gofilipa/aclu_transgender · Datasets at Hugging Face

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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 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.”