Christopher Wiggins

Every afternoon, when Saoirse Stone gets home from her job as a teacher in Florida, she performs a small ritual. She changes out of the clothes she wore to school. She sets aside the bag that holds her lesson plans. She places everything she will need for the next day near the door, then tries to stop thinking about the classroom. It is, she says, the only way to keep herself intact. “You have to have a clear division,” Stone, who is transgender, told The Advocatein an interview. “I change clothes immediately. I set my work stuff down. And then I don’t touch […]

The Trump administration has ordered federal prisons to begin tapering hormone therapy for incarcerated transgender people. Physicians say that it could inflict immediate psychological distress and long-term medical harm on a vulnerable population. The guidance, issued February 19 by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, outlines how the federal prison system will treat incarcerated people diagnosed with gender dysphoria. It bars the agency from initiating hormone therapy for inmates who were not already receiving it and instructs clinicians to develop tapering plans that could ultimately discontinue treatment for prisoners who currently rely on hormones as part of their medical care. To physicians who treat transgender patients, the […]

A new report is raising questions about how U.S. law enforcement agencies across the South classify the deaths of transgender women, arguing that some cases ruled suicides may warrant deeper scrutiny. The story, in too many Southern towns, begins with speed. A body is found. Authorities announce no foul play. A ruling is entered. The case, advocates argue, was closed before it was ever truly opened. Jill Collen Jefferson has spent years in the gap between what official records say and what families believe happened. The founder of social justice organization JULIAN, she has reviewed hundreds of deaths across seven Southern states, […]

The federal government’s chief workplace civil rights agency has reversed course on one of its most consequential transgender rights precedents, allowing federal agencies to bar trans employees from using restrooms that align with their gender identity. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reversed a key portion of its 2015 landmark transgender rights ruling, narrowing protections for transgender federal employees and intensifying a growing clash between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats over the future of workplace equality. In a 2–1 decision issued February 26, the EEOC ruled against a transgender federal employee who filed a discrimination complaint after being denied access to the women’s restroom at work. The […]