Possible transgender proposal stirs anger
LGBT leaders WASHINGTON — across the U.S. reacted Monday to a report that the United States government is considering adoption of a new definition of gender that would effectively deny federal recognition and civil rights protections to transgender Americans.
“I feel very threatened, but I am absolutely resolute,” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Rights, said at a news conference convened by more than a dozen activist leaders. “We will stand up and be resilient, and we will be here long after this administration is in the trash heap.”
The activist leaders, speaking amid posters reading “#Won’tBeErased”, later addressed a protest rally outside the White House.
The Department of Health and Human Services acknowledged months ago that it was working to rewrite a federal rule that bars discrimination in health care based on “gender identity.” It cited a Texas-based federal judge’s opinion that the original rule went too far in concluding that discrimination based on gender identity is a form of sex discrimination, which is forbidden by civil rights laws.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the agency was circulating a memo proposing that gender be defined as an immutable biological condition determined by a person’s sex organs at birth. The election-year proposal would define sex as either male or female, and any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified through genetic testing, according to the Times’ account of the memo.
President Donald Trump addressed the matter briefly as he left the White House for a political trip to Houston, but left unclear how his administration plans to proceed.
“We have a lot of different concepts right now,” Trump said. “They have a lot of different things happening with respect to transgender right now — you know that as well as I do — and we’re looking at it very seriously.”
Trump added: “I’m protecting everybody.”
The department said it did not comment on “alleged leaked documents.” It did release a statement from Roger Severino, the head of its Office for Civil Rights, saying his agency was reviewing the issue while abiding by the 2016 ruling from the Texas-based federal judge, Reed O’Connor.
LGBT activists, who pledged legal challenges if the reported memo leads to official policy, said several other courts had issued rulings contrary to O’Connor’s.
“For years, courts across the country have recognized that discriminating against someone because they are transgender is a form of sex discrimination, full stop,” said Diana Flynn, Lambda Legal’s litigation director. “If this administration wants to try and turn back the clock by moving ahead with its own legally frivolous and scientifically unsupportable definition of sex, we will be there to meet that challenge.”
Shannon Minter, a transgender attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, called the reported plan a “cynical political ploy to sow discord and energize a right-wing base” before the Nov. 6 election.
“The fact that the court ruling by a single federal district court judge was issued nearly two years ago only underscores the suspiciousness of this timing,” Minter said.
According to Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a lawyer with Lambda Legal, the proposed rule change appears to be undergoing White House review and would need to be signed off by the departments of Justice, Labor and Education, which are also involved with civil rights enforcement.