It appears we are on our own...a truly bad week
To claim the week was anything but a disaster for transgender people would be Trump-level dissembling.
On Tuesday, two cabinet secretaries testified before House committees. HUD Secretary Ben Carson admitted that he has delayed implementing homeless shelter protections for transgender people because it’s “a very complex issue.” By “complex,” he means that he’s catering to those prejudiced against trans people who fear sharing facilities with them.
The problem with Carson’s response is that the guidance he’s refusing to implement already accounts for the concerns he expressed. Published three years ago, the rule says that if shelters have concerns about privacy or safety, it must take steps to address them without refusing service to transgender people or segregating them. It explicitly provides suggestions for these accommodations and even notes that funding is available to assist with necessary renovations:
This may include, for example: responding to the requests of the client expressing concern through the addition of a privacy partition or curtain; provision to use a nearby private restroom or office; or a separate changing schedule. The provider must, at a minimum, permit any clients expressing concern to use bathrooms and dressing areas at a separate time from others in the facility. The provider should, to the extent feasible, work with the layout of the facility to provide for privacy in bathrooms and dressing areas. For example, toilet stalls should have doors and locks and there should be separate showers stalls to allow for privacy.
Carson recently proposed removing HUD’s commitment to nondiscrimination from its mission statement and he has a long history of flagrantly anti-LGBTQ positions. Implying that transgender people deserve to be homeless just because of their “anatomy” is simply the latest addition to that litany.
--Zack Ford, Think Progress
And then there was Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) asked her about the department’s recent announcement that it would no longer consider Title IX complaints from transgender students denied access to bathrooms, locker rooms, or sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Title IX protects students on the basis of “sex,” but Devos confirmed she does not believe that applies to transgender students.
Until either the Supreme Court or Congress clarifies the law with regard to transgender access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and athletic teams, that is not an area where law has been clarified. This department is not going to make law. We are going to continue to enforce laws that we are given to do.
--Devos
Her claim that the department cannot “make” law ignores that it’s the department’s job to interpret the law. The Obama administration believed that Title IX does protect transgender students, but DeVos reversed that guidance. Several courts have ultimately agreed with the Obama administration’s interpretation, because if Title IX doesn’t recognize transgender students’ gender identities, then they are actually less protected under the law than their cisgender peers. If the law says that a transgender boy is only protected for being mistreated as a girl because he was assigned female at birth, he wouldn’t be protected at all because he’s a boy and would thus never file a complaint that he was being unfairly treated as a girl.
--Ford
Then Friday rolled around. Yesterday I published a diary about what I thought were the Mattis recommendations which were submitted to the White House concerning military service by transgender personnel.
We are now learning that Mattis' Panel of Experts were overruled by a different "working group" which prepared an overruling report (the one I reported on yesterday) behind the scenes.
That working group was led by Vice President Pence and included Ryan Anderson from the Heritage Foundation and Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council.
But don't let Mattis off the hook here.
Mattis actually supports open transgender service, but he was effectively overruled by Pence, and chose not to spend his limited political capital further defending trans troops. In a memo released on Friday, Mattis encouraged Trump to ban transgender people from enlisting in the military, and to discharge those service members who wish to transition. Trump has now formally adopted these suggestions.
--Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
Given its authors, the Trump report’s conclusions are unsurprising. It claims transgender service members “undermine readiness,” which is demonstrably false. The RAND study carefully analyzed the armed forces of Australia, Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom after each country legalized open trans service, and it found these policies had no impact on “readiness.” Yet the Trump report disavows this conclusion by pointing out that each country reported some initial “resistance in the ranks”—which, it argues, “is a strong indication of an adverse effect on unit cohesion.”
Courts are unlikely to find that this concern justifies Trump’s ban. Private prejudice against transgender people cannot justify invidious discrimination, and former military leaders have already testified that the trans-inclusive policy had no deleterious effects. Moreover, this claim is padded out with language questioning whether treatment genuinely helps transgender people, asserting that their “high rates of mental health conditions” are not truly allayed by transition. This is dangerous nonsense; transition care has proved highly effective at treating gender dysphoria and accompanying conditions. Yet the new policy would prevent trans service members from transitioning, thereby forcing them to continue living with a treatable condition.
--Stern
Finally, the Trump report alleges that trans service “imposes disproportionate costs” by imposing a “negative budgetary impact” due to the medical needs of transgender service members. How much of a negative budgetary impact are we talking about? The report doesn’t say, or even estimate. But a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that a transgender service member costs the military roughly 22 cents per month. That figure is, of course, extraordinarily low. It is especially ironic to see Trump use budget concerns to justify this ban as he plans a pointless and exorbitantly expensive military parade.
--Stern
The report encourages Trump to ban openly transgender people from entering the military; discharge current service members who come out as transgender, unless they agree not to transition; and allow those individuals who came out under the previous policy to remain enlisted, with full access to health care. That last prong theoretically protects the roughly 8,980 trans troops currently serving. It represents an effort to satisfy judicial concerns over the Pentagon potentially punishing those who relied on the old policy; due process concerns are heightened when the government breaks a promise upon which citizens reasonably relied. And the entire reports mark an attempt to retroactively justify Trump’s ban by lending it a sheen of reason and legitimacy.
--Stern
So that was three Cabinet secretaries abandoning our rights and protections under the Constitution.
Expecting that we are anything but on our own is naïveté.