Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards has promised to veto any “unnecessary” and “discriminatory” legislation targeting “fragile” trans youth that winds up on his desk.
The Democrat said in a press conference on Monday (19 April) he would oppose bills seeking to ban trans youth in sports, as well as a proposal that would make it illegal for trans minors to access vital gender-affirming medical treatment. Edwards called both measures “unnecessary and discriminatory”, adding that he’s “hopeful” the state’s legislature “will not seek to advance those bills”.
“I am really concerned about emotionally fragile people and the idea that the weight of the state would be put behind something that to me is unnecessary and discriminatory and very hurtful for those individuals when there’s not a compelling reason to do it,” Edwards said.
He also said the proposals would have an “adverse impact to the state” should they be brought into law.
AP reported that New Orleans, Louisiana is scheduled to host the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Final Four basketball tournament in 2022. The NCAA has issued a statement declaring its support for trans student-athletes and said it will choose locations for its tournaments where “hosts can commit to providing an environment that is safe, healthy and free of discrimination”.
Two of the four Louisiana lawmakers sponsoring the bans on trans athletes in school sports have said they intend to move the bills forward despite this.
Republican senator Beth Mizel told the LA Illuminator that the state should “not let the NCAA or any other special interest group tell us what to do”. She claimed any group that said they would boycott the state should the anti-trans bills pass into law was practising a kind of “extortion”.
Louisiana lawmakers introduced four anti-trans measures thus far in 2021. Two bills – Senate Bill 104 and House Bill 575 – would ban trans minors under the age of 18 from receiving healthcare and mental health services related to their gender identity.
SB 104 would require trans youth to get permission from their parents before pursuing any gender-affirming care, including counselling.
HB 575 would prohibit trans minors from getting any prescriptions for drug therapy or even gender-affirming surgery even if they have the permission of their parents. The bill would also force school staff to out trans students to their parents. If it were to pass into law, it would criminalise anyone that provides gender-affirming care to trans minors with a two-year prison sentence or a $10,000 fine.
A trans woman in Oklahoma was denied the life-saving coronavirus vaccine because she had a “mismatched” identity document.
The resident, who has not been named, was turned away by the Logan County Health Department because her name did not match what was written on her ID card.
She sought to explain this administrative snag to healthcare officials – she was waiting on the paperwork, she claimed – but the department still refused, KOCO5 News reported.
Frustrated, the woman reached out to Freedom Oklahoma, Oklahoma’s sole statewide LGBT+ advocacy group, for help – and they were prepared for a fight.
Tweeting the Oklahoma State Department of Health, the group wrote: “Why is Logan Co Health Department turning away a trans woman trying to get a vaccine and telling us to take it up with the state?”
The department replied on 14 April that it is coordinating with both county health officials and activists to “rectify” what happened.
“It is a top priority to ensure equity in our state’s public health system, including ensuring every Oklahoman has access to the COVID-19 vaccine,” it added.
State officials later stressed that the incident was a one-time thing in a statement to activists.
“The equity of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution has always been paramount in the Oklahoma State Department of Health’s effort to vaccinate Oklahoma,” a spokesperson for the department said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, a situation with a resident being denied a vaccine, due to a mismatched ID, at one of our county health departments was handled poorly.”
In Oklahoma, trans locals face an uphill climb all too common in the US to have their name and gender changed on identification documents.
While more and more state legislators have cleaned up these confusing legal frameworks, making it easier to acquire accurate ID, roadblocks – and there are many – remain.
In the confusing patchwork of US states that allow trans people to update their documents – or not at all – the muddled system, at times, limits what kinds of services trans people can access.
But policymakers aren’t exactly lacking in reasons to iron out these processes.
According to a report from the Williams Institute, 42 per cent of trans people who are eligible to vote in 45 American states do not have accurate identification documents. Researchers estimate that’s more than 350,000 trans Americans.
Moreover, a trans person simply having a passport or birth certificate with the correct gender can drastically improve their mental health, a studyfound.
Even then, some people (and countries and international agencies, such as the United Nations) question whether there’s even a need for a gender marker on identity documents at all.
George and Emily Spurrier are leaving their home of 16 years in central Arkansas due to a new law that will ban the health care that they say their 17-year-old transgender son needs.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, vetoed the measure earlier this month, calling it “a vast government overreach.” But the Arkansas General Assembly overrode the veto, and the bill will become law this summer.
Emily Spurrier said when her son heard the news, he sat in her car and cried for an hour.
“It was just kind of a wave of emotions, thinking about moving and then him worrying about some friends that he has here in the Little Rock area,” she said. “And then just the thought that this is really the only place he ever remembers living.”
Arkansas is the first state in the country to pass a law banning transition care for minors. The measure will bar access to reversible puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries, though surgeries aren’t included in global standards of care for transgender minors and aren’t performed on them in Arkansas, Hutchinson said during his veto.
The Spurriers’ son, who just started using testosterone, will no longer be able to access this physician-prescribed hormone once the new law is implemented, so his family is raising money on GoFundMe to move to New Mexico by August.
“The benefits are not going to outweigh the dangers of raising our children here in this state.”
AMANDA DENNIS
The Spurriers, along with some families in Texas and North Carolina, which are considering similar legislation, told NBC News they are prepared to move to protect their children.
Fourteen states are considering bans or restrictions on transition care for trans minors, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law, found that 45,100 trans youth are at risk of losing access to care because of the proposals. Major medical associations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the Pediatric Endocrine Society oppose the bills.
As of Monday, there were at least 44 bills across 25 states targeting transgender youth, with five of them on governors’ desks, according to the ACLU and the Human Rights Campaign. A recent PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found that two-thirds of Americans are opposed to laws that would limit trans rights.
George Spurrier said that, in addition to the transition-care ban, the Arkansas Legislature is considering several other bills that create an unsafe environment for his son.
“If it had been one or two bills, we may have been more optimistic about fighting and getting through all of it,” he said. “But the fact that they just kept coming one after another after another … has just kind of demoralized us. Even if everything gets defeated or repealed, the spirit behind them is still here, and we just can’t help but feel like it’s not safe.”
In addition to the recently passed trans health care bill, Arkansas is considering four other bills targeting LGBTQ people, and the governor has signed two others into law, according to the ACLU. For example, Hutchinson signed a bill into law on March 26 that allows doctors to refuse to treat someone based on their religious or moral beliefs, a measure that advocates say would allow physicians to refuse to treat trans patients even in the emergency room.
Brooke, 8, won’t be allowed to compete on girls’ sports teams at school once one of Arkansas’ new laws takes effect.Amanda Dennis
Another Arkansas family is also facing a deadline. Amanda Dennis, who has lived in the state for most of her life, said her family has about two to three years to figure out how they’re going to get care for their transgender 8-year-old, Brooke, by the time she begins puberty.
“I will have to fly to another state — and the problem is we’re surrounded by states that are doing the same thing,” she said, adding that Kansas, Missouri and Texas are all considering similar bills.
Flying to another state wouldn’t be financially sustainable for the family, Dennis said, and like the Spurriers, she’s also worried about how other recent laws and proposed bills will affect Brooke. Dennis said her daughter wants to try out for gymnastics, cheerleading and dance, but she wouldn’t be able to compete on a girls’ team due to a bill Hutchinson signed in March that bans trans student athletes from competing on teams that align with their gender identity.
“It breaks my heart that I’m going to have to, at one point, should we choose to stay in Arkansas … tell her, ‘Brooke, you won’t be able to try out for any of these teams.’”
Arkansas is also considering a bill that would prohibit schools from requiring teachers to refer to trans students by a name and pronoun that isn’t consistent with their sex assigned at birth.
“So there’s more things coming down the pike that will really eventually force us to leave the state,” Dennis said. “The benefits are not going to outweigh the dangers of raising our children here in this state.”
Texas is considering a bill similar to Arkansas’ transition-care ban, but with criminal penalties. The bill would make it a felony for parents to provide their trans children with access to gender-affirming care. It would classify the act as child abuse, and parents who violate the proposed law could face up to 10 years in prison, have their child removed from their home and face civil litigation.
Amber Briggle kissing her son.Amber Briggle
Texas mom Amber Briggle, who lives north of Dallas, testified against the bill last week.
“I’m afraid that by speaking here today my words will be used against me should SB 1646 or SB 1311 pass, and my sweet son, whom I love more than life itself, will be taken from me,” she said.
Briggle said taking away her son’s access to care would “destroy him.”
“We gave him the support that he needed, and it was like a light switch turned on and like my baby came back to me and was perfect again,” she told NBC News, adding that the 13-year-old is a straight-A student and a great musician. “He can play the opening riff to ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ on his ukulele — I will say I taught him that.”
Briggle said to have that familial support taken away would be “devastating” for her son.
“It’s devastating because he is as successful as he is because he has that support,” she said. “It’s also devastating and terrifying to think that taking away that support means taking him away from his family, and placing him with, who knows.”
Moving wouldn’t be easy for the family, Briggle said. She’s a small business owner, and her husband is a tenured professor.
“It’d be really complicated for us, but it’s certainly not out of the question,” she added. “My son always comes first.”
Texas’ bill would also make it a felony for medical providers to administer transition care to minors. Kimberly Shappley, who has a trans 10-year-old named Kai and is a nurse at a clinic that serves LGBTQ people, said it’s a “double whammy” for her, because it would affect both her work and her family.
Kai Shappley, a 10-year-old transgender girl from Austin, Texas, speaks before the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs, on April 12, 2021.Texas Senate
Shappley, a former conservative Christian minister, moved from her small Texas hometown to Austin in 2018, because she said the relatively liberal capital city has more supportive local policies for Kai.
“But if these laws passed, even Austin can’t protect us,” she said. “It’ll take everything we have — just living in Austin has been super expensive — it’ll take everything we have to relocate. I’ll do it. I’ll have to.”
Shappley said she wants to see more action from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden released an executive orderlast month affirming that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, but he hasn’t made a statement directly addressing the flurry of bills targeting transgender minors.
Shappley said she took time off of work to campaign for the Biden-Harris ticket, so she’s angry that they haven’t explicitly mentioned the bills.
“Even if they can’t do anything right now, tell us what your plan is,” Shappley said. “Kamala Harris had a trans flag outside of her office. OK, if you’re an ally, why aren’t you loudly telling my kid she’s gonna be OK? Why aren’t you loudly saying, ‘You know what, Mrs. Shappley, you don’t have to move; we’ve got your back.’ I want somebody to say something.”
North Carolina is also considering a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Advocates say it would likely be vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, but Katie Jenifer and her daughter Maddie said the debate over the bill is itself harmful.
Maddie, 13, said that, though laws targeting trans youth likely won’t get past North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, the debate over the laws is itself harmful.Katie Jenifer
“If I didn’t have my hormones or my [puberty] blocker, I’d be very unhappy, and I wouldn’t want to leave the house sometimes,” Maddie, 13, said.
Even if advocates are saying the bill won’t become law, “there is still the smallest bit of chance, and that alone just makes me very anxious,” Maddie added.
Jenifer said she has told Maddie they would move should the bill or a similar one become law, but she acknowledged not everyone has that option.
“That’s the real crux of the issue: How do we help those families?” she said.
Back in Arkansas, Dennis said Brooke, who’s currently in third grade, is ready to be part of a potential legal battle against the state’s new laws.
“She wants to be someone that can be a light to other kids her age, and she really wants to be a part of the conversation,” she said, adding that Brooke is “ready to put on her activist hat and help.”
While Dennis said she and her husband are proud of their daughter, “at the same time, we do get a little bit sad that an 8-year-old has to be the voice.”
Police arrested two men in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday in connection with the shooting deaths of two Black transgender women whose bodies were found in hotel rooms less than two weeks apart.
Police found the first woman, Jaida Peterson, at the Quality Inn & Suites Airport on April 4 and the second woman, Remy Fennell, at the Sleep Inn University Place on Thursday, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
The cases were so similar — both victims were Black trans women, were engaged in sex work and were fatally shot in hotel rooms — that police issued an “urgent” message to the LGBTQ community, particularly those engaged in sex work, during a news conference Thursday evening.
Rob Tufano, the department’s public affairs director, said sex workers needed to be “hypercautious, hypervigilant in who they’re engaged with” and aware of their surroundings.
On Friday, police announced they arrested two men whom they allege were both involved in the killings. Dontarius Long and Joel Brewer were each charged with two counts of murder, two counts of possession of a firearm by a felon, one count of robbery with a dangerous weapon and one count of conspiracy to commit robbery with a dangerous weapon.
Following the announcement, Lt. Bryan Crum said during a Friday news conference the department doesn’t believe “there’s any further risk to public safety.”
“I can tell you that our investigation has advanced to the point that I feel confident in telling you there is no one else at large that was a part of this,” he said.
Investigators are still looking into the suspects’ alleged motives, Crum said, and they’re working with the FBI to determine whether the killings could be considered hate crimes.
“If hate crime charges are appropriate, we will absolutely pursue those,” he said.
Peterson and Fennell are among 15 transgender people killed so far in 2021, though that number could be higher because police often deadname and misgender them — use a trans person’s name and pronouns assigned at birth — in reports about their deaths. So far, nine of the known trans victims are Black trans women.
Prior to the arrests, advocates in Charlotte said Black trans women were scared.
“Many of them use hotels as their primary form of housing, and they don’t feel safe to be there right now,” Ash Williams, a trans organizer in Charlotte, said. “So, many of us are moving up to try to raise funds for safer, nonhotel housing for the Black trans women that live in Charlotte.”
But even after the arrests, Williams said trans people in Charlotte don’t feel safer, because police “criminalize” Black trans sex workers.
“We keep us safe,” he said. “The police do not keep us safe — they made that clear last week when they deadnamed and misgendered Jaida, so we don’t give a f— about what the police are talking about.”
In a statement to NBC News, Tufano said “Community members should have an expectation to live and work without the fear of violence.”
He added “Because of the tireless work of members of the CMPD, two dangerous people can no longer prey on vulnerable members of our community. The arrests will never bring back the lives of the two innocent souls lost, but may bring some measure of peace to their loved ones.”
After the shootings, Charlotte groups House of Kanautica, Charlotte Uprising, Feed the Movement CLT and End Trans Hate in North Carolina began raising funds to help safely house Black trans women and sex workers, potentially in long-term Airbnbs.
Eventually, activists would like to start a housing initiative similar to My Sistah’s House in Memphis, Tennessee, where a group is building tiny homes for Black trans women.
In the meantime, Williams said Black trans women will continue to push for the same support they’ve demanded for years: better access to hormone therapy, employment and housing.
“They’re underemployed or not employed because people don’t want to hire them,” he said.
“That’s the reality that the girls are dealing with every single day,” he added. “They deserve housing all the time — not just when a lot of girls are getting killed in our community.”
The rights of transgender Americans has been a growing topic of debate on sports fields, in state capitols and in Congress. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, says more than 30 state legislatures have proposed more than 115 bills that would limit transgender rights, from participation on sports teams to access to medical care.
But two-thirds of Americans are against laws that would limit transgender rights, a new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found. That opposition includes majorities of every political ideology from liberal to conservative and every age group.
These proposed bills have emerged as a new culture war, with Republican state legislators introducing and voting for them amid Democratic opposition, while a majority of Americans who identify as Republicans are against such laws, according to the poll.
“The parties are speaking to their base people,” said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducts the poll. “The Democratic coalition is more diverse. It’s broader. The Republicans are speaking to a much narrower base, and that can put you against the overall public opinion within those jurisdictions.”
About one half of one percent of U.S. adults are transgender, according to a recent Gallup survey. In the PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, more than half of Americans say they personally know someone who is transgender. That includes 53 percent of Democrats, 39 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of independents.
People under the age of 40 are more than twice as likely as older Americans to personally know someone who is transgender. Sixty-three percent of Gen Z and millennial voters said they do, while just 28 percent of people over 74 years old said the same.
Five years ago, less than a third of Americans said they knew someone who was transgender, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
“It’s really hard once you’re informed or you know a trans person to support one of these bills because it really strikes at the humanity of a trans person,” said Kate Sosin, who reports on LGBTQ+ issues at The 19th. “More than half of people do know transgender people and that number is only going to go up…and if that is the case, this is inevitably going to be a losing issue for lawmakers trying to make this a wedge issue, because even if you don’t support transgender rights, you don’t want to be the lawmaker pushing something that is seen as bigoted.”
Health care and trans youth
The most far-reaching bills introduced this year would limit transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming medical care. Twenty-one state legislatures have considered such bills this year, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA, which also estimates more than 45,000 youth could be affected, including nearly 1,500 kids in Arkansas who will lose medical care after the state became the first in the country to enact such a law just last week.
Fewer than three in ten people support state laws that prohibit gender-affirming care for minors or that criminalize providers of that care. Among Republicans, 26 percent support bills that prohibit this medical care, while 70 percent are opposed. That’s on par with where Democrats landed on the issue, with 26 percent in favor of such bills and 69 percent opposed.
Republican support for criminalizing providing gender transition-related care for minors was markedly higher, at 38 percent, while only 19 percent of Democrats were in agreement. Forty-two percent of people who supported former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election said they support criminalization.
“People aren’t eager to victimize the individual,” Miringoff said, comparing Republican support on these bills to similar shifts in opinion on abortion services. “Tolerance for the individual and not wanting to discriminate against the individual is different than providers for some of the services.”
Dr. Robert Garofalo, a pediatrician who treats transgender youth at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, said gender-affirming care, which can include puberty blockers and hormones like testosterone for transgender boys and estrogen for transgender girls, is considered best practice by most medical experts.
“Who would want anything less for their child than the ability to live their lives with an element of authenticity? That’s what gender-affirming care is,” Garofalo said. “There’s no evidence to suggest that these treatments are experimental…There’s a common understanding within most mainstream medical organizations that access to gender-affirming care for these young people saves lives.”
Trans athletes
Bills that affect access to medical care might have serious health implications, but the legislation that is getting the most attention seeks to bar transgender people from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. More than half of the proposed legislation around transgender rights this year is about limiting sports participation, and governors in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee have all signed bills into law.
But nationally, these proposed laws are unpopular. Only 28 percent of Americans overall support bills to bar transgender youth from competing on teams that align with their gender, while two-thirds oppose the bills. Opposition is consistent across the political spectrum with two-thirds of Democrats, Republicans and independents all in agreement. People who know someone who is transgender are five-points more likely to oppose these efforts than people who do not.
But while Americans across the political spectrum overwhelmingly agree that states shouldn’t pass laws regulating trans participation in sports, they are more evenly divided on whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete on teams that match their gender identity. For grade school, 50 percent of people said transgender children should be allowed to play on teams that match their gender identity, while 44 percent said they should not. In middle school, the split was 49 percent for, and 47 percent against. In high school, 47 percent were for and 48 percent against. And in college, 49 percent were in favor and 45 percent opposed.
Support for transgender participation in sports is where American are more sharply divided along party lines. Seventy-five percent of Democrats say transgender high school athletes should be allowed to play on teams where they identify with their team mates, while more than 80 percent of Republicans say they should not. Independents are more closely divided with 44 percent in favor and 50 percent opposed.
The statewide bans were tested last year when Idaho became the first state in the country to enact a ban on transgender women joining women’s teams. A judge temporarily stopped the law from going into effect.
At the center of the lawsuit was Lindsay Hecox, a 20-year-old student at Boise State University and a transgender athlete. She was a track and cross-country runner in high school and hopes to one day join her university team.
“The legislation is basically being used as fear mongering against trans people, and I think trans athletes were an easy target,” Hecox told PBS NewsHour. “They word it so that I’m othered and made different when it doesn’t need to be that way.”
The National Collegiate Athletic Association and state athletic associations don’t track the number of transgender athletes competing, but a recent Associated Press analysis found only a handful of instances where such participation has led to a complaint, out of hundreds of thousands of high school athletes. Some of the lawmakers supporting the bans say they know of no transgender athletes competing in their states, but that they consider the bills to be proactive.
Advocates for the sports bans say transgender girls and women have an unfair competitive advantage, but medical experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, say there’s no evidence to support those claims.
“There is nothing in these pieces of legislation that I think are supported by any element of truth or any element of science,” Dr. Garofalo said. “We’re not legislating sports participation based on the size of your shoe or based upon your height or other sort of immutable characteristics.”
The International Olympic Committee first outlined its guidelines for participation of trans athletes in 2003. The NCAA has allowed transgender athletes to compete for nearly a decade, and in order to play college sports, transgender women must first complete a full year of testosterone suppression treatment, because after that time, medical experts generally agree any advantage in strength or endurance from previous testosterone levels would have disappeared.
Protection from discrimination
The efforts in Republican-controlled state legislatures to limit transgender rights are in sharp contrast with the Democrat-controlled Congress and White House, which are pushing to expand protections for LGBTQ people. On his first day in the Oval Office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. Last month, three Republicans joined House Democrats to pass the Equality Act, which would extend those protections in employment and housing discrimination under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Senate has not voted on the measure.
Sixty-three percent of Americans in this latest poll support the Equality Act, but that support is sharply divided along party lines. While 90 percent of Democrats support the bill, just 32 percent of Republicans say the same. Support also drops significantly among older populations. Nearly eight in ten adults under the age of 40 support the Equality Act. Less than half of Americans aged 75 and older agree.
Hecox said she hopes public opinion will continue to shift in favor of transgender rights as more people hear stories like hers. In the meantime, she said she’ll continue to fight anti-LGBTQ laws in the courts.
“Things will get better, and this legislation is just a momentary setback for trans acceptance,” Hecox said. “I don’t want to just fade from the world and not have any impact on it.”
A chilling new bill in Texas would define the parents of trans kids who consenting to their affirming healthcare as “child abusers”.
Texas Senate Bill 1646 was filed on 11 March, 2021, and is sponsored by 13 Republican state senators.
The bill states that a person will be considered guilty of child abuse by “consenting to or assisting in the administering or supplying of, a puberty suppression prescription drug or cross-sex hormone to a child, other than an intersex child, for the purpose of gender transitioning or gender reassignment” or “performing or consenting to the performance of surgery or another medical procedure on a child, other than an intersex child, for the purpose of gender transitioning or gender reassignment”.
The bill places Texas parents consenting to gender-affirming care for their trans kids alongside those who create child porn, sexually abuse children, give illegal drugs to children and those who facilitate forced child marriages.
Penalties for child abuse in Texas include jail time, fines, and removal of the child.
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) staff attorney Chase Strangio wrote on Twitter: “This bill in Texas, SB1646, would remove trans kids from their homes if a parent affirms their gender. Truly barbaric.”
In response, the Texas charity Doctors For Change wrote an open letter to state senator Bryan Hughes, who chairs the Senate State Affairs Committee, condemning the bill and its implications for both parents and healthcare providers.
It wrote that its “more than 1,000 healthcare provider members… vehemently oppose SB1646”.
The letter continued: “We care for Texans of all ages, including transgender and non-binary children, youth, and adults, and we are appalled by the blatant intention of SB1646 to characterise the provision of our compassionate, evidence-based care as ‘child abuse’ and to levy criminal penalties against providers who are putting the health and wellbeing of patients first, as is our duty to do, as well as parents/ guardians who are properly ensuring their children receive necessary care.”
The group also pointed out that because of mandatory reporting of child abuse, the bill would “mandate any healthcare provider report minors receiving certain care which would irreparably damage the trust and confidentiality of patient-provider relationships”.
The White House is not ruling out any legal action being taken in the future against states in which lawmakers are pushing anti-trans laws, including banning transgender athletes from female sports teams.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday (8 April) that president Joe Bidenwould continue to advocate for LGBT+ rights amid the flurry of new state laws against trans youth. But she stopped short of committing to any legal action against them.
Chris Johnson, the White House correspondent for the Washington Blade, asked Psaki if Biden would “reach out to the attorney general” to begin legal action against states which enacted anti-trans bills. He pointed out that state legislatures had been ‘warned’ that “anti-transgender bills are an illegal form of sex discrimination”.
Johnson specifically cited the actions of the Arkansas legislature, which overrode its governor’s veto to pass an anti-trans healthcare bill. The cruel ban, which passed into law on Tuesday (6 April), makes it illegal for healthcare professionals in Arkansas to offer gender-affirming care like puberty blockers and hormone treatment to trans youth.
Arkansas has also become the second state to ban transgender athletes from female sports teams. Mississippi’s governor has also signed a law banning transgender athletes from girls’ school sports.
Psaki said she can’t “stand here and predict legal action” as the ultimate decision on if action would go forward lies with the Justice Department and attorney general, Merrick Garland. However, she said Joe Biden remains committed to advocating for LGBT+ rights and transgender equality in the US.
“What I can say is that the president’s view is that all persons should receive equal treatment under law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation,” Psaki said.
“That’s fundamental to how he will make laws — advocate for laws, I should say; how he will communicate about his views on the rights of transgender individuals in the country; and certainly, you know, what his view is as it relates to any actions by the government.”
In a follow-up question, Johnson asked if Biden would engage in communication with Garland about the anti-trans legislation. Psaki said the president “certainly can”, but she reiterated: “I don’t have anything to predict for you at this time.”
Garland has said he will advocate for stronger protections for trans Americans. In a hearing before the Senate about his nomination to the office of the attorney general, he promised to combat violence against the trans committee, especially Black, trans women, in the US.
He said it was the “job of the Justice Department to stop” the murders of transgender Americans and protect trans youth. Garland said: “It’s clear to me that this kind of hateful activity has to stop, and yes, we need to put resources into it.”
But in the same hearing, Garland dodged questions about bans on transgender athletes being included in girls’ and women’s sports. He declined to comment on questions, saying he hasn’t had the “chance to consider these kinds of issues” in his career.
Heather Hughes, a music and math teacher at a private school in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, said a 16-year-old student pulled out her phone Monday afternoon and announced that Gov. Asa Hutchinson had vetoed a bill that would have banned transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming medical care.
Hughes said it shows that young people understand the national conversation about trans youth, who are the focus of a wave of state bills that seek to restrict their access to transition-related medical care and sports.
“They get that something’s up, and they understand enough to be like, ‘This is a bad idea,’” Hughes said of her students. “They think it’s asinine. They don’t understand why it’s a big deal in the first place, like why bother making these bills, and so then anytime it’s brought up, they’re mostly infuriated.”
Another student, who is 15, talked to Hughes last week about how they wanted to start testosterone soon. But on Tuesday, the Arkansas Legislature overrode Hutchinson’s veto, and the state is now poised to become the first to ban gender-affirming care for trans minors.
The law bans insurance plans from covering or reimbursing the cost of transition-related care for minors, including puberty blockers and hormones. After it takes effect this summer, Hughes’ student won’t be able to use testosterone unless they pay out of pocket, which Hughes said is “not that likely given their situation.”
Heather Hughes.Courtesy Heather Hughes
Hughes, who is also trans, called the Arkansas law “ridiculous” and said it “opens up the door to more restrictions.” She said her doctor informed her that part of the law will also explicitly allow private insurance companies in the state to refuse to cover gender-affirming care for trans people of any age.
“We’re already getting priced out of so many things and already face enough — why make it worse?”
Hughes is one of 17,300 educators in the U.S. and Canada who signed an open letter to President Joe Biden Monday calling on him to do more to directly address the wave of state bills targeting transgender young people. There are currently 20 states that have introduced bills that would prohibit or restrict transition care for trans minors, according to the ACLU, and more than 30 that have introduced measures that would ban trans student athletes from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity. According to the Movement Advancement Project, five states — Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, Tennessee and South Dakota — have passed such legislation, though a federal judge stopped Idaho’s law from taking effect last August.
Harper Keenan, an assistant professor in the department of curriculum and pedagogy at the University of British Columbia, helped organize the letter.
Keenan taught elementary students in New York City public schools for five years, and said the bills create a dangerous power dynamic. Legislation that bans transgender student athletes from competing on the sports teams that align with their gender identity, for example, positions transgender girls “as predators invading girls’ spaces,” he said.
Harper Keenan.Courtesy Bonnie Chan
“This is a violation of some of our most fundamental responsibilities as educators, which is to support and protect the young people that we work with,” Keenan said. “When we position young people as predators, especially a particular group of young people as predators, we really put them in danger.”
The letter from educators calls on the Biden administration to protect transgender young people’s access to health care, school facilities and activities, and school records and identification that reflects their self-identified gender.
“Anti-trans bills are merely the tip of a much larger iceberg of anti-trans sentiment, gender misunderstandings, and the scapegoating of trans youth that serves to mobilize a conservative base,” the letter states.
The Biden administration did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the letter, but an official did confirm that Biden issued an executive order this month stating that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which protects students at schools receiving public funds from sex-based discrimination, also protects them from discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. The Department of Justice supported Biden’s order in a memo released Monday, which said it interprets Title IX to protect LGBTQ students.
The official also said the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights announced on Tuesday that it will conduct a comprehensive review of Title IX regulations to fulfill Biden’s recent executive order.
Lawmakers who support restrictions on trans student athletes have said these measures are necessary to protect cisgender girls’ opportunities in sports. However, legislators in almost all the states considering bans could not cite any known cases where trans girls’ participation in sports caused a problem in their state or region, according to an Associated Press report published last month.
Still, Hutchinson said the state’s ban on trans athletes in sports, which he signed March 25, “will help promote and maintain fairness in women’s sporting events.”
Supporters of the gender-affirming care restrictions argue that they’re protecting minors who are too young to make medical decisions. The sponsor of Arkansas’ recently passed trans health bill, state Rep. Robin Lundstrum, a Republican, compared it to laws that prevent minors from purchasing alcohol until they’re 21.
“They need to get to be 18 before they make those decisions,” Lundstum said, according to The Associated Press.
Some teachers believe the debate over trans minors’ access to care is really a debate over their existence. Elizabeth-Marie Helms, a trans middle school social studies teacher in Fort Wayne, Indiana, said legislators “don’t really have any interest in science-based medicine.” She noted that lawmakers in Indiana, like those in Arkansas, want to ban trans minors’ access to puberty blockers, even though they have long been used to treat precocious puberty in cisgender youth and wouldn’t be banned for cisgender young people.
“I try to teach my students, ‘Listen to others with empathy. Even if you don’t agree with them, try to understand their points of view,’” Helms said. “In these cases at the state level, it’s just really unclear what a sincere approach to these Republican talking points would even look like, because it just nakedly looks like they’re trying to erase trans people.”
Some cisgender educators like Melissa Tracy, who teaches at a high school in Delaware, said they’re worried about the effects of the bills on trans students at school.
“It’s personal for me, because I think of every trans student who has ever sat in my classroom, and, frankly, they deserve better,” she said. “They are not political pawns.”
Tracy said she participated in a workshop 10 years ago that changed her understanding of the needs of LGBTQ youth. The presenter said that 30 to 40 percent of LGBTQ students will experience suicidal ideation. (That number is higher for trans youth: Fifty-two percent reported that they seriously considered suicide from December 2019 to March 2020, according to the Trevor Project’s 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health.)
“Since then, I’ve tried to really do right by the students that I teach,” Tracy said.
Several states, including Alabama and Iowa, are considering bills that would force state employees, including teachers, to out students to their parents if they believe a student is questioning their gender. Being forced to “out” a student takes away their agency and jeopardizes one of the few places that some trans youth feel safer, according to Tracy.
“Why wouldn’t we want to do whatever we can to create safe spaces for our students, because, frankly, some of the students that I have taught have not been accepted at home, and literally the only place where they might feel accepted is at school,” she said. “And then you remove that space of acceptance, and they can’t be who they want to be, and that’s just not right.”
Some teachers and advocates say they’re already seeing the national conversation affect trans students.
Julia Cuneo, a youth organizer and educator who helps high school students in Detroit with advocacy campaigns, said a few students have reached out to “express fear and concern” after Republican lawmakers in Michigan introduced a trans athlete ban.
“We have some students who are trans and genderqueer and who are really worried about the ways that their school will target them, and the ways that they won’t be able to express themselves in their classes,” Cuneo, who uses gender neutral pronouns, said. Some students fear their identity could be both disrespected and used against them or that they could be outed.
“They don’t know exactly how this will manifest,” Cuneo said. “The legislators write the law but then it’s kind of up to schools how it gets enforced, and so that uncertainty is really really scary.”
Cuneo said the bills put students and teachers against each other. They said they don’t know of any teachers who openly support Michigan’s athlete ban, but “I’ve definitely talked to teachers who feel like, ‘Well, the law is the law, and I have to do it or I’ll get in trouble.’”
Currently, both teachers and students want to create a safe environment for learning, but if the bills become law, their interests would clash, according to Cuneo.
“I think that’s really the end goal of the GOP in this moment, is to try and put that wedge between supporters and allies, people who are in solidarity with queer people, and the young people who are coming out,” they said.
Tracy said she wonders whether the sponsors of the bills know any trans youth or have spoken with any.
“I guarantee you that if they took even just 10 minutes out of their busy schedule to talk to somebody that perhaps their viewpoint might change,” she said. “Ultimately, I think this is just what I want to tell those legislators: It’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s about the kids of America. It’s about the kids in your state.”
The head of trans healthcare at one of the largest hospitals in the US has reminded the public that puberty blockers are an “incredibly safe” and “reversible” treatment for transgender children.
Dr Joshua Safer, executive director at Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York City, was speaking to NPR alongside Republican Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson – who recently tried and failed to veto a bill restricting gender-affirming treatments, including puberty blockers, for under-18s.
“The reason I vetoed the bill,” Hutchinson said, “is because we did not want to interrupt a treatment that the parents had agreed to, the patient agreed to and the physician recommended.”SPONSORED CONTENTWhat’s Huel’s Black Edition?By Huel
Hutchinson was overruled by Republican lawmakers, and Arkansas became the first US state to ban puberty blockers for trans kids. But Safer said that in his medical experience, puberty blockers are a “conservative options and they are reversible”.
“Puberty blockers are used in a number of medical situations, specifically so that hormones can be adjusted to a certain degree, and then they can be stopped, and things will revert to how they were,” he said.
“When we use these medications for transgender kids as well as for kids with precocious puberty, they’re incredibly safe,” Safer added. “That’s the reason why they are the conservative go-to medication for these kids.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is preparing litigation in Arkansas, stating that the anti-trans bill “will drive families, doctors and businesses out of the state and send a terrible and heart-breaking message to the transgender young people who are watching in fear”.
“This is a sad day for Arkansas, but this fight is not over – and we’re in it for the long haul,” said Holly Dickson, executive director of ACLU in Arkansas.
Dozens of similar bills attacking trans people, backed by the anti-abortion Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, are making their way through legislatures across the US.
Three North Carolina Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would force teachers to out any trans or gender non-conforming child to their parents.
Senate Bill 514 would make it illegal for any “government agents” to not “immediately” inform the parents or legal guardians of any child or young adult if that “minor under its care or supervision has exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria, gender nonconformity, or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor’s sex”.
This would compel any state employee, teacher, volunteer or contractor of a school district in North Carolina to out trans students under the age of 21 to their parents.
The bill – introduced by Republican senators Ralph Hise, Warren Daniel and Norman Sanderson – will also prevent doctors and other healthcare professionals from giving gender affirming care to trans youth under the age of 21. This includes performing gender affirming surgeries and administering puberty blockers, testosterone or estrogen.
Under the bill, medical professionals who provide gender affirming treatment to trans patients could have their license revoked and face a civil penalty of up to $1,000 per occurrence.
Kendra R Johnson, executive director of Equality NC, said in a statement that it is “heartbreaking” – but “not unexpected” – to see these “direct, repeated attacks” against trans and gender non-conforming youth in North Carolina.
“These attempts to control the bodies and medical decisions of parents and their transgender children are invasive, inappropriate and outright dangerous,” Johnson said. “Decisions about a child’s medical welfare should be made between that child, their doctor, and their parents or guardians – not lawmakers.”
She added that it is the “job of all lawmakers” to thoroughly understand the “entirety of their constituency” and “mitigate challenges instead of creating barriers”. Johnson said: “We cannot legislate the transgender community out of existence.”
Chantal Stevens, executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina, added SB 514 is the latest in a “series of coordinated attacks on healthcare access” for LGBT+ youth across the US. She explained the “true aim” of such legislation is to “push trans and non-binary people out of public life”.
“Not only are these bills rooted in falsehoods, hate and fear-mongering, but they also invade the private interactions between each of us and our medical providers,” Stevens said.
The North Carolina bill comes after Arkansas became the first state to ban gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth. The Arkansas bill was passed by the state’s House of Representatives and Senate in March before making its way to governor Asa Hutchinson for approval. However, Hutchinson vetoed the bill on Monday (5 April), saying it was a “vast government overreach”.
