NYT: Trump's Rollback of Trans Protections Is Widespread

[Carolyn Marie]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/us/politics/trump-transgender-rights.html

 

 

Carolyn Marie

[Charlize]

As i listen to TV, radio and internet news it unfortunately becomes obvious that we are increasingly a target for the right wing. Fortunately at the same time society is more accepting than it has ever been.  I hope the majority can again control the politics without gerrymandering and voter suppression giving hate the platform it has today.  

 

Hugs,

 

Charlize

[Jackie C.]

It would be lovely if we could restore some semblance of democracy. I'm still seriously considering claiming asylum in another country if Trump gets another term. I'd rather not wait until the right wing declares that it's legal to hunt us for sport.

 

Hugs!

[ShawnaLeigh]

2 hours ago, Jackie C. said:

It would be lovely if we could restore some semblance of democracy. I'm still seriously considering claiming asylum in another country if Trump gets another term. I'd rather not wait until the right wing declares that it's legal to hunt us for sport.

 

Hugs!

It feels like it right?!?!?   
Im not very politically driven but do care about “our” issues and feel fear over what this idiot thinks and says.  
I wish our government wasn’t so broken.  Or the process to elect the right people anyways.  
Having good choices to elect from is a major crying shame.  
Never anyone worth a crap to choose from.  Jmo

[NB Adult]

NYT has been the source of a lot of disinformation lately, along with many other mainstream media sources all in an effort to denegrate Trump and conservatives which is making it hard to trust the veracity of a lot of articles that are supposedly news. I'd be interested if there was in fact some kind of actual legal documentation to back up that NYT assertion. Nowadays it behooves us all to do some digging to determine truth from BS.

[Carolyn Marie]

2 hours ago, NB Adult said:

I'd be interested if there was in fact some kind of actual legal documentation to back up that NYT assertion. Nowadays it behooves us all to do some digging to determine truth from BS.

 

The "legal documentation" of which you speak is clearly available, and cited, in the long list of actual legal actions, court filings, and agency policy decisions taken by the Trump administration.  When HUD issues a policy directive telling HUD recipient agencies to deny trans women the right to go to a women's shelter, that is legal documentation.  When the Education Department issues a policy stating that Title IX protections do not apply to trans children, that is legal documentation.  What else are you looking for?

 

Carolyn Marie

[Susan R]

41 minutes ago, Carolyn Marie said:

The "legal documentation" of which you speak is clearly available, and cited, in the long list of actual legal actions, court filings, and agency policy decisions taken by the Trump administration. 

It's been posted here several times but I'll just post it here in case anyone new wants to read them.

 

ANTI-TRANSGENDER & ANTI-LGBTQ Legislation under Trump administration through May 24, 2019
 

• May 24, 2019: The Department of Health and Human Services published a proposed rule that would remove all recognition that federal law prohibits transgender patients from discrimination in health care. Courts across the nation have ruled otherwise.

 

• May 22, 2019: The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a plan to gut regulations prohibiting discrimination against transgender people in HUD-funded homeless shelters.

 

• May 14, 2019: President Trump announced his opposition to the Equality Act (H.R. 5), the federal legislation that would confirm and strengthen civil rights protections for LGBTQ Americans and others.

 

• May 2, 2019: The Department of Health and Human Services published a final rule encouraging hospital officials, staff, and insurance companies to deny care to patients, including transgender patients, based on religious or moral beliefs. This vague and broad rule was immediately challenged in court.

 

• April 12, 2019: The Department of Defense put President Trump’s ban on transgender service members into effect, putting service members at risk of discharge if they come out or are found out to be transgender.

 

• March 13, 2019: The Department of Defense laid out its plans for implementing its ban on transgender troops, giving an official implementation date of April 12.

 

• January 23, 2019: The Department of Health & Human Services' Office of Civil Rights granted an exemption to adoption and foster care agencies in South Carolina, allowing religiously-affiliated services to discriminate against current and aspiring LGBTQ caregivers.

 

• November 23, 2018: The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) erased critical guidance that helped federal agency managers understand how to support transgender federal workers and respect their rights, replacing clear and specific guidance reflecting applicable law and regulations with vaguely worded guidance hostile to transgender workers. While this guidance change did not change the rights of transgender federal workers under applicable law, regulations, Executive Orders, and case law, it is likely to cause confusion and promote discrimination within the nation's largest employer.

 

• August 10, 2018: The Department of Labor released a new directive for Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) staff encouraging them to grant broad religious exemptions to federal contractors with religious-based objections to complying with nondiscrimination laws. It also deleted material from an OFCCP FAQ on LGBT nondiscrimination protections that previously clarified the limited scope of allowable religious exemptions.

 

• June 11, 2018: Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that the federal government would no longer recognized gang violence or domestic violence as grounds for asylum, adopting a legal interpretation that could lead to rejecting most LGBT asylum-seekers.

 

• May 11, 2018: The Bureau of Prisons in the Department of Justice adopted an illegal policy of almost entirely housing transgender people in federal prison facilities that match their sex assigned at birth, rolling back existing protections.

 

• March 23, 2018: The Trump Administration announced an implementation plan for its discriminatory ban on transgender military service members.

 

• February 18, 2018: The Department of Education announced it will summarily dismiss complaints from transgender students involving exclusion from school facilities and other claims based solely on gender identity discrimination.

 

• January 26, 2018: The Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule that encourages medical providers to use religious grounds to deny treatment to transgender people, people who need reproductive care, and others.

 

• January 18, 2018: The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights opened a "Conscience and Religious Freedom Division" that will promote discrimination by health care providers who can cite religious or moral reasons for denying care.

 

• December 14, 2017: Staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were instructed not to use the words “transgender,” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based” in official documents.

 

• October 6, 2017: The Justice Department released a sweeping "license to discriminate" allowing federal agencies, government contractors, government grantees, and even private businesses to engage in illegal discrimination, as long as they can cite religious reasons for doing so.

 

• October 5, 2017: The Justice Department released a memo instructing Department of Justice attorneys to take the legal position that federal law does not protect transgender workers from discrimination.

 

• September 7, 2017: The Justice Department filed a legal brief on behalf of the United States in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing for a constitutional right for businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and, implicitly, gender identity.

 

• August 25, 2017: President Trump released a memo directing Defense Department to move forward with developing a plan to discharge transgender military service members and to maintain a ban on recruitment.

 

• July 26, 2017: President Trump announced, via Twitter, that "the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military."

 

• July 26, 2017: The Justice Department filed a legal brief on behalf of the United States in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, arguing that the 1964 Civil Rights Act does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or, implicitly, gender identity. 

 

• June 14, 2017: The Department of Education withdrew its finding that an Ohio school district discriminated against a transgender girl. The Department gave no explanation for withdrawing the finding, which a federal judge upheld.

 

• May 2, 2017: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a plan to roll back regulations interpreting the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination provisions to protect transgender people.

 

• April 14, 2017: The Justice Department abandoned its historic lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s anti-transgender law. It did so after North Carolina replaced HB2 with a different anti-transgender law known as “HB 2.0.”

 

• April 4, 2017: The Departments of Justice and Labor cancelled quarterly conference calls with LGBT organizations; on these calls, which had happened for years, government attorneys shared information on employment laws and cases.

 

• March 31, 2017: The Justice Department announced it would review (and likely seek to scale back) numerous civil rights settlement agreements with police departments. These settlements were put in places where police departments were determined to be engaging in discriminatory and abusive policing, including racial and other profiling. Many of these agreements include critical protections for LGBT people.

 

• March 2017: The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) removed links to four key resource documents from its website, which informed emergency shelters on best practices for serving transgender people facing homelessness and complying with HUD regulations.

 

• March 28, 2017: The Census Bureau retracted a proposal to collect demographic information on LGBT people in the 2020 Census.

 

• March 24, 2017: The Justice Department cancelled a long-planned National Institute of Corrections broadcast on “Transgender Persons in Custody: The Legal Landscape.”

 

• March 13, 2017: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that its national survey of older adults, and the services they need, would no longer collect information on LGBT participants. HHS initially falsely claimed in its Federal Register announcement that it was making “no changes” to the survey.

 

• March 13, 2017: The State Department announced the official U.S. delegation to the UN’s 61st annual Commission on the Status of Women conference would include two outspoken anti-LGBT organizations, including a representative of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM): an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

 

• March 10, 2017: The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced it would withdraw two important agency-proposed policies designed to protect LGBT people experiencing homelessness. One proposed policy would have required HUD-funded emergency shelters to put up a poster or "notice" to residents of their right to be free from anti-LGBT discrimination under HUD regulations. 

The other announced a survey to evaluate the impact of the LGBTQ Youth Homelessness Prevention Initiative, implemented by HUD and other agencies over the last three years. This multi-year project should be evaluated, and with this withdrawal, we may never learn what worked best in the project to help homeless LGBTQ youth.

 

• March 8, 2017: Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) removed demographic questions about LGBT people that Centers for Independent Living must fill out each year in their Annual Program Performance Report. This report helps HHS evaluate programs that serve people with disabilities.

 

• March 2, 2017: The Department of Justice abandoned its request for a preliminary injunction against North Carolina’s anti-transgender House Bill 2, which prevented North Carolina from enforcing HB 2. This was an early sign that the Administration was giving up defending trans people (later, on April 14, it withdrew the lawsuit completely).

 

• March 1, 2017: The Department of Justice took the highly unusual step of declining to appeal a nationwide preliminary court order temporarily halting enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination protections for transgender people. The injunction prevents HHS from taking any action to enforce transgender people's rights from health care discrimination.

 

• February 22, 2017, 2017: The Departments of Justice and Education withdrew landmark 2016 guidance explaining how schools must protect transgender students under the federal Title IX law

 

[NB Adult]

46 minutes ago, Carolyn Marie said:

 

The "legal documentation" of which you speak is clearly available, and cited, in the long list of actual legal actions, court filings, and agency policy decisions taken by the Trump administration.  When HUD issues a policy directive telling HUD recipient agencies to deny trans women the right to go to a women's shelter, that is legal documentation.  When the Education Department issues a policy stating that Title IX protections do not apply to trans children, that is legal documentation.  What else are you looking for?

 

Carolyn Marie

 

Pretty much all that Susan has just provided. I am abysmally out of touch and lazy concerning discovery of these kinds of issues as transgender advocacy and activism doesn't occupy any of my waking life other than a few postings here. Thanks!

[NB Adult]

Guess they don't like us! ?

[Josie Beth]

Trump definitely doesn’t, but he really doesn’t speak for the majority of people in day to day life. That’s why I laugh when people assume that the president is the most powerful person in government. There’s always a potential for abuse but the final word is going to come from both congress and the courts. However even then most companies and businesses have adopted policies that have actually done more to protect people from discrimination than is even required by law. It’s not always that way but usually if someone has a relative who is lgbtq, they are more likely going to make sure their company has anti discrimination policies in place. Personally I’m aware of a couple of places like that but it’s just not the right fit for me or they aren’t hiring. 

[Jackie C.]

Dunno @Josie Beth, a president with a like-minded senate packing the judicial system with loyalist judges is still pretty darn scary to me. We haven't even begun to see the repercussions of that little trick. Add in all the other dirty deeds they've been pulling (election fraud, gerrymandering, etc...) and I'm worried that we'll turn into another Chile (for reference, the US is #2 behind Chile in a frightening number of inequality studies).

 

So yeah, color me nervous.

 

Hugs!

[Jani]

On 12/7/2019 at 7:22 AM, Charlize said:

becomes obvious that we are increasingly a target for the right wing.

I remember someone writing that we are the next convenient target now that their other "boogie mans" are no longer available.  

[Jackie C.]

"Other" and mostly harmless? That sounds about right. We're easy to track too, so that's probably a bonus. I still think they'll be working on Muslims for a while longer though. They seem to have a real hate on for Muslims (unless they own vast oil fields. Those Muslims are apparently OK).

 

Hugs!