. +This policy forces transgender students to go to separate, single-stall restrooms that no other student is required to use. +Last June — the day after classes ended — Gavin filed a lawsuit challenging the school board’s stigmatizing policy under Title IX, a statute prohibiting schools from discriminating on the basis of sex, and the Constitution. +Gavin asked for an injunction allowing him to use the boys’ restroom while the case is pending. +We had hoped to get that injunction before classes began this September +so Gavin could begin his junior year with a fresh start. +The Department of Justice and Department of Education filed a brief supporting Gavin. +But a few days before classes began, the district court in Norfolk denied Gavin’s request for an injunction. +Gavin is now asking the Fourth Circuit to reverse the lower court’s ruling, which conflicts with modern precedent recognizing that transgender people, like everyone else, are protected from discrimination based on their sex. +In order to equally participate in school, work, and society, transgender people — like everyone else — have to use the restrooms. +The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Education have all recognized that transgender people should be able to use the restrooms that correspond to their gender identity and cannot be segregated into separate restrooms away from everyone else. +From the first time he stood up in front of his school board and a room full of hostile adults, Gavin’s message has been simple: “All I want to do is be a normal child and use the restroom in peace.” +Hopefully by the time Gavin begins his senior year, he will finally be able to do that. +P.S. Want to know what Gavin and other transgender youth are up against? +John Oliver sums it up well here: %3Ciframe%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20height%3D%22384%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FhmoAX9f6MOc%3Fautoplay%3D1%26autoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%22%20thumb%3D%22%2Ffiles%2Fyt_lastweek-johnoliver-transrights-580x384.jpg%22%20width%3D%22580%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy statement. +This embed will serve content from youtube.com. +Last week, a suburban Chicago school district – High School District 211 – announced that they would not comply with a ruling by the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) that the district was in violation of Title IX. +The violation occurred when the District refused to allow our client, a high school girl, to use the girls’ locker room just because she is transgender. +In speaking with the media and in school newsletters and a column in the suburban Daily Herald, Daniel E. Cates, the district superintendent, presented a remarkably distorted view of the process leading up to OCR’s decision. +Worse still, he presented an insensitive and inaccurate depiction of what it means to be transgender and sent a message to our client and other transgender students that they are not viewed as equal to the other students in District 211. +District 211 has misstated and omitted a number of key facts regarding the process that led to their announcement last week. +My clients started meeting with the district more than two years ago to explain why their daughter should be treated as a girl at school in all ways, including when using the locker room. +As the district has no policy guiding the treatment of transgender students, the parents had to initiate the discussion regarding how the school would treat their daughter in accordance with her gender. +They provided medical information regarding her diagnosis with gender dysphoria and her transition to living fully as a girl, including legally changing her name and changing the gender on her passport. +In response to claims by the school that they had not had to deal with transgender students before, the parents brought in representatives from the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance to educate the school administration and staff. +The parents made clear to the district that their daughter’s gender and her medical condition is not a choice and that it is essential to her health and her ability to succeed at school that she be treated as a girl, and that means being treated like a girl in all respects including locker room access. +What the district offered was a separate restroom, down a long hallway, where my client has been forced to dress for gym and the athletics she is involved in. +The separation serves as a daily reminder that the school does not regard her as a girl or even a human being but as some undifferentiated “other.” +For someone who had to assert her voice as a girl and struggle to be recognized, it is devastating to be told “not really” as District 211 has done. +In letters and meetings, we told the district two years ago that by segregating and isolating our client, it was violating not only federal law but also Illinois law explicitly prohibiting discrimination against transgender persons. +But the district refused to comply. +Only then did we file a complaint to the OCR. +The OCR process involved looking at the school facilities and interviewing coaches, gym teachers, and other staff. +OCR staff tells us that (as we already knew) girls do not fully undress when getting ready for gym, some choose to dress in restroom stalls, and girls do not shower after gym (other than after swimming) or many of the sports activities. +OCR explored options, including the installation of additional privacy curtains for students who want some extra privacy when dressing or showering. +The district argues it has a “creative” solution to allow transgender students to be in the gender-appropriate locker room, but only if they agree to a condition imposed on no one else – to always dress in a private area away from other students. +This is just a new twist on the existing requirement that transgender students dress in a private restroom down the hall. +The new proposal is no less discriminatory than the current practice – it just shifts the physical location of it. +The OCR rejected the District’s demand that transgender students be required to use the private areas, while other students had a choice. +What our client wants is pretty basic – to be accepted for who she is and treated just like other students. +Other students accept her. +The school board and administration apparently do not. +These adults should remember that many students are unhappy with their bodies – body image issues can be serious in a world filled with unrealistic and often oppressive images of physical beauty particularly for young women and girls. +But no other students – no matter how uncomfortable they are with their bodies – are required to hide them. +Imagine how it feels for a girl to be told that her body is so unacceptable that she must dress apart from everyone else – even if she might otherwise choose to do so. +The message is loud and clear – transgender students should be ashamed of how they look and who they are. +It is upsetting to see the superintendent say that the district is “sensitive” to the needs of transgender students and supportive of them. +The district’s actions are the farthest thing from being supportive. +You can’t defend discrimination by claiming you’re nice about it. +Most damaging, the superintendent asserts that a girl who is transgender has a “male body” and that transgender students are “of the opposite sex” when defending the district’s position. +Such assertions are wrong as a matter of science and offensive because they serve to challenge and undermine the very core of a person’s identity. +A transgender girl is female. +She is a girl through and through – not something in between as the district suggests. +And although unnecessary to make a transgender person “really female” or “really male,” many transgender young people including my client have undergone medical interventions to conform their body to their gender. +By making these statements, the district undermines the legitimacy of these students’ identities and fails in its stated mission to care for all 12,000 students in its care. +The district claims that its proposed solution for requiring transgender students to dress in a separate area is the best solution as it protects the privacy of the other students in the district. +But this isn’t a real issue for students. +The only students’ privacy that is being violated is that of transgender students who are outed by the district’s forcing them to dress in a separate area. +The sad thing in all of this is that the superintendent is completely unwilling to accept that this is discrimination. +Rather than recognize this – and the harm that his policies are doing to one of his students – he makes himself out to be the victim, blames the process and claims that he is only being “reasonable” and standing on “principles.” +The superintendent’s message raises a serious question about our identity, as a community and a nation – are we ready to accept that shaming an extremely vulnerable group of students is reasonable and principled? +What a terrible lesson this message sends the District 211 students and community. +Most astounding is the superintendent’s claim that forced segregation amounts to “inclusiveness” and protects students’ “dignity.” +It is not. +The school district is discriminating against my client. +And instead of seeing this as an opportunity to teach acceptance, it is teaching all the students in the school that discrimination is okay. +What a truly devastating message to send. +Ever the optimist, I remain hopeful that the district will come around to recognizing that those who discriminate against the vulnerable and disenfranchised are not remembered kindly in history – and will join the many other school districts that treat their transgender students with the respect they deserve. +“No men in women’s bathrooms.” +Those five words animated a campaign based in fear and deception that used anti-trans rhetoric to take down an equal rights ordinance in Houston, Texas, which protected 15 classes of people from discrimination. +After last night’s vote on Proposition 1, Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) was repealed by the voters. +The vote not only strips away protections for LGBT Houstonians, veterans, pregnant people, people of color (whom 53 percent of the discrimination claims impacted) and others, it also sends a very clear message to Houston and the country that when it comes to understanding and supporting transgender people, we have a long way to go. +Everyone loses in Houston, but the trans community, in particular, is reeling from months of vitriol that undermined the very core of their humanity. +The factually dishonest message that HERO would permit men to enter women’s restrooms relied on a core belief that transgender women are not women. +The opposition used fear about and misconception of transgender people to spin lies that the ordinance would make it legal for someone to claim to be transgender in order to enter a restroom and commit a crime — something that has never actually happened in the 17 states and 200 cities that already have protections for trans people. +To be clear, the repealed ordinance did not even mention the word “bathroom,” let alone authorize violence. +And when it comes to violence and harassment, trans people are far more likely to get harassed while trying to use the bathroom than anyone else. +All that HERO’s repeal actually does with respect to bathrooms is force more men, trans men, into women’s restrooms and place all transgender people in less safe and more precarious positions in all aspects of our lives. +Though Houston is the latest battleground for this anti-transgender crusade by opponents of LGBT equality, this story is by no means a new one. +We see efforts to undermine and demean the humanity of transgender people, particularly transgender women, everywhere from the pages of the New York Times to the stage of presidential debates. +In a year that has witnessed an epidemic of anti-transgender murders, it should be no secret that the messages these campaigns advance directly create the climate in which transgender people — mostly transgender women of color — are murdered. +Sending the message that transgender people are deceitful predators who deserve no rights or respect cultivates a sense that we are disposable, unlovable, and shameful. +It is this narrative that leads to violence. +If we are looking for answers to the epidemic of violence against transgender women this year, we should start in Houston with the campaign that legitimized the lie that transgender people are less than human. +Despite this devastating loss and the many losses of life and legal protections we have seen this year, the community is full of strength and resilience. +The story won’t end here. +Fighting the vicious and dishonest bathroom panic argument is key to winning equal rights across the board. +We have a serious problem. +But we have long-shown that there are answers in investing in and mobilizing the most vulnerable and despised among us. +Let’s invest in trans people, trans communities, and trans resistance. +We are fabulous and transformative. +Update as of June 28, 2016: +Meagan’s complaint has been settled to the satisfaction of the parties. +In July, I went to a hotel in Des Moines, Iowa. +I was with a friend, who is a Black transgender woman like me. +We were in a hard place because we were traveling to the funeral of her brother. +We were driving from Kansas City, Missouri, up to Des Moines to meet up with a friend before all going to the funeral together. +I booked us a room at the Drury Inn in West Des Moines because I am a regular Drury customer and have a special Gold Key account there, so I get points each time I stay. +We also wanted a place to stay that was close to the mall, so my friend could pick up some last minute things she needed for the funeral. +During check-in, my friend and I had a weird feeling. +The woman at the front desk was giving us a hard time because my Illinois identification listed my old name and had an “M” identifying me as “male.” +I haven’t had the money to obtain a legal name change and update my identification documents with my correct name and gender. +In the middle of checking us in, the clerk went and talked to the manager for several minutes. +Then the manager came out from the back and was immediately hostile. +She made it obvious that she did not want us staying there. +The manager’s face actually showed a look of disgust. +Neither the clerk nor the manager would make eye contact with us, and they kept whispering to each other in our presence like we weren’t even there. +My friend said, “I don’t think we should stay here. +The manager is giving me a bad vibe. +They might be racist or against transgender people.” +But we were already there and our luggage was there. +I figured that was the worst of it. +I was wrong. +The next morning, the police came to us before we could start our day. +I was nervous because they were beating at the door and were not wearing police uniforms. +The officers were immediately rude and scary. +My friend started to cry, and then I started to cry. +At that point we found out that the employees at the Drury Inn called the police because they were so uncomfortable with who we are. +They complained that “two men dressed as women” had checked in, and they were worried about prostitution. +As a Black trans woman, I am used to unfair and discriminatory treatment, but this was extra upsetting because we were paying customers at a hotel and on our way to a funeral. +I felt like I had no rights. +The police officers were very forceful and disrespectful. +They tried to make it seem like we were doing something other than we were. +They made my friend take out the stuffing in her bra. +They were in our room for at least 35 to 40 minutes before they even arrested me. +They went through my purse and found a bottle of my hormones. +I carry my hormones with me but not a copy of the prescription. +I thought, “How could you arrest me for my hormones?” +But they did. +They handcuffed me, but never read me any rights or that type of thing. +They let my friend go, and she had to go to the funeral without me by her side. +The jail that I was taken to did not have a policy in place for transgender people like me. +So when they did the pat down, they had a woman pat down my top half, but a man pat down my bottom half, as if I’m not one person but two. +The jail even reached out to the state LGBT organization and the media because they wanted to do the right thing, and my lawyers at the ACLU tell me that the jail is working now to adopt a policy for transgender inmates so that there’s a better system in place in the future. +But none of that was in place for me yet, and my experience was extremely lonely, scary, and difficult. +I was kept in a medical unit, and while I had telephone and video conferencing, I wasn’t able to be with the other women in the general population. +Finally after eight days, people who read about my story were able to raise enough money for my bail. +Now, thanks to the help of my criminal defense lawyers who took my case for free, my case has been dismissed. +When I came out as transgender, I expected I would experience some discrimination, but I didn’t know how strong it would be. +When something bad happens, I try to think about things and sort out why they happened. +When this all happened, I knew exactly what it was: the racial profiling, the transgender profiling, the harassment, the solitary confinement. +I knew why it was happening, and I knew it wasn’t right. +I knew something had to change. +To experience so many levels of discrimination makes you feel like less of a person. +I want to stand up for myself and other Black and transgender people. +And so I did. +In honor of the brave men and women who served our country, here are five ideas of how we can make life better for our most vulnerable patriots. +1. Let Veterans Vote In many states, if you are convicted of certain crimes, you lose your right to cast a ballot. +These disenfranchised citizens include more than 585,000 veterans. +We should honor their service by allowing their voices to be part of our democracy again. +2. Provide Transgender Veterans With Medically Necessary Health Care There are more than 134,000 transgender veterans or retirees. +Yet they are not able to receive full health care. +The Veterans Health Administration and TriCare, the healthcare program of the Department of Defense, must provide full medical care, including treatments specifically related to gender transition and gender affirmation. +3. Abolish the Death Penalty +A new report by the Death Penalty Information Center reveals that at least one in every 10 people on death row is a veteran of the U.S. military. +Too often, the courts don't consider PTSD and other potential impacts of military experience on a veteran's mental health. +Our justice system makes these grave errors and many others in death penalty cases. +We shouldn’t put anyone’s life at risk this way. +Our veterans — and the civilians they protected from harm — deserve better. +4. +Honor Immigrant Veterans When immigrant veterans are convicted of crimes, even non-violent and non-serious crimes, they face deportation and permanent separation from their families. +The Department of Homeland Security should give special consideration to the veteran’s military service, the possibility of rehabilitation, and the impact on the veteran’s family before deporting those who served this country. +5. Don’t Discriminate Against Survivors of Military Sexual Violence After being sexually assaulted, many veterans still have to fight to receive the benefits they deserve. +According to the ACLU and Service Women’s Action Network report, Battle for Benefits: VA Discrimination Against Survivors of Military Sexual, the Department of Veterans Affairs granted disability benefit claims for PTSD related to military sexual trauma at significantly lower rates than for other forms of PTSD, disproportionately impacting female veterans. +We must reform VA regulations and improve training and oversight so veterans who experienced sexual assault are not traumatized again by poor care. +The ACLU of Illinois represents the family of a female student denied access to the locker room at her high school because she is transgender. +Recently the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found that the school was violating the girl’s federally protected rights. +The family has not spoken publicly about this case, seeking to protect their family’s privacy. +The mother of the student, however, shared this statement with the ACLU of Illinois. +We are pleased to share it with you. +My husband and I laughed recently when our daughter said her friends say, “You’re the most famous anonymous person.” +Laughter has been rare these days. +That’s because our daughter is “Student A” at the center of the recent controversy over whether a girl who is transgender should be permitted to use the girls’ locker room. +The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights says yes. +Our school district — Township District 211 — insists that students “of the opposite sex” should not be permitted in the girls’ locker room. +For the record, we agree with District Superintendent Daniel Cates about not permitting students of the opposite sex in the locker room. +But the inconvenient fact for Mr. Cates and his supporters is that our daughter is not “of the opposite sex.” +She is a girl. +The district wrongly assumes what many who are not educated about the issue assume: That what makes a girl a girl and a boy a boy is simple anatomy. +We believed this, until our daughter came along. +Despite early signs — from as young as four, when she declared herself a girl, to the fact that she had mostly girlfriends growing up, played with dolls, begged to wear girls’ clothes, insisted on wearing a Hannah Montana wig while she danced around the living room, and was heavily distraught over the male characteristics of her body — we were still shocked and ill-prepared when, at the end of seventh grade, our daughter again told us that she was a girl and had to live openly as one. +This is a difficult concept to grasp. +However, just because something is difficult to understand, does not mean we should mock it or deny its existence. +When we were struggling to understand, we sought out medical professionals and support groups. +Through this education process, we learned that gender extends beyond the sex a person is assigned at birth. +We learned that scientific evidence has determined that gender is also determined by the brain’s anatomy, which is why the sexual characteristics assigned to many at birth are incongruent with their true gender identity. +We also learned that one’s gender identity is different from one’s sexual orientation. +Most importantly, we learned acceptance. +We then tried to work with our daughter’s educators, our church, and family and friends to mitigate the risk that she would be one of the at least 20 transgender individuals who were brutally murdered this year or one of the more than fifty percent of transgender youth who attempt suicide by the age of 20. +We were cautiously optimistic when many of our family and friends expressed support. +However, we faced roadblocks early on with the school system. +In junior high, our daughter was not permitted to use the girls’ restroom or locker room or to participate in girls’ sports. +As a result, she was bullied on a daily basis. +The emotional toll this took on her broke our heart, and we vowed to do all we could to ensure she never had to endure this kind of abuse in high school. +We knew that a big factor in whether our daughter would be fully accepted by her peers was whether the high school would treat her as a girl in all respects. +If she was segregated, forced to use separate facilities, it would signal to others that it was acceptable to treat her differently. +To ensure our daughter would not be discriminated against, we legally changed her name, obtained a passport that correctly identified her gender as female, and submitted medical records to the district that demonstrated she had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and was receiving treatment for it, including hormone injections. +Despite the overwhelming evidence that my daughter is a girl, the institution that is charged with educating and enlightening our children was only concerned with her body. +The district therefore did not allow her in the girls’ locker room and instead felt compelled to discipline her on several occasions after she did, in fact, dare to use the same facilities as every other girl. +The result was devastating to her — there were times she was inconsolable, and all we could do was hold her and tell her that we loved her and would continue to advocate on her behalf. +After four months of meeting with the administration, it is the district that left us no other remedy but to file a complaint with the Department of Education with the help of the ACLU of Illinois. +Despite the district’s best efforts to frame the OCR’s findings as big government’s attempt to regulate at the local level, it is the district that has trampled on the rights of our daughter. +The fact that Superintendent Cates has the nerve to state he’s being “bullied” into complying with the law shows he has absolutely no sensitivity or compassion for what my daughter or any other transgender youth in the district has suffered under his policies. +It is simply reprehensible and the lowest form of political posturing. +The fact that neighboring school districts have managed to grant transgender youth access to the locker rooms which correspond with their gender identity without any issues only serves to highlight that District 211’s stated concerns are mere subterfuge for discrimination. +The only real fear is that which my daughter faces now and probably will for the rest of her life — fear that she will never be truly accepted by society, fear that she will never get married and have a family, and, most concerning, fear that she will be harmed by people who are threatened by her very existence. +Some of the opinions and comments on this case have been hurtful and difficult to read; still, we are pleased that the issue is in the public discourse. +We are hopeful that those with open minds and hearts will come to a place of acceptance. +And we are thankful for the courageous voices of those who came before us and those who stand beside us in this journey for justice. +And while our daughter will continue to remain anonymous for now, she is well-represented by the thousands of transgender youth who are fighting for the right to live as their true authentic selves. +Update: June 29, 2016 We have successfully settled Meagan Taylor's case to the satisfaction of the parties! +We have been so proud to represent Meagan in this important case. +Meagan's case garnered national attention, and has been an important reminder to those in the criminal justice system and who run businesses and other public accommodations in Iowa that transgender people are explicitly protected by our civil rights laws from discriminatory treatment. +Given the attack on transgender people happening across the country, we are proud and thankful to work here in Iowa where transgender people are afforded dignity and protection under our state law. +As Meagan's case demonstrated, public accommodations laws are about far more than bathrooms and it is important that we protect transgender people from discrimination in public life so they may go about their lives without fearing harassment, discrimination, arrest or violence simply because of who they are. +Thank you to Meagan for bravely standing up for her rights and to the outstanding ACLU volunteer attorneys, Amber Shanahan-Fricke and David Goldman, at the Des Moines law firm Babich Goldman, who worked on Meagan's behalf. +When Meagan Taylor and her best friend — both young, Black, trans women — stopped at a hotel in Des Moines on the way to a funeral, they expected to check-in, spend the night, and be on their way. +What happened instead should be a chilling reminder of the deadly intersection of racism and transphobia that so many Black transgender people are forced to navigate. +Meagan describes the check-in process as being off from the start. +Even though she is a regular customer of Drury Inns, she had never stayed at the location in West Des Moines, where she and her friend stopped this past July. +What started as a hostile and uncomfortable encounter with staff ended the next morning with employees calling police to complain of “two men dressed as women” checking into the hotel and to report suspected prostitution. +There was no evidence of prostitution — just two Black trans women sleeping in a hotel room the morning before a funeral. +Meagan was arrested for possessing hormone therapy pills without a copy of the prescription and spent eight days in the local jail before she was bailed out. +All charges were eventually dropped, but the experience has left its mark on Meagan. +Like so many transgender people, Meagan has not had access to the medical and financial resources necessary to update the name and gender marker on her state identification. +This meant that when she checked into the Drury Inn, even though she is a woman, the Illinois state identification that she presented listed her as male and under her birth name. +The lack of congruent identification immediately outed Meagan as transgender to complete — and hateful — strangers. +Just the fact of their blackness and their transness prompted hotel staff to call the police to report suspected prostitution. +This, too, is all too common for transgender women of color who are regularly suspected of engaging in sex work when just walking down the street or going about their daily routines. +It is this type of profiling that leads 47 percent of Black transgender women to be incarcerated at some point in their lives. +Meagan was arrested not because there was any evidence that she was engaging in sex work but because she had hormone pills in her possession without a prescription. +From her identification that did not accurately reflect her name and gender to the profiling by hotel staff to the arrest for possession of hormone therapy pills, Meagan’s experience perfectly captures the institutional and interpersonal discrimination that transgender people of color are regularly forced to navigate. +These experiences lead to arrest and incarceration for so many, and in a tragically increasing number of cases, death. +In Meagan’s case, a community of trans people rallied behind her and got her out of jail after eight days. +Then pro bono counsel took on her defense to make sure the unfair charges against her were dropped. +And thankfully, Iowa law — like the law in 16 other states and more than 200 cities — prohibits discrimination against transgender people in public accommodations, so she is able to seek legal redress for the injustice she experienced. +What happened to Meagan is inexcusable and unlawful. +That is why we have joined her in filing a civil rights complaint with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission based on the race and gender identity discrimination she experienced at the Drury Inn. +In a moment when we are witnessing civil rights protections being stripped away from LGBT people as opponents cultivate hateful myths about predatory trans people in bathrooms, Meagan’s case is a stark reminder of the critical need for legal protections for this targeted community. +The vitriol slung at transgender people in the midst of the legislative and ballot fights, like the one last week in Houston, not only take away critical legal protections but also send the message to young trans women of color like Meagan that their lives are not worthy of dignity. +The hateful speech also emboldens uncomfortable bystanders, like the staff at the Drury Inn, to report Black trans women to the police for simply existing. +As a transgender person, I don’t take small things for granted. +I appreciate the store clerk who calls me “sir,” my colleagues who don’t struggle with my name or pronouns, and most important to my daily routine, I appreciate every uneventful trip to and from the bathroom. +To cisgender (non-transgender) people, going to the bathroom is a small thing, a normal and thoughtless part of their day, as routine as breathing air. +To me, many other trans people, and anyone who doesn’t fit rigid norms of masculinity and femininity, just locating a bathroom where we will be safe causes anxiety, fear, and takes a great deal of time and effort. +There is widespread fear about trans people being able to go to the bathroom like everyone else does. +Fear of how we might be different. +Misinformation that somehow letting us go to the bathroom will make other people unsafe. +Though there is no data to support that fear, there is data to show that trans people continue to be bullied, harassed, and worse just for simply existing. +Efforts to legalize this discrimination towards and harassment of trans people through so-called “bathroom-bills” have taken center stage in state legislatures in places like Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Missouri, Arizona, and Nevada. +These bills would not only fine trans people for using the restroom (up to a $4,000 dollar fine included in a recent California ballot initiative), but also criminalize and potentially send trans people to jail. +We face fear, anxiety, and violence just by existing each day and these bills encourage further harassment and violence, attempting to legislate us out of public spaces. +When something as necessary and basic as going to the bathroom becomes the subject of ballot campaigns, school board meetings, and legislative battles, the message that we get is clear: You cannot exist, you are not people. +This violent message is often amplified for trans people of color, trans people living in poverty, and trans people with disabilities. +By making it so difficult for trans people to use the bathroom safely, our very existence is challenged, resisted, and suppressed. +Thankfully, even with the rise in vitriolic anti-trans campaigns, there are stories of love and resistance to counteract them. +This week, NBC Nightly News is aired a special on transgender children who are loved and supported by their families. +Laverne Cox was recognized in People Magazine’s 50 most beautiful people and Janet Mock announced that she will be sitting down with Oprah to discuss her New York Times best-selling memoir, “Redefining Realness.” +Trans people are beautiful and brilliant and deserving of love, like everyone else. +We need to send that message to the young trans people when they hear their state governments are trying to take away their rights and their abilities to live in the world. +Fortunately, many of the anti-trans bills that we saw this legislative session died in committees, or on their state legislature’s floor. +But some damage was done just by the fact that they were introduced and trans people were sent the message that we don’t deserve to live safely or with dignity. +Stand with me and other trans people and support our right to exist and help tell the next generation of young trans people that they are loveable and beautiful and brilliant. +The past few weeks have been pivotal for conversations about LGBT people in the public discourse. +Just days after Olympian Bruce Jenner announced to Diane Sawyer and 17 million viewers that he is a woman, leading gay rights advocate Mary Bonauto argued for marriage equality at the United States Supreme Court. +There is good reason to believe that the decades-long fight for marriage for same-sex couples will be concluding on the side of love and equality. +And as that fight (fingers crossed) comes to at least a formal end, many have assumed that transgender rights will become a key legal and political project that follows marriage equality. +Yet that narrative obscures the important reality that the struggle for justice for transgender people preceded the fight for marriage equality, continued throughout that fight, and will persist long into the future. +Inevitably, as we come to understand the common humanity of trans people, our stories and struggles will become a part of the public consciousness. +At the same time, we mustn’t perpetuate such an ahistorical view of the struggle for justice for trans people that only begins where the fight for marriage equality leaves off. +While it may well be the “Transgender Tipping Point,” it is only because trans people have been fighting in the streets, in the courts, in prisons and jails, and in legislatures for decades. +Led by trans women of color, that fight is not just one for equality but also for survival. +It is a demand to be understood as human in the face of institutional, systemic, and interpersonal violence. +It is a demand for accountability in the face of police profiling and targeting. +It is a demand for worker’s rights, for health care, for equality. +It is as simple as a demand to use the restroom in peace. +It is as nuanced as the demand to be visible and understood as existing outside of the gender binaries that organize our legal and social structures. +As The New York Times today recognized, it is a request “to come out in a nation where stories of compassion and support vastly outnumber those that end with a suicide note.” +The call for justice for trans people is not merely what comes after marriage. +It is a call that has been animating our movement for as long as there has been one. +Today Caitlyn Jenner introduced herself to the world in a fabulous Vanity Fair spread. +“Call me Caitlyn,” she tells the public in this latest cover story and through her recently launched @Caitlyn­­_Jenner +Twitter handle. +It is important that people do actually call her Caitlyn. +Words matter and erasing the identity of trans people by calling them by their birth names and birth-assigned sex is an act of hatred — one that is inextricable from the brutal violence that so many trans people, particularly trans women of color, encounter just for existing in the world. +How we talk about trans people sets the tone for the world in which trans people live. +And because young trans people are dying by suicide and trans women of color are being murdered at alarming rates, those of us forming public narratives about trans celebrities have an obligation to tell those stories with care. +When we write about Caitlyn Jenner, her name and narrative will give enough context. +There is no need to mention what her name used to be or what sex she was assigned at birth. +And as writer and activist Janet Mock brilliantly explained to Piers Morgan, neither Janet nor Caitlyn were “born boys.” +They were born babies and they are women — brave and fabulous women. +But as brave and fabulous as Caitlyn Jenner is, and she is both of those things, her story is so far from the story of most trans peoples’ lives and should not eclipse the truth of the fight for trans justice. +Telling her story with care means using the right name and pronoun, but it also means highlighting the extent to which it is not the typical trans story. +Her story can only be told by also telling the stories of the trans people who are struggling to survive systemic discrimination. +Health care for transgender people remains highly stigmatized and largely unavailable for the majority of trans people. +Both private (i.e., employer) and public (i.e. Medicaid) insurance plans continue to have blanket bans on coverage for health care related to gender transition. +Even where there has been progress on coverage generally, insurance coverage for care that trans women need is still elusive. +For example, the facial feminization surgery that Caitlyn describes in Vanity Fair is almost universally excluded from coverage. +This means that most trans people, particularly trans women of color, cannot access the basic care that they need. +It means that going to the doctor feels like a battle — if a trans person can get there at all. +It means that trans people participate in criminalized economics like the drug and sex trades to pay for the health care they need or seek the care from friends or unsupervised black markets. +It means that trans people die seeking the care they need to live. +To tell Caitlyn’s story with care is to demand justice for trans people. +We must not tell Caitlyn’s story in a vacuum that erases the history of trans organizing, mobilizing, and celebrity of the many trans women who came before her and made her Vanity Fair cover possible. +Janet. +Laverne. +Major. +Sylvia. +Marsha. +We must not exclaim that Caitlyn looks “fabulous” without interrogating our standards for which trans people get to grace the covers of magazines and all the while continuing to keep the health care that brings life to trans people out of reach. +We must not celebrate Caitlyn without mourning Islan, Lamia, Penny, and the hundreds of other trans women, mostly of color, we have lost to violence. +This violence isn’t just at the hands of hateful partners or strangers, but violence in the arms of hateful and exclusionary systems. +Thank you, Caitlyn, for bravely sharing your truth. +May your platform shed light on these injustices and the leaders who have been fighting to make them known. +Things were going just fine at Gloucester High School for sophomore Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy. +It was the first school year he was fully out as male and the school was doing everything it should. +Administrators, teachers, and students began using his new legal name and referred to him with male pronouns, and Gavin was able to use the boys' restroom without incident. +All of this was consistent with established treatment standards for gender dysphoria, which recognize that it is essential for individuals to live consistently with their gender identity. +Or, as Gavin says, "I'm a boy, and it's important for me to live like other boys do." +He is right, which is why we filed a lawsuit this week against the Gloucester County School Board for revoking Gavin's access to boys' facilities – a violation of both the Fourteenth Amendment and federal law prohibiting sex discrimination by schools. +Gavin's story says a lot about the prejudice and unfairness that many trans youth face in Virginia. +Fortunately, it also gives us a spark of hope that things might be improving. +After a few months of smooth transition, some parents and others in Gloucester County besieged the school board with demands that Gavin be barred from the boys' restrooms. +People lined up at meetings to tell the school board that letting Gavin use the restroom appropriate to his gender identity would create a bathroom free-for-all, allowing all students to use whatever bathroom they wanted. +The speakers' comments revealed unfounded fears, stereotypes and a misunderstanding about what it means to be transgender. +They said that respecting Gavin's gender identity would lead to teenagers seeing each other's genitals and sexual assault in the restrooms. +Many of them called Gavin a "girl" or "young lady," and one person called him a "freak." +In the end, the school board caved under pressure and adopted a policy that boys' and girls' restrooms could only be used by students of the "corresponding biological gender" by a vote of 6-1. +Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case. +The same frenzy arose in Stafford County this March when a transgender girl began to use the girls' restroom in her elementary school. +Once again, the school board was deluged with complaints and once again, it responded by barring the student from the girls' bathroom. +In Fairfax County, there was a similar outcry in May when the school board announced plans to amend its nondiscrimination policy to protect transgender students and employees. +Now, onto the signs of progress in Virginia. +On the state level, Attorney General Mark Herring issued an opinion in March declaring that local school boards have the authority to include sexual orientation and gender identity in their anti-discrimination policies. +And similar to Gavin's experience, it appears that before Stafford County took action against the trans girl there, school officials had provided her a welcoming environment and allowed her to use the girls' restroom. +The school division's nondiscrimination officer explained to a complaining parent that federal law required the school to treat students appropriately according to their gender identity. +In Fairfax County, the school board passed the policy prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity despite the public hue and cry. +We hope that our lawsuit on behalf of Gavin will add to this positive momentum. +We're pushing hard against discrimination, district by district, county by county and we're going to keep fighting until all kids in Virginia are able to go to school to learn and not face bullying and hatred. +We have a long road ahead of us. +“I'm homosexual and I’m afraid about what my future will be and that people won’t like me.” +Sadly, this quote didn’t come from a gay person several decades ago, during a time before most people realized that they had gay people they knew and loved in their lives. +It isn’t even from several years ago. +The quote is from a young boy, captured in a haunting photograph from Humans of New York with a look of pained anguish on his face, as if he is holding back a well of tears. +In the days since the image was first posted, it has received more than 620,000 “Likes” on Facebook and has been shared nearly 60,000 times. +Responses, overwhelmingly positive, have poured in from individuals from across the world, including Ellen DeGeneres and Hillary Clinton. +This week, the U.S. Senate will be presented with a rare opportunity to act to ensure that LGBT students across the country are able to obtain a quality public education that is free of discrimination. +Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) will be offering the Student Non-Discrimination Act, or SNDA, as an amendment on the Senate floor. +The need for these protections could not be clearer. +At the end of the day, the goal is to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students, not lawsuits. +As moving as the response to this photo has been, the fears voiced by this boy are reflective of a tragic reality impacting far too many LGBT young people in schools across the country. +Discrimination, harassment, and even physical violence continue to play far too large a role in the lives of LGBT students. +A nationwide 2013 survey of nearly 8,000 students found that more than 30 percent of LGBT students reported missing at least one entire school day in the past month because they felt unsafe. +Too often, it is the schools themselves that are the problem. +The ACLU and the ACLU of Virginia have filed a lawsuit, on behalf of a transgender student, against the Gloucester County School Board for adopting a discriminatory bathroom policy that segregates transgender students from their peers. +The policy effectively expels trans students from communal restrooms and requires them to use “alternative private” restroom facilities. +SNDA, which is modeled closely on Title IX, would provide critical, explicit nondiscrimination protections for LGBT students in federal law. +When schools discriminate against LGBT students — such as denying trans students access to restrooms that reflect who they are or barring students from bringing a same-sex date to a school dance — or allow instances of serious harassment to go unaddressed, SNDA provides important legal remedies, including a private right of action, to hold schools accountable. +Schools found to be in violation of the law would also risk losing their federal funding. +A half century of civil rights laws have demonstrated that these kinds of enforcement tools are most effective in preventing discrimination from occurring in the first place as well as getting schools to appropriately respond when students are being discriminated against or harassed. +At the end of the day, the goal is to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students, not lawsuits (important and necessary as they sometimes are). +While we continue to celebrate a landmark Supreme Court victory for the freedom to marry, we cannot lose sight of all the important work that remains. +It is mindboggling to think that there is still no federal law that explicitly protects LGBT students in our nation’s public schools. +By supporting SNDA, senators would make clear that LGBT students should be able to look forward to futures full of promise, not live in fear over whether they will be accepted and loved for who they are. +When Jennicet Gutiérrez, an undocumented transgender Latina, interrupted the president’s Pride party speech last month, Facebook feeds lit up in debate. +But regardless of where you stand on her tactics, Gutiérrez shed light on an issue most Americans knew little about: the plight of transgender immigrants in detention. +U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains an average of 75 transgender prisoners on any given night. +Although transgender detainees make up a small part of those detained for immigration violations, they are also one of the most vulnerable: one in five confirmed sexual abuse cases in ICE custody involve a transgender detainee. +The ACLU shed light on this issue in 2011 when we filed a lawsuit on behalf of a 28-year-old transgender woman who was sexually assaulted by a guard while she was in immigration custody operated by Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company. +Transgender detainees are also frequently subjected to egregious mistreatment, including lack of access to necessary hormones and other medications and long stints in solitary confinement. +Now the Obama administration has taken initial steps to address this. +ICE recently issued an 18-page memo detailing expanded guidelines on the treatment of transgender immigrants. +The ICE memo provides guidance on how to determine a detainee’s gender identity, and it includes provisions that might allow housing individuals in facilities appropriate to the immigrant’s gender identity. +So why aren’t we all celebrating? +Although this is a welcome step towards improving the treatment of transgender detainees, especially during the intake process, the memo does not go far enough in protecting the rights of transgender individuals. +The guidance still allows for inhumane practices, including the use of solitary to house transgender individuals based on their vulnerability and placement based on assigned sex at birth, even where such placement may not be safe. +These practices have failed in the past to protect transgender immigrants, particularly women, from sexual and physical abuse in detention. +Meanwhile, ICE already released a set of policies in their 2011 detention standards meant to protect transgender detainees, and the officials themselves say only 62 percent of the current detainee population is covered by the 2011 standards. +The current memo includes no enforcement provisions, which is critical to making sure the guidelines have any teeth. +As immigrants’ rights advocatesmade clear in a statement reacting to the new memo: “A guidance document cannot be expected to change the fact that DHS and ICE have consistently failed at maintaining a minimum of safety and dignity for transgender immigrants.” +So what is the solution? +Meaningful change would require that the most vulnerable detainees be considered eligible for release from ICE’s brutal detention and deportation system. +Without community-based alternatives to detention, which are proven to be reliable and cost-effective, the LGBT community, and transgender women in particular, will continue to remain vulnerable to violent attacks and inhumane treatment. +Thirty-five members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson asking for the release of LGBT immigrants from the detention facilities. +Even if the detention system does not end in the near future, ICE can use its existing discretion to release LGBT individuals from custodial detention, just as it should for all people for whom alternatives to detention can mitigate flight risk and any danger to the community. +It is time for us all to hear the voices that Jennicet Gutiérrez bravely and boldly represented at the White House. +The detention and deportation of transgender people must end. +That will be a moment of Pride worth celebrating. +Last night Caitlyn Jenner accepted the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYs and used her platform to bring attention to the struggles that transgender individuals face — particularly transgender young people. +At the end of her speech Jenner called on the crowd to take up the cause of transgender rights — a cause, she explained, that is about accepting people for who they are. +“If you want to call me names. +Make Jokes. +Doubt my intentions. +Go ahead,” Jenner said. +“Because the reality is … I can take it. +But for the thousands of kids out there coming to terms with who they are. +They shouldn’t have to take it.” +%3Ciframe%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2F5j5AC_NgQpc%3Fautoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%22%20width%3D%22560%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E Privacy statement. +This embed will serve content from youtube.com. +They shouldn’t have to take it, but day after day transgender young people are bullied, isolated, and attacked because of who they are. +On Monday, the ACLU will be in court in Norfolk, Virginia, defending the right of a transgender boy named Gavin Grimm who has been fighting just to use the boys’ bathroom at school. +When Gavin first came out to his school as transgender and expressed his medical need to use the bathroom consistent with his gender identity, the school permitted him to do so for seven weeks without incident. +It wasn’t until adults in the community learned that Gavin was using the boys’ bathroom and became enraged that a transgender young person could use the bathroom that corresponds with his gender identity that Gavin was forced to use a separate bathroom from all the other kids. +The adults in the community went so far as to take the issue to the school board and pass a policy to prevent Gavin and other trans students from using the bathroom consistent with who they are. +Standing before Gavin, his family and the entire community, a supporter of the new policy called Gavin a “freak” and compared him to someone who thinks he is a dog. +The message the community sent to Gavin was clear: You are different, you are a freak, and we don’t care about you or your dignity. +This is precisely the type of bullying — from other young people but more insidiously from parents, adults, and institutions — that leads to disturbingly high rates of homelessness, murder, and suicide among transgender youth and young adults. +It has to stop. +When transgender teenager Leelah Alcorn took her own life this past December because of the abuse she experienced at the hands of adults in her life, she left a message behind: “The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was – they’re treated like humans with valid feelings and human rights. +Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. +My death needs to mean something.” +Across the country there are young people like Gavin who are just trying to survive. +Thankfully there are people like Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox, and Janet Mock who use their platforms to challenge us all to build a safer and more accountable world for these young people to grow up. +Join us on Monday in heeding Caitlyn Jenner’s message and supporting Gavin in his fight to be treated as human. +Our youth need to be sent messages of love and support not vengeance and disgust. +After all, as Gavin testified before the school board, “This could be your child…I’m just a human. +I’m just a boy.” +The Pentagon announced this month that the military will work on a policy that allows transgender soldiers to serve openly. +ACLU client Shane Ortega, a transgender solider, gives his thoughts on what this policy means. +I’m still processing the news about the policy change. +Even though this is obviously really good news, I’m concerned about what happens from here. +I think implementation is absolutely capable of being done. +But this is a no-fail mission. +We can’t just measure twice and cut once. +We need to measure six times and then cut. +The conversation so far about being transgender in the military has been about the emotional toll of it, and that’s important. +But we need to make sure we get implementation right. +We need to make sure that implementation allows immediate allowance for access to health care. +We need to make sure that new policies allow the full spectrum narrative of transgender service so that not everyone has to get lower-surgery to be able serve as the gender they are. +And we need to make sure that we have strong policies in place to ensure all service members are protected from sexual assault. +I’ve been involved in LGBT activism for a long time. +My mom is a lesbian and served under “don’t ask, don’t tell” for 27 years. +I grew up in a gender nonconforming environment, so my gender identity wasn’t a big issue. +When I joined the military, I thought the policy that trans people could not serve was unfair. +I’m a nerd and Googled about policies in 19 other countries. +I read about the history of Canada, Britain, Australia, and Israel, where transgender people have been allowed to serve openly for years. +When I found this out, I thought: “Why isn’t America allowing us to serve openly, and how do we change this?” +I decided to be a quiet professional and work with the system. +I felt that it was better to help educate people and meet them where they are. +I put my faith in the chain of command, and I utilized it. +I knew if I did, I would allow them to exercise their humanity. +My faith was not misplaced. +Since I was in The Washington Post, I’ve heard from a lot of transgender people serving or who want to. +I either get really positive letters that detail how this has allowed open dialogue to command. +On the flipside I also receive some letters about how they feel invalidated, ignored and isolated. +It’s hard to be this visible and you never realize how tough it’s going to be. +I knew what I was doing came with a heavy responsibility to my fellow service members and our nation. +I would never take the lives of others lightly, but I knew that I could take on this task and stay the path. +My personal quote I live by is “I’ve survived every bad day in the history of my life.” +The history of trans military personnel is sometimes very sad. +I thought that if I am vocal about these things, maybe I can help people. +From what I saw at the time there was no one speaking the clear realities openly and candidly. +I swore to protect and help my countrymen. +Sometimes helping your country doesn’t mean fighting a war; it means speaking up and out. +I know that transgender equality in the military will, in fact, affect transgender equality in America. +You can’t say transgender soldiers or veteran who served their country honorably can’t use the right bathroom or shouldn't have job discrimination protections. +At the end of the day, all people are entitled to dignity and respect. +The world needs to exercise more compassion, or we are going to eat each other alive. +I will be standing up in court this morning on behalf of Gavin Grimm, a 16-year-old boy who just completed his sophomore year at Gloucester High School. +Gavin is transgender and has a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria. +This means that even though he was assigned the sex of female at birth, he is a boy and lives in accordance with his male gender identity in all aspects of his life. +He has had a legal name change and is identified as male on his driver’s license. +With the permission of the high school principal Gavin used the boys’ restroom for almost two months without any problems. +But all that changed when some parents began complaining to the Gloucester County School Board about a “girl” in the boys’ room. +During two public school board meetings, residents of Gloucester County — including people who did not even have school-age children — threatened to vote the board out of office if they did not pass a new policy to kick Gavin out of the boys’ restroom. +Gavin and his parents sat at the school board meeting while strangers pointedly referred to him as “a young lady” to deliberately undermine his gender identity and warned about sexual predators. +One speaker called Gavin a “freak” and compared him to a person who thinks he is a dog and wants to urinate on fire hydrants. +“All I want to do is be a normal child and use the restroom in peace,” Gavin told a room full of grown adults. +“This could be your child. +I’m just a human. +I’m just a boy.” +The school board caved, voting 6-1 to pass a new policy that limits access to the communal restroom based on “biological gender” and relegates students with “gender identity issues” to “alternative” restroom facilities. +As a result, Gavin has been effectively banished to an alternative bathroom and conversations about his body and his personal medical information have been held in public in front of his classmates and the larger community. +Gavin’s case is reaching the courts at a critical time. +While we continue to push for explicit protections in our federal civil rights statutes, it is now widely recognized by courts that discriminating against transgender people for their gender nonconformity already violates protections against sex discrimination in the Constitution and our civil rights laws. +And in order to equally participate in school, work, and society, transgender people — like everyone else — have to use the restrooms. +Today the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Education have all said that transgender people should be able to use the restrooms that correspond to their gender identity and cannot be segregated into separate restrooms away from everyone else. +But there has been pushback too. +Last year we saw a wave of legislative attempts to prohibit transgender people from using the same restrooms as everyone else. +Some bills even threatened to put a bounty on the heads of transgender people by offering rewards to anyone who reports that a transgender person is using the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity. +And people who oppose legal protections for transgender people are hoping that the policies adopted by federal agencies are rejected by the federal courts. +This is a civil rights issue and Gavin deserves our support. +That’s why the ACLU is in court today — to stand up for Gavin and for the rights of transgender people to participate equally and fully at school, at work, and in society. +I hope you will join me in standing with Gavin. +In February, we blogged about how seven transgender women had been murdered in the United States. +Now, five months later, that number is up to 11. +Trans women’s bodies are still under attack. +Last Friday, K.C. Haggard, a 66-year old white transwoman, was murdered while standing on a street corner in Fresno, California. +The brutal stabbing was recorded on the security camera footage of a nearby store. +K.C. unsuccessfully tried to flag a car down for help, and then pedestrians can be seen walking by her as she lay on the ground dying. +Even in suffering and death, transgender women are ignored, stepped over. +Also last week, India Clarke, a 25-year-old Black transwoman living in Tampa, Florida, was found murdered in a park. +In reporting on this tragedy, all media outlets in Tampa further dehumanized India by misgendering her, refusing to identify her as a woman and by using her legal name. +India’s life was brutally ended before it had even begun, and then in death, she was erased, stigmatized, treated as less than human. +Two weeks ago, Meagan Taylor, a Black transwoman visiting Des Moines, Iowa, was arrested after she and a friend rented a room from a hotel in West Des Moines. +Employees of the hotel saw that Meagan was trans and Black and called the police, seemingly claiming that she and her friend were engaging in sex work. +Meagan was then arrested on an outstanding warrant for unpaid fines from an arrest when she was 17 years old. +The encounter with law enforcement and the humiliation Meagan suffered was because she dared to rent a hotel room while being a Black trans woman. +Trans women’s lives are endangered when renting hotel rooms, driving cars, walking down the street. +How much longer will we sit idly by while they are murdered for having the audacity to exist? +This must stop. +Despite this horrific violence, transwomen continue to bravely resist the dehumanization and repression they face each day. +Transwomen have resisted a society determined to erase them for decades. +They have pushed back and survived and refused to be silenced. +These brave women continue to face down huge systems of oppression each day. +Black trans leaders like Cece McDonald and Monica Jones fought back against a criminal legal system that profiled and punished them for their identities. +Transwoman Jennicet Gutierrez called attention to the disparate rates of violence experience by undocumented transgender detainees during President Obama’s “LGBT Pride Reception” at the White House this last June. +Trans women like Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, and Caitlyn Jenner continue use their positions in popular culture to speak out against the violence and stigma experienced daily by trans women of color. +We must follow the lead of these amazing women in demanding accountability from a transphobic society that seems bent on eradicating transwomen. +We must join our trans sisters in the fight for their right to exist free of violence in our country. +While the American workplace is often notoriously inhospitable to transgender Americans, the federal government last month moved decisively to change that. +In a new memorandum, the Department of Justice explicitly clarified that gender identity discrimination claims are covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. +This is another important step forward in the ongoing fight for basic fairness and equal treatment under the law for transgender Americans. +Our client Diane Schroer knows all too well how this type of workplace discrimination can have profound effects on someone's life, and her case was a critical step to ensuring other Americas don't face this type of discrimination. +Diane applied for a job with the Library of Congress as a senior terrorism research analyst after retiring from a 25-year career in the U.S. Army. +Based on her distinguished record of military service, which included the Defense Superior Service Medal, Diane was offered the job and immediately accepted. +After Diane retired from the Army, she confronted feelings she had been dealing with her entire life. +After careful consideration under the care of a doctor, Diane decided to transition from a man to a woman. +Prior to starting work, Diane took her future boss to lunch to explain that she was in the process of transitioning. +She had interviewed for the position while still presenting as a man and thought it would be easier for everyone if she simply started work presenting as a female. +The following day, Diane received a call from the future boss rescinding the offer, telling her that she wasn't a "good fit" for the Library of Congress. +The Library of Congress thought Diane was the most qualified person for the job when they assumed she was a man and offered her the position. +Rejecting the best candidate for a job based on her gender – including her decision to transition from one gender to another – was both unfair and illegal. +In 2005, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on Diane's behalf, alleging that the actions of the Library of Congress violated Title VII. +At the time, DOJ vigorously fought Diane's lawsuit, arguing that transgender people are not protected under the sexual discrimination provision in Title VII. +Thankfully, the court agreed with Diane, and – in a landmark legal victory for transgender people – ruled that discriminating against someone for changing genders is sex discrimination and a violation of Title VII. +The new DOJ memorandum discusses the importance of Diane's lawsuit in advancing the government's evolution on this issue. +It further vindicates the rightness of Diane's fight against the discrimination she endured. +This latest breakthrough builds on a number of important court decisions, including a historic ruling by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2012, which found that transgender people are protected under laws banning sex discrimination. +As important as these protections are, they certainly do not negate the need for clear and explicit laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination in the workplace as well as in other aspects of public life. +Such laws leave no room for ambiguity, and they also demonstrate a concrete commitment on the part of the U.S. government to eradicating discrimination against individuals on the basis of both their sexual orientation and gender identity. +The ACLU also continues to work in courts across the country to ensure that Title VII and other existing laws against sex discrimination are interpreted to include transgender people. +This change in policy by the DOJ vindicates Diane's battle against workplace discrimination and provides protection for transgender Americans as they struggle for the respect and dignity they deserve. +Learn more about anti-trans* discrimination and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. +Being transgender can be a lifelong battle against erasure. +We are erased by families who tell us we cannot be who we are; erased by governments who prevent us from obtaining identification that affirms our names, genders, and existence; and erased by health care systems that withhold treatment that we need to survive. +This erasure leads to catastrophic health outcomes for trans people, particularly trans people of color. +The numbers are staggering: 41 percent of trans people have attempted suicide at some point in their lives. +Trans women are 49 times more likely to be living with HIV than the general population. +LGBT young people make up 40 percent of all homeless youth. +And the numbers go on, reflecting a devastating cycle of rejection, poverty, homelessness, incarceration, and, all-too-often, death. +The death of transgender teenager Leelah Alcorn by suicide last month brought into focus the critical need to give voice and visibility to the trans community. +Before ending her life, Leelah published a suicide note in which she reflected that, "The life I would've lived isn't worth living in… because I'm transgender." +Leelah ended her life at 17 because she could not imagine being a transgender adult in this world. +So last night, when the Amazon series Transparent won the Golden Globe award for best comedy series, it was a big deal. +It was a big deal when series creator Jill Soloway accepted the award and said to the world: "They are our family. +They make this possible. +This award is dedicated to the memory of Leelah Alcorn, and too many trans people who die too young." +The very fact that the word "transgender" was used at the Golden Globes without mocking the existence of trans people matters. +It matters that Jeffrey Tambor – who won the best actor category for his role as transgender woman, Maura Pfefferman – dedicated his award to the transgender community and thanked Soloway for giving him the "gift" and the "responsibility" of Maura. +It matters and it also isn't enough. +With the notable exception of the legendary Alexandra Billings, there were no people of color there representing the trans community and no trans women receiving acting awards for playing trans roles. +Telling public and visible trans narratives comes with a responsibility to center the resilient trans people and communities who are fighting to be themselves in life and in death. +It means honoring Leelah Alcorn and Islan Nettles. +It means recognizing that real trans parents are fighting uphill court battles to retain connections with their children. +It means thanking the trans people who made Transparent possible, like Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, and Miss Major. +Visibility, as Jeffrey Tambor poignantly noted, is both a gift and a responsibility. +It truly is time, as Leelah Alcorn urged, to "fix society." +Learn more about transgender rights and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. +It seems basic enough to ask that one be treated like a human being – that a person’s dignity be honored in life and death. +But tragically for too many transgender people that is still a far off dream. +The past few weeks have witnessed another series of horrors for the transgender community. +Three transgender women of color have been murdered: Lamia Beard in Norfolk, Virginia; Ty Underwood in Tyler, Texas; and, Ms. Williams in Louisville, Kentucky. +Their murders are part of the systemic violence that trans people experience; violence that is disproportionately levied upon transgender women of color whose lives exist at the intersection of racism, sexism, and transphobia. +Adding further indignity to the violence of their deaths, local media reports have erased the existence and dignity of these fallen sisters referring to them incorrectly as “men dressed as women” and by names that don’t honor who they were in life and death. +As Chai Chai Jindasurat, programming coordinator with the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, told BuzzFeed News: “The harm of the media misgendering and victim-blaming is that it sends a message to the public that these homicides are not as serious, and that somehow transgender people deserve it.” +Are the lives of trans people less worthy of respect in life and dignity in death? +Sadly, this is the message that many trans people receive. +It was the message that teenager Leelah Alcorn received before taking her own life and leaving the message that “The life I would've lived isn't worth living in… because I'm transgender.” +Thankfully, despite this violence and ongoing efforts to demean and erase trans people – like this Oklahoma bill that would require people to disclose whether they have had “sex reassignment surgery” when seeking a marriage license – the trans community continues to show incredible resilience in fighting back. +This week, in the midst of the violence the community has faced, we also received word of a key victory in the fight against police profiling of transgender women of color as sex workers. +A superior court judge reversed the conviction of Monica Jones, a black transgender activist, who was found guilty in April 2014 at a bench trial of “manifesting” intent to solicit an act of prostitution. +This reversal comes after mobilized efforts, led by Monica, to draw attention to the targeting of trans women for arrest by police in Phoenix and across the country. +With the support of Laverne Cox, the ACLU, and others, Monica used her story to speak for so many others suffering the injustices she had experienced. +Of her victory, Jones said: “My conviction being vacated is important, but it is a small win in our larger fight for justice. +There are so many trans women and cisgender women who might be charged under this law in Phoenix and similar laws across the country. +There is so much more work that needs to be done so that no one will have to face what I have, no matter who they are or what past convictions they have.” +Indeed. +Learn more about transgender rights and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. +Her name was Lamia Beard. +She was from Virginia. +Her name was Taja DeJesus. +She was from California. +Her name was Penny Proud. +She was from Louisiana. +Her name was Ty Underwood. +She was from Texas. +Her name was Yazmin Vash Payne. +She was from California. +Her name was Bri Golec. +She was from Ohio. +Her name was Kristina Gomez Reinwald. +She was from Florida. +Seven transgender women that we know of have been murdered in this country since 2015 started. +At least five were women of color. +It's a horrifying litany already, and it's only February. +Writer and activist Janet Mock blogged on Monday about how she maintains hope in the face of these tragedies because recent media visibility for transgender women of color, like herself and Laverne Cox, is gradually helping "reshape the narrative of trans women's lives." +At the ACLU, we also feel a responsibility to do whatever we can to change the landscape for trans people in the United States. +Through litigation, policy advocacy, and education, we're working to enhance safety, increase opportunity, and foster dignity for all transgender people, but especially for trans women of color. +Toward this end, much of the ACLU's work in recent years has focused on getting policymakers and the public to appreciate the basic human dignity of transgender individuals. +It goes without saying that transgender people have the right to do everything non-transgender people do, from using restrooms in peace to accessing medically necessary health care to serving in the military, but unfortunately there are still people and institutions denying this basic truth. +Conversations in the halls of power and in the media about righting these exclusions help Americans understand what it means to be transgender and appreciate trans people's humanity. +Another thread of our work has involved protecting the safety of transgender people, often in relation to the criminal justice system. +Disproportionately forced into survival economies because of widespread discrimination and stereotyping based on both gender and race, transgender women of color are particularly vulnerable to cycles of arrest, incarceration, trauma, and violence. +We've both responded to individual instances of these problems and worked to raise awareness of the underlying issues, such as by helping Monica Jones fight a Phoenix police practice of profiling and arresting trans women of color as presumed sex workers, and helping Connecticut teenager "Jane Doe" resist officials' efforts to imprison and isolate her without criminal charges. +Where feasible, we've also worked with governments to secure policies and training that increase law enforcement sensitivity to the needs of transgender people. +The LGBT Project's work on these issues dovetails with that of many other advocates, including our colleagues within the ACLU at the Racial Justice Project, the Criminal Law Reform Project, the Campaign to End Mass Incarceration, and affiliate offices around the country. +Finally, we've been striving to ensure that transgender Americans have equal opportunity to achieve economic security. +This includes pushing to enact and enforce local, state, and federal laws protecting transgender workers from discrimination. +It also encompasses our extensive advocacy to ensure that transgender students are respected at school and able to focus on learning. +Being able to participate fully in education and in the workplace won't guarantee that transgender girls and women of color are safe from violence, but it will reduce the vulnerability that comes from economic marginalization. +Further, seeing transgender peers succeed at work and at school will help other Americans work through their prejudices and misconceptions regarding transgender people. +Unfortunately there's no lawsuit the ACLU can file, no bill we can push through Congress, and no report we can issue that will immediately stop violence against transgender women of color. +But that does not mean we can throw up our hands and dismiss the issue as irrelevant to our legal work. +We stand with advocates around the country in honoring the lives of trans women, by working to address the causes of these tragedies. +We stand with those who say not one more. +Learn more about transgender rights and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. +The day I got my driver's license with the gender marked "F" and my new legal name was one of the best days of my life. +I was assigned male at birth, and my parents named me Steven. +But I'd known for many years that I am a woman, and now I had the identification to prove it. +That year also included many of the hardest days. +My parents, who belong to a conservative church, disowned me. +My next-door neighbor hosed me in the face with a chemical poison. +And I was fired from the job that I loved – all because I am transgender. +I'm an electrician, and I was working at H & H Electric, a contractor in Hot Springs, Arkansas. +The day after I got my new driver's license, I told my boss that I am a transgender woman. +He looked shocked. +He told me that I was one of his best people and that he would hate to lose me. +I was stunned that his first reaction was that he might have to fire me. +He didn't fire me right away, but he didn't let me come to work as a woman, either. +He told me I couldn't discuss my transition with anyone at work or use my legal name, Patricia. +Even though I didn't say anything, people at work noticed that I was transitioning. +My hair was growing out, and I'd started hormone therapy. +Some of my co-workers were kind to me, but others were cruel. +Twice, co-workers tried to sabotage my work. +One of those instances could have caused an explosion that could hurt or even kill someone. +Fortunately, I discovered it in time, and no one was hurt. +The more time passed, the more it became obvious that I am a woman. +Eventually I felt brave enough to wear makeup and a blouse to work. +I was on top of the world. +I had a great job, and I was finally being myself. +That week, my boss pulled me aside and said, "I'm sorry, Steve, you do great work, but you are too much of a distraction and I am going to have to let you go." +I am not a distraction. +I am a woman, and I shouldn't be fired for being who I am. +That's why the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on my behalf arguing that firing me because I am transgender is illegal sex discrimination. +Even though federal law prohibits employers from hiring or firing people because of their gender, here in Arkansas and in 31 other states, there are no laws that explicitly tell employers that discrimination against transgender people is illegal. +I'm here to make sure that transgender workers are judged on their job performance, not who they are. +Learn more about transgender rights and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. +We shouldn't have to keep defending our right to exist. +From inside the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she is serving a 35-year prison sentence, that is precisely what convicted Wikileaker Chelsea Manning has been doing – fighting for her existence. +Since first being diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2010, Chelsea has struggled to be recognized and affirmed by the government, the public, and even some of her supporters, as Chelsea. +In a December op-ed published in the Guardian, she reflected: We should all have the absolute and inalienable right to define ourselves, in our own terms and in our own languages, and to be able to express our identity and perspectives without fear of consequences and retribution. +We should all be able to live as human beings – and to be recognized as such by the societies we live in. +This month, after a year and a half of fighting, including filing over two-dozen complaints, numerous formal grievances, a demand letter, and a federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU, Chelsea Manning finally received some affirmation of her humanity. +On February 11, she began hormone treatment for her diagnosed gender dysphoria. +But even with this victory, Chelsea's fight continues. +The government is refusing to let Chelsea grow her hair as other female prisoners are permitted to do. +Instead it is forcing her to keep an almost shaved head in accordance with male hair standards. +Meanwhile, in her criminal appeal, the government has refused to honor Chelsea's female identity and is fighting to use male pronouns and her former name in the legal papers for that case – a clear signal that they seek to further dehumanize her as she fights for her freedom. +Around the country, countless other transgender women and men in prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers are struggling to be heard, to receive treatment, and to survive unbearable conditions. +In other words: to simply exist. +This last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued the Georgia Department of Corrections on behalf of Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman who has been denied the medically necessary hormone treatment that she relied on for 17 years prior to her incarceration. +In response to her pleas for treatment, Georgia prison officials mocked Ashley calling her a "he-she-thing" and ridiculing her health and safety needs. +From prison, Ashely writes: "It is amazing how a minor brush with the law has turned into a death sentence. +This is about more than just hormone treatment. +This is about gross human rights violations. +Three years of torture is enough." +Indeed. +Three days would be enough, three years is nightmare. +Across the political spectrum, people denounce the worth of trans people to receive the basic medical care we need. +Television shows mock our existence and even in the wake of tragedy, media outlets think it permissible to erase our core humanity by refusing to honor our lives and genders in death. +As Ohio-based trans activist Cherno Biko explained: Our fight is not for equality, it's for liberation and survival. +Our bodies are being criminalized and policed to the point of extinction. +It is crucial that we channel our energy and resources to our communities' most vulnerable. +While we mourn the many trans women we have lost this year, we must also stand with those trans people living under unbearably violent conditions. +Exposed to unthinkable deprivations and degradation, our incarcerated trans brothers and sisters are everyday defending their right to exist. +What an incredibly modest, yet truly brave and resilient demand. +Until no more trans people are subjected to the fear of death for being who they are, fighting for trans survival in and out of prisons is our duty and privilege. +From Chelsea to Ashley to the countless whose names we do not know, we see you, we defend you, and we support you. +Learn more about transgender rights and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. +Getting arrested for using the bathroom could become the law in Florida. +Using a public restroom is something most people have done. +For many non-transgender people, the experience might be gross or inconvenient, but most people don't have serious concerns about whether they will be harassed, attacked, or arrested when walking into a bathroom. +But for most trans people, this is precisely what we think about every time we walk into the bathroom. +In a 2012 survey, 53 percent of transgender respondents reported harassment when trying to access a public place like a hospital, restroom, or retail establishment. +Among black transgender respondents, 22 percent reported experiencing physical attacks while accessing public establishments. +These verbal and physical attacks are part of the larger pattern of violence that transgender people experience – violence that has already resulted in the murder of at least seven transgender women since the start of this year. +So, how are state legislatures responding to this crisis in the trans community? +With ill-conceived proposals that would make transgender people targets of further harassment and arrest for using the bathroom. +Yesterday a bill moved forward in a Florida House committee that would make it a crime to use a restroom that does not match the sex listed on a person's birth certificate or other government-issued identification. +Introduced in direct response to Miami-Dade County's efforts to prohibit discrimination against transgender people, the bill's purpose, according to its sponsor Rep. Frank Artiles, is to protect "public safety" and prevent "criminals — males" from going into a "women's locker room … say[ing] …'I feel like a woman today.'" +But the bill actually undermines "public safety" if you consider trans and gender non-conforming people part of the public. +It allows the businesses and patrons to police and punish women and men who do not conform to expectations of how women and men "should" look. +It further forces transgender women, and all transgender people, to defend our right to exist in the world when doing something as basic as going to the bathroom. +It invites business owners and the public to question trans people's core identity. +And it encourages violence against us. +Imagine going through the world having fought to be yourself and then having your state representatives try to pass a law that equates your very identity with danger and criminality. +That is what this law does. +Bill opponents responded to the legislation by explaining that not only would the proposed law increase violence against transgender people, but it also might prevent a parent from accompanying their child to the restroom or make it more difficult for a person with disabilities who is accompanied by an aide to use the restroom. +Rather than simply pull the discriminatory bill, Florida lawmakers amended it to make clear that it was and is designed for one purpose: to target transgender people. +Going to great lengths to ensure that no one else is negatively impacted, lawmakers have even carved out an exception for "[a] person who enters an unoccupied single-sex facility that is designated for the opposite sex while another person waits outside the entrance to the facility notifying others that a person of the opposite sex is using the facility." +Apparently the bill sponsors wanted to make sure there's no criminal penalty for the "buddy system" women use to cope with long lines for the ladies' room. +Meanwhile, as trans people are being killed across the country, other similar bills are also being considered in Kentucky and Texas. +These bills send a clear message to trans people: You are not worthy of legal protections, and your humanity is not respected here. +Join our efforts to defeat this cruel bill and send a message that trans lives matter. +Learn more about transgender rights and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. +Today is the Transgender Day of Visibility, which is a moment to take stock of what “visibility” actually means in the day-to-day lives of transgender people around the world. +As we become more visible in society, what is also visible is how much work remains to be done to create positive change for all transgender people. +While the visibility of high-profile trans people like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock has helped to shift the narrative about our community, we must acknowledge that visibility for many of our trans brothers and sisters is still not possible because it subjects them to discrimination and violence. +Thus far in 2015, the epidemic of violence against young transgender women of color has been more visible in our country than ever before. +In addition to this violence, we have also seen and heard about the suicides of several transgender youth, including most recently Blake Brockington, a young trans man of color. +How can we celebrate visibility when it still leads to arrest, violence, and, too often, death? +We must continue to work to address the disparate outcomes experienced by transgender youth of color in their homes, schools, and social service programs. +We must ensure that school is a refuge for trans youth, not a battle ground, as it has been for our client Gavin Grimm at his school in Glouster County, Virginia. +We must ensure that when trans youth need to access social services, they can do so without fear that they their identities will be mocked, dismissed, or met with violence. +After being pushed out of their communities and into the streets, many of transgender youth engage in criminalized economies to address basic needs like housing and food. +Inevitably, under these conditions just surviving makes these young people especially “visible” and vulnerable to profiling by police, street violence, and other victimization. +Many of these youth who were kicked out of their homes preferred to brave the streets rather than attempt to navigate homeless shelters and other temporary housing that they knew to be transphobic and dangerous. +Today, as we acknowledge that some of us are able to be visible and safe in our homes, workplaces, and communities, let’s take the opportunity to work for those of us who cannot be visible without experiencing harm. +Today, let’s work for schools that embrace and protect trans student’s right to use school facilities consistent with their gender identities. +Today, let’s demand trans-affirming foster homes and homeless shelters for trans youth who are pushed out of their homes and schools. +Our community needs more than visibility; we need safety and life affirming services for the most vulnerable among us.