The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled in favor of three transgender students who were forbidden by their schools from using bathrooms matching their gender identities. The circuit court upheld a lower court’s preliminary injunction that said the schools have to let trans students use facilities associated with their genders.
“Students who are denied access to the appropriate facilities are caused both serious emotional and physical harm as they are denied recognition of who they are,” said ACLU of Indiana lawyer Kenneth Falk. “They will often avoid using the restroom altogether while in school. Schools should be a safe place for kids and the refusal to allow a student to use the correct facilities can be extremely damaging.”
The case involves three trans boys in Martinsville, Indiana and Terre Haute, Indiana, who need access to the boys’ room at their middle and high schools.
One of the boys, identified as A.C. in court documents, is 13 and knew he was a boy since age eight. When he started seventh grade at John R. Wooden Middle School, his stepfather asked that he be allowed to use the boys’ rooms. The school refused and said that A.C. has to use either the girls’ room or a unisex bathroom in the health clinic.
Since he wasn’t out as trans to his classmates, he didn’t want to use the girls’ room. The only accommodation he got was that he wasn’t punished for tardiness when he used the health clinic bathroom. The school suggested he go entirely to online classes just to keep him out of the boys’ restroom.
He felt “depressed, humiliated, and angry” at school and tried to avoid going to be bathroom, which became a major distraction.
The school district actually had a policy to allow some trans students to use the appropriate bathrooms at the district high school, but they told him they couldn’t accommodate him because he’s in middle school.
The other two plaintiffs are 15-year-old twins B.E. and S.E. at Terre Haute North Vigo High School, who both transitioned socially when they were 11. They both also have a colon condition that requires them to take laxatives and have regular access to bathrooms.
They started using the boys’ restrooms in 2021 and no students had a problem with them doing so, the court documents say. But school employees who knew they were trans admonished them. Their mother met with the vice principal, and she was told that the twins had to use the girls’ facilities or a bathroom in the health office.
Since they weren’t out as trans at school, they worried about upsetting the other girls by using the girls’ facilities, and the health office was often locked during parts of the day and far away. B.E. had an accident once because he couldn’t get to the health office in time.
The school’s transgender bathroom policy took numerous factors into consideration and the school’s administration said that trans students needed unspecified surgical changes before they could use the correct bathroom. Gender-affirming surgery is banned for trans people under the age of 18 in Indiana.
The court took into account the fact that Title IX bans discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal money, which is most of them. Citing the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton Co. that found that job discrimination against LGBTQ+ people necessarily takes sex into account and is therefore prohibited under Title VII, the appeals court ruled that the trans boys are likely to succeed in their case and that preventing them from using the correct bathroom while the case works its way through the court system could cause irreparable harm.
“Litigation over transgender rights is occurring all over the country, and we assume that at some point the Supreme Court will step in with more guidance than it has furnished so far,” Judge Diane Wood wrote for the court in her opinion.
A European man has been in a state of remission from HIV infection for nearly two years after receiving a stem cell transplant to treat blood cancer. If enough time passes with no signs of viable virus, he could join the rarefied club of five people who are considered either definitely or possibly cured of HIV.
All six people had HIV when they received stem cell transplants to treat blood cancers such as leukemia or lymphoma. But unlike the five other cases, this new one involves a person whose donor did not have a rare genetic abnormality that generates resistance to HIV in the immune cells that the virus targets for infection.
The man’s case will be presented next week at the International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science in Brisbane, Australia. This major biennial gathering of scientists will also hear noteworthy presentations regarding post-treatment control of HIV in infant boys, circumcision’s impact on HIV risk in gay men, and the relationship between HIV and mpox (formerly known as monkeypox).
It remains unethical for a person with HIV who does not already qualify for a stem cell transplant due to cancer to undergo such a treatment in hopes of curing the virus, given such treatment’s considerable toxicity. Scientists generally expect that any success in the effort to develop a widely scalable HIV cure therapy will likely take decades.
Nevertheless, Dr. Sharon Lewin, president of the IAS and director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia, called the new viral remission case “great news.” Such case reports, she said, “help in many ways in the work toward a cure.”
The ‘Geneva Patient’
The man newly in remission from HIV has been dubbed the Geneva Patient, after the Swiss city where he has received his treatment. He is in his early 50s, was diagnosed with the virus in 1990 and began taking antiretroviral treatment in 2005. In 2018, he was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer known as an extramedullary myeloid tumor. He was treated with radiation, chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant.
His case has been overseen by a research team led by Asier Sáez-Cirión, head of the viral reservoirs and immune control unit at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
HIV is vexingly difficult to cure. This is in large part because even when suppressed by antiretrovirals, the virus hides in nonreplicating immune cells, known collectively as the viral reservoir. Such standard HIV treatment only works on cells that are actively producing new viral copies. So the virus remains under the radar of antiretrovirals within these latently infected cells, each of which can take months or even years to return to a replicating state.
Since the first such case was announced in 2008, three people have definitely been cured and two additional people, pending more time passing without a viral rebound, have possibly been cured of HIV.
Prior to the Geneva Patient’s case, a handful of other people with HIV who developed cancer also received stem cell transplants from donors without the rare genetic mutation conferring natural resistance to the virus. But none from this group went more than 10 months after stopping antiretroviral treatment without a resurgent virus. Hopes that they had been cured were dashed.
The man in Switzerland has now spent 20 months with no viral rebound, having been taken off of antiretrovirals in November 2021. Sáez-Cirión and his colleagues have conducted a battery of ultrasensitive tests in search of HIV in his body and have only been able to detect trace amounts of defective virus. But they still cannot rule out that the man retains even a single cell infected with viable virus, one that could spring to action at any moment and repopulate the body with HIV.
“The possibility of viral rebound is indeed a concern,” Sáez-Cirión said. “The virus may persist in rare infected blood cells or anatomical sites that we have not analyzed.”
It remains unclear why the Geneva Patient’s case has been so successful, at least thus far, while others who received similar treatment were not so fortunate.
Dr. Steven Deeks, a leading HIV cure researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study of the Geneva Patient, said the details of the case “suggest that what we once assumed was impossible might in fact be possible.”
Speculating about the drivers of this man’s lengthy HIV remission, Deeks said, “Eliminating most if not all of the reservoir with chemotherapy was certainly the key intervention.” Deeks also noted the man’s repeated episodes of what is known as graft-versus-host disease, a powerful and potentially dangerous immune reaction that occurs as a consequence of a stem cell transplant. This might have also played a crucial role, Deeks said, “as the newly rebuilt immune system may have been attacking and clearing the old immune system, including any residual T cells harboring HIV.”
Sáez-Cirión said it is also possible that the immunosuppressive drugs that the Geneva Patient continues to receive to prevent graft-versus-host disease may be preventing any residual HIV from replicating.
Post-treatment control of HIV
Researchers in sub-Saharan Africa have identified a handful of boys born with HIV who did not experience viral rebound even after their antiretroviral treatment was interrupted for extended periods.
This finding comes from a study of 281 mothers in South Africa who had passed HIV to their newborns. The infants were all put on antiretrovirals immediately after birth. But the investigators eventually discovered that the caretakers of five boys had not provided them with HIV treatment for periods spanning three to 10 months, and yet each of these children maintained an undetectable or very low viral load.
Four of the boys were immediately put back on HIV treatment. However, one other has been kept off of treatment and has now passed 19 months without a viral rebound. Three of the others have been enrolled in a study in which their treatment will once again be interrupted, but under close monitoring.
Dr. Gabriela Cromhout, a research clinician and doctoral candidate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and one of the lead authors of the study, said three of the boys can be classified as so-called post-treatment controllers of HIV, because they had sustained an undetectable viral load for more than six months while off antiretrovirals.
In advance of their conference presentation, Cromhout and her colleagues did not, however, conduct any ultrasensitive tests to search for the residual presence of HIV in the children’s bodies. Such tests are ongoing.
Dr. Deborah Persaud, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the head of a major ongoing study seeking to cure HIV in infants, said, “This is an enormous advance for the field of HIV remission and cure.” However, Persaud, who was not involved in the South African study, said to back their findings, the study’s investigators would need to present data at the conference confirming that the five boys were infected and that they were indeed off antiretrovirals for the extended periods — data that Cromhout confirmed her team has on hand.
Circumcision and HIV risk
In the mid-2000s, a trio of randomized controlled trials in sub-Saharan Africa determined that circumcising men reduced the risk of female-to-male sexual transmission of HIV by about 50% to 60%.
Now, a research team in China is the first to have completed such a study of gay and bisexual men. They enrolled about 250 uncircumcised men who have sex with men who reported primarily being the insertive partner in intercourse (known as being the “top”). Half were randomly selected to be circumcised. After one year, five study participants contracted HIV, all of them in the control group. The study registered no significant differences in sexual behaviors between the two study groups that might have affected the men’s relative risk of HIV.
The difference in the HIV acquisition rate between the two study groups, the investigators calculated, was statistically significant.
On a media call Wednesday, Dr. Huachun Zou, a professor of epidemiology at the Sun Yat-sen University School of Public Health in Shenzhen, China, said larger studies may be necessary to fully establish whether circumcision reduces the risk of HIV among gay and bisexual men. But he said it is “very unlikely” that researchers will, indeed, launch such research because of the global popularity of the HIV prevention pill, known as PrEP, as a means of reducing risk of the virus among gay and bi men. He said PrEP is not, however, widely used in China, a nation that also has a low circumcision rate.
HIV and mpox hospitalization
This study looked at surveillance data from the World Health Organization regarding 82,290 mpox cases from 2022. There was information about the HIV status for 39% of these people, among whom 52% — 16,633 people, or 20% of the total — had that virus.
The study found that overall, having HIV was not associated with a greater likelihood of being hospitalized with mpox. However, being immunocompromised, including from HIV or from another factor, was tied to about two to four times the hospitalization risk, compared with being HIV-negative and having a healthy immune system.
Fifty-eight of the people with HIV died, as did four of the 15,371 people without HIV.
Recent polling shows that Americans increasingly support transphobic bathroom bills, but social science research suggests that this trend could be reversed if more Americans simply came to personally know transgender people.
In a poll released last October, approximately 52% of Americans said they support “bathroom bills” requiring trans people to use facilities matching the sex they were assigned at birth. This was 17% higher than the 35% who supported bathroom bills when the same question was asked in 2016, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) reported.
This increase is most likely due to the recent wave of transphobic legislation and rhetoric by conservatives nationwide. As of July 28, 80 anti-trans bills have been passed in state legislatures in 2023 so far, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, a 207% increase from the 26 transphobic bills passed in 2022. Many of these laws ban trans people from accessing correct bathrooms, gender-affirming care, or having their identities respected in public schools and other institutions.
However, a June 2023 PRRI survey found that people who know trans people are less likely to agree with transphobic political views. This illustrates a phenomenon known in social science research as “intergroup contact theory.”
The theory states that interpersonal contact with people who are different from one’s self leads to more positive attitudes about those people and a decreased belief in negative stereotypes about them, PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman wrote at The Hill.
For example, in the June 2023 survey, 70% of trans respondents and respondents who are personally close to a trans person said they opposed bans on gender-affirming care for trans children. Comparatively, only 52% of cisgender respondents and those who don’t personally know trans people said that they opposed the bans.
Approximately 35% of respondents who know a trans acquaintance agreed with the conservative view that “young people are being peer pressured into being transgender.” That percentage rose to 49% among respondents who don’t know any transgender people.
Similarly, 20% of respondents who are personally close to a trans person agree that it’s never appropriate to discuss that some people are trans in public schools — a view that has been pushed by the anti-LGBTQ+ group Moms for Liberty and other so-called “parents’ rights” groups. That percentage rose to 41% among respondents who don’t know any transgender people.
In short, the increase in transphobic rhetoric and legislation has been able to thrive because most Americans don’t know actual trans people.
In fact, only 6% to 11% of all respondents in the June 2023 survey said that they have a “close personal relationship” with a trans friend or family member. Comparatively, 40% to 59% of all respondents said that they have a “close personal relationship” with a gay, lesbian, or bisexual friend or family member.
But while the trans community may benefit politically in the long run by building closer relationships with cisgender people, that still presents some challenges. Foremost, some trans people may feel afraid of outing themselves to cis family members, neighbors, and co-workers who may be unsupportive or even hostile to trans individuals.
Lambda Legal, with partners McDermott Will & Emery and Merchant Gould P.C., filed a federal lawsuit against Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County late last week challenging the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department’s (MNPD) discriminatory policies and practices that reject all job applicants living with HIV.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee on behalf of an anonymous plaintiff, John Doe, a 45-year-old Black man and decorated civil servant living with HIV who has worked as a Tennessee State Trooper and with the Memphis Police Department for several years. The plaintiff was previously offered a position in the MNPD, but his 2020 offer was later rescinded solely because of his HIV status.
“This lawsuit responds to a clear case of HIV and employment discrimination where the MNPD denied employment to a well-qualified applicant due only to his HIV status. This applicant was taking advantage of today’s medical advancements and treatments; there is absolutely no reason why his HIV status is at all relevant to his ability to perform the duties of a job in law enforcement, the military, or any other job. In this case, the discrimination is even more egregious since the plaintiff had been serving as a police officer in Tennessee for years with no issue. To the contrary, he has been recognized for his work.” said Greg Nevins, Senior Counsel and the Director of Lambda Legal’s Employment Fairness Project.
“There are many concerning aspects of this discriminatory policy but a particular one is the racial aspect. Nashville is a city where almost 60% of people living with HIV are Black, and black men, who face disproportionate access to preventative health care, are 3.1 times more likely to live with HIV than White males. Given this data, the MNPD’s discriminatory policy clearly has a disproportionate impact on Black people and people of color. Discriminating on the basis of HIV status brings up other potential intersectional issues of race, gender, sexual orientation and, of course, stigma,” said Jose Abrigo, HIV Project Director at Lambda Legal.
“McDermott Will & Emery is proud to serve as co-counsel with Lambda Legal and Merchant Gould on this important employment discrimination case,” said Lisa A. Linsky,McDermott Litigation partner, co-lead on the case and founder of McDermott’s LGBTQ+ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee. Our law firm has a rich history of pro bono work supporting marginalized communities and fighting unjust laws, and we are committed to ensuring justice for all Americans.”
The Police Department’s policy rejected the plaintiff’s application during the Civil Service Medical Officer’s exam process claiming that an applicant “must meet or exceed the medical standards set forth in the United States Army Induction Standards.” MNPD uses the Pentagon’s medical exam policies for hiring purposes. Lambda Legal is fighting this same hiring policy from the Pentagon in federal court in the lawsuit Wilkins v. Austin, related to the U.S. Armed Forces’ policy barring people living with HIV from enlisting.
However, since 2022, the Pentagon is no longer either discharging military members due to HIV or considering HIV status for deployment or commissions, following a landmark ruling in April 2022 that was not appealed. A Virginia federal judge ruled that, as to servicemembers living with HIV who are asymptomatic and virally suppressed, the military could not discharge them, refuse to commission them, or categorically bar their worldwide deployment based on their HIV status. This victory came in lawsuits Harrison v. Austin and Roe and Voe v. Austin – litigation Lambda Legal brought with its partners Modern Military Association, Winston & Strawn LLP, Peter Perkowski, Esq., and Scott Schoettes.
The lawsuit filed last week, John Doe v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Metropolitan Nashville Police Department argues that MNPD’s policies are unlawful and constitute a violation of federal law including, but not limited to, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
This lawsuit is the latest in Lambda Legal’s long history of fighting HIV discrimination nationwide, starting in 1983 with People v. West 12 Tenants Corp., helping to establish the illegality of discriminating against people living with HIV.
Anti-abortion advocates in the U.S. are threatening to kill one of the most successful public health programs in history over unsubstantiated facts, unwavering opposition to a woman’s right to choose, and blatant anti-LGBTQ+ bias.
Conservative rganizations, including the Heritage Foundation and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, are threatening U.S. lawmakers with the withdrawal of their support if they grant a routine reauthorization to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the hugely successful HIV prevention initiative in Africa.
The far-right Family Research Council describes the 20-year-old program as “a massive slush fund for abortion and LGBT advocacy.”
PEPFAR, initiated by President George W. Bush, is estimated to have saved over 25 million lives.
While the Biden administration maintains that the program — reauthorized every five years under Democratic and Republican presidents alike — does not fund abortions, those assertions aren’t enough for critics who are convinced that money from the initiative is flowing to abortion providers.
PEPFAR grantees are “promoting and helping to support abortions abroad,” Ryan Walker, the head of Heritage Action, told Christianity Today. “A five-year reauthorization to us is beyond the pale.”
The program’s $6 billion annual budget is dedicated to buying antiretroviral drugs and medical supplies, and paying for drug delivery and prevention programs, including funding for both condoms and abstinence education.
According to Doug Fountain, executive director of Christian Connections for International Health, assertions PEPFAR is funding anything other than HIV prevention are based on unsubstantiated “rumors” among people who are far removed from the funding’s beneficiaries.
“The way we look at it is, which is the more pro-life position: supporting a proven program that saves lives, or impeding it out of unsubstantiated fear?” Walker asked. “We actually can see a situation where HIV/AIDS will come under global control in the next decade or so. But we need to keep our eye on the ball and not stop progress based on rumors.”
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), now in his 22nd term representing central New Jersey, is leading the charge against what was, until now, a routine and bipartisan five-year reauthorization.
The 70-year-old congressman has fallen in line with so-called pro-life organizations advocating for a one-year authorization, denying the program the long lead times required to properly implement it, and leaving PEPFAR’s fate to the whims of politics.
Smith now claims his previous support for the program was a response to an “emergency,” and a necessary if temporary “tourniquet” for a “horrific problem.”
PEPFAR was already subjected to prohibitions on abortion access through longstanding restrictions like the Helms and Siljander Amendments. However, in 2018, the administration of President Donald Trump included the program in the Mexico City Policy, at Smith’s insistence. The Mexico City Policy explicitly prohibits U.S.-funded organizations from using money from any source to perform or advocate for abortions overseas.
The Biden administration stripped that provision from the amendment reauthorizing PEPFAR. Smith has staked any new funding on reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy.
Smith also pointed to a lunch meeting with the head of PEPFAR, John Nkengasong, to explain his new-found opposition.
Smith claims Nkengasong told him he works at “10,000 feet” and didn’t know what local organizations were doing on the ground. “If you tell me face-to-face over lunch that you have no idea what they’re doing at the local level, I have a problem with that,” the congressman told Christianity Today.
PEPFAR gives “a pot of money that empowers the abortion lobby in each and every one of these countries,” Smith claimed, without evidence.
For his part, Nkengasong maintains “PEPFAR has never, will not ever, use that platform in supporting abortion.”
Four Florida residents filed a motion in federal court yesterday seeking an emergency block on provisions in SB 254 that have created arbitrary, harmful and medically unjustified restrictions on medically-necessary healthcare for transgender adults. Olivia Noel, Kai Pope, Lucien Hamel, and Rebecca Cruz Evia, are all facing dangerous disruptions in their ongoing medical care due to the Florida law.
The motion for preliminary injunction filed yesterday follows the filing of an amended complaint on July 21 expanding the case, Doe v. Ladapo, to challenge state law SB 254’s restrictions on medical care for transgender adults and seeking class-wide relief for all transgender minors and adults who require medical care restricted by SB 254.
“I have been following an established healthcare plan for years, but because of SB 254 my care has suddenly stopped and I can no longer see the provider I trust and who knows my medical history,” said plaintiff Lucien Hamel. “I’m terrified because stopping my care is already having a negative impact on my health and on my family.”
“My physician had to cancel my procedure because of SB 254,” said plaintiff Rebecca Cruz Evia. “I can’t even schedule an appointment with a physician because they are all afraid of this law, even though medical providers have determined this care is medically necessary for me. I’m frustrated and scared about what will happen if I can’t get the care I need.
“I wake up every day feeling like I’m in a nightmare. SB 254 has canceled medically-necessary treatment prescribed for me by my medical team,” said plaintiff Kai Pope. “As a physician myself, SB 254 alarms me not only because of the devastating harm it is causing me and other transgender Floridians, but because of the disruption it is causing to our healthcare system.”
The plaintiffs are represented by Southern Legal Counsel, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the Human Rights Campaign, which issued the following statement:
“SB 254’s restrictions on well-established medical care cause profound harm, serve no legitimate purpose, and reflect gross legislative overreach. SB 254 takes away Floridian’s ability to make important decisions about their own lives and hands it over to the government instead. That should alarm us all.
“In addition to banning established medical care for transgender adolescents and creating criminal and civil penalties for those providing such care, SB 254 enacted severe restrictions on access to care for adults. Advanced Practice Registered Nurse – Nurse Practitioners (APRN-NPs) are critical providers of transgender healthcare in Florida. SB 254 now completely bars them from continuing to treat transgender patients. SB 254 also arbitrarily restricts the use of telehealth for transgender patients and requires in-person consultation for the initial prescription of all transition-related care, a requirement that can be impossible to meet for Florida residents who don’t live near a providing physician. Pursuant to SB 254, the Boards of Medicine have also created mandatory, one-size-fits-all consent forms that defeat the purpose of informed consent by requiring providers to convey false information to their patients and by imposing extremely burdensome, unnecessary, and medically unjustified requirements that transgender patients must meet to obtain even routine transition-related care. Rather than protecting transgender patients, these restrictions intentionally make it difficult or impossible for transgender adults to receive needed medical care.
“These restrictions serve no medical purpose and intentionally prevent transgender people from receiving the care they need.”
The motion filed yesterday by plaintiffs Olivia Noel, Kai Pope, Lucien Hamel, and Rebecca Cruz Evia seeks an emergency block on all provisions in SB 254 and related Boards of Medicine Rules restricting access to established transgender medical care for adults while their legal challenge to SB 254 continues.
The federal district court issued a prior preliminary injunction on June 6 halting enforcement of the ban on healthcare for transgender minors and saying the ban is likely unconstitutional. That order allows Florida parents to access necessary medical care for their transgender children.
Southern Legal Counsel, Inc. (SLC) is a Florida statewide not-for-profit public interest law firm that is committed to the ideal of equal justice for all and the attainment of basic human and civil rights. SLC’s Transgender Rights Initiative protects the rights of Florida’s LGBTQ+ community through federal impact litigation, policy advocacy, and individual representation.www.southernlegal.org
Through strategic litigation, public policy advocacy, and education, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) works to create a just society free of discrimination based on gender identity and expression, HIV status, and sexual orientation.www.glad.org
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.www.hrc.org
The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) is a national legal organization committed to advancing the human and civil rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. Since its founding, NCLR has maintained a longstanding commitment to racial and economic justice and the LGBTQ community’s most vulnerable.www.nclrights.org
Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that could help transgender and nonbinary people receive accurate credit scores.
The Name Accuracy in Credit Reporting Act, introduced last week by Sens. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Tina Smith (D-MN), would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to require credit reporting agencies to only use a person’s current legal name in credit reports, according to The Hill. In March, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) marked Transgender Day of Visibility by introducing companion legislation in the House.
As Fetterman’s office noted in a press release announcing the introduction of the legislation, people who legally change their names often face challenges obtaining accurate credit reports and scores. When they apply for credit using their new names, credit bureaus create entirely new credit files. These fragmented credit reports can result in a drop in their credit scores, impacting their ability to access loans, rent homes, and get jobs.
Currently, even when trans and nonbinary people update their credit files, credit agencies can continue to use their deadnames in their credit reports, potentially outing them and exposing them to harassment and discrimination. As The 19th* noted, 27 percent of trans respondents to a recent survey conducted by the Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement & Research and the Movement Advancement Project said they faced discrimination in banking and financial services.
“Amid the ongoing attacks on the LGBTQ community, I am proud to introduce this bill with Senator Smith that is a commonsense measure to make it easier for people who change their names to obtain accurate credit reports and information,” Fetterman said in a statement. “Whether it’s transgender and nonbinary people or survivors of domestic violence, every American should be able to get an accurate credit report and score.”
“Nobody should face unnecessary burdens to receive a mortgage or a car loan, but transgender and nonbinary Americans have to deal with credit agencies that can’t even get their name right,” said Smith. “This bill fixes a simple issue that Minnesotans have been asking me to help fix, and it will help trans and nonbinary Americans clear a hurdle to accessing loans.”
Fetterman previously raised the issue to the CEOs of Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion—the “big three credit reporting agencies—during an April Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing.
Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Ed Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Patty Murray (D-WA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) joined Fetterman and Smith in co-sponsoring the legislation, which has been endorsed by over a dozen LGBTQ+ and progressive organizations.
An alarming 81% of transgender adults have considered suicide, according to a new studyfrom the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. Comparatively, it found 35% of cisgender adults have considered suicide.
The first-of-its-kind study, which appeared in this month’s edition of the journal Psychiatry Research, examined the prevalence of serious drug use, psychological distress, and suicidality among a nationally representative sample of trans and cisgender adults. The study took its data from the U.S. Transgender Population Health Survey (TransPop).
The study found that 42% of trans adults have attempted suicide, compared to just 11% of cis adults. It also found that 56% of trans adults have engaged in non-suicidal self-injury, compared to 12% of cis adults.
Overall, trans people said they were significantly more likely to experience poor mental health during their lifetimes than cis people. However, 82% of trans adults said they had sought mental health treatment at some point, compared to just 47% of cis adults.
While trans and cis adults both reported similar rates of hazardous drinking and problematic drug use, trans nonbinary adults reported the highest rates of substance use.
For example, while 17% of trans women and 25% of trans men reported hazardous drinking, 45% of trans nonbinary people reported the same. While 33% of trans women and 18% of trans men reported problematic drug use, 42% of trans nonbinary people reported the same.
Trans nonbinary adults also reported more problematic drug use, more psychological distress, more suicidal ideation, and more non-suicidal self-injury than trans men, with rates of three to six times greater than that of trans men.
One of the study’s authors, Ilan H. Meyer, said, “A lack of societal recognition and acceptance of gender identities outside of the binary of cisgender man or woman and increasing politically motivated attacks on transgender individuals increase stigma and prejudice and related exposure to minority stress, which contributes to the high rates of substance use and suicidality we see among transgender people.”
Sadly, the study’s findings seem to back up a May 2023 study from The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ youth anti-suicide organization. In that study, 66% of queer youth said that anti-LGBTQ+ legislation had negatively affected their mental health, and 41% of LGBTQ+ youth in the U.S. said they’d seriously considered suicide in the last year.
Among suicidal survey respondents, those who identified as transgender, nonbinary, and/or people of color reported higher rates of suicidal ideation than their peers. Rates of anxiety and depression were, on average, 18.5% higher among trans, nonbinary, and questioning youth than among cisgender youth.
In addition to the mental distress, 64% of trans and nonbinary young people reported feeling discriminated against in the past year due to their gender identity, and 27% of trans and nonbinary young people reported being physically threatened or harmed in the past year due to their gender identity.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgment-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.
More than 100 transgender men have entered the Miss Italy pageant this week, according to an activist leading a protest against recent comments by the pageant’s organizer, who said trans women wouldn’t be allowed to compete.
The comments came after another European pageant, Miss Netherlands, crowned its first transgender winner, Rikkie Valerie Kollé, this month. About a week later, Patrizia Mirigliani, the official organizer of Miss Italy, told an Italian radio station that Miss Italy wouldn’t allow trans women to compete.
“Lately, beauty contests have been trying to make the news using strategies that I think are a bit absurd,” Mirigliani said, according to the Italian news outlet Il Primato Nazionale.
She added that Miss Italy has historically allowed only people who were assigned female at birth to enter, “probably because, even then, it was foreseen that beauty could undergo modifications, or that women could undergo modifications, or that men could become women,” according to Il Primato Nazionale.
Trans activist Federico Barbarossa, who lives in Bari, a town in southern Italy, said that he became angry when he saw Mirigliani’s comments but that he was “also kind of amused by it, because I was like, ‘Yeah, well, I was assigned female at birth, but they would reject me because I look like a boy, and they would consider me as a boy,’” he said in an interview with NBC News.
Barbarossa decided to enter the pageant under his deadname, or the name he was given at birth, as a form of protest in solidarity with trans women. Barbarossa shared a screenshot of an email he received confirming his registration on Instagram, and then the local LGBTQ nonprofit group he works with, Mixed LGBTQIA+, shared his entry on Facebook with a statement encouraging other trans men to do the same.
The campaign went viral online, Barbarossa said, and he estimates that more than 100 trans men have entered the pageant so far. He said some told him they haveeven been called to selections, which is the next step in the process to find contestants across the country.
Miss Italy organizers “really have to go through every single application,” Barbarossa said. He hopes the protest will “maybe lead them to think better next time.”
“I like to think I’m a little part of Italy’s progress in this sense,” Barbarossa said.
Mirigliani and Miss Italy organizers didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
More beauty pageants have started to include trans women in recent years. In 2018, Angela Ponce became the first trans woman to compete in the Miss Universe pageant. Then, in 2021, Kataluna Enriquez became the first trans woman to compete in the Miss USA pageant after she was crowned Miss Nevada. Some countries, such as Mexico and Thailand, have held separate beauty pageants for trans women.
Barbarossa said he thinks beauty pageants try to exclude trans women in part because they simply don’t understand them or have false ideas about what it means to be trans.
Authorities in Plano, Texas, are investigating what they call “an intentionally set fire” at a Unitarian Universalist church Sunday, just weeks after it was targeted for criticism in a video by an anti-LGBTQ Christian YouTuber.
A passerby spotted flames coming from the Community Unitarian Universalist Church early Sunday, Plano Fire-Rescue said in a statement. The fire was around the front door and was extinguished quickly, causing no injuries, it said.
The department is leading the criminal investigation into the fire, with the city’s police department working on its own investigation, authorities told NBC News.
The church called the incident “a firebomb attack” in a statement on its Facebook page, saying “an incendiary device with a chemical accelerant was thrown or placed at the front doors of the main church building.”
It also referred to the visit from right-wing content creator Bo Alford, who goes by “bodittle” on social media, less than a month earlier.
“Church officials have been reviewing building security and working with the Plano Police Department since the intrusion of a hate group in the church building during and after Worship Service on Sunday, June 25. That group has posted video of their activities inside the church on various social media sites.”
Church board member Jodie Zoeller Bloom confirmed that the statement referred to Alford’s video, titled “We acted LGBT at LGBT Church,” which he uploaded to YouTube on July 12.
In the video, Alford, fellow YouTuber Cassady Campbell and another man film themselves visiting the Plano church. They ask the congregation about their beliefs while in their words, “pretending to be LGBTQ” with the goal of “testing” the church’s theology and exposing “false teachers.”
At the end of the video, which has been viewed more than 200,000 times, the men stand by the church sign and ask viewers to “pray for these people,” calling the church “pagan and satanic.”
In an email, Alford said, “First and foremost, my prayers go out to anyone effected by the fire. As to the accusations, My channel spreads the message of Jesus and his love for us. If you watch the video you will see the members of the church having nothing but nice things to say about us. She enjoyed our conversation and even ended it with a hug. The fact we are being labeled as a hate group and being tied to this fire in any way is appalling.”
In his social media bios, Alford describes himself as, “Believer Of Christ YouTuber/ Boxer/Pro Lib Troller.” His videos often feature him and his friends “pranking” politically and socially liberal Americans, particularly focusing on members of the LGBTQ community.
Authorities have not suggested any connection between Alford’s visit and subsequent video and the church fire. Plano police told the Dallas Morning News on Sunday that the department “cannot confirm” the fire “as a hate crime” at this time, though the investigation is ongoing.