Idaho officials have made it more difficult for young transgender people to change the sex listed on their birth certificates despite a U.S. court ruling that appears to ban such obstacles.
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare released comments from the public Wednesday on a temporary rule requiring people younger than 18 to get approval from medical or mental health professionals before requesting the change.
Many of the comments said they wanted the conservative state to go back to banning all gender changes on birth certificates.
Dani Martin, a transgender resident of Idaho, was one of two plaintiffs who sued the state in order to obtain a birth certificate matching her gender identity. A federal judge ruled in her favor in March 2018.Lambda Legal
A federal judge ruled last year that an Idaho law barring transgender people from changing their birth certificates violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“Any new rule must not subject one class of people to any more onerous burdens than the burdens placed on others without constitutionally appropriate justification,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale wrote.
Health and Welfare’s board of directors complied with the order and changed the state’s rules last year. But this May, the board approved the temporary rule requiring anyone under 18 to get approval before requesting the change.
The requirement “advances the public health, safety, and welfare of minors because it ensures the decision to amend the sex designation is informed and supported by independent professional judgment,” the department said in documents justifying the change.
Because of a unique set of circumstances involving Idaho’s obscure rule-making process, that temporary rule went into effect July 1.
Thousands of rules touching on just about every aspect of daily life were set to expire earlier this year after lawmakers killed a bill reauthorizing them at the end of the legislative session in April. Republican Gov. Brad Little used his executive authority to give rules he wanted to keep temporary status on July 1.
The Idaho Legislature convenes in January, and lawmakers will again consider approving or rejecting rules, including the one on transgender birth certificates.
The newly released public comments are part of that process.
“Your gender is what you were born as biologically. How you self-identify is irrelevant,” Georgia Ryan of Blanchard wrote in one comment that was submitted.
Between April 2018 and September, 121 people, including 20 minors, applied to change the gender on their birth certificates, Health and Welfare spokeswoman Niki Forbing-Orr said. They ranged from 7 to 78.
She said five minors applied after the July 1 rule change, but she didn’t have information about the status of those applications.
Peter Renn of Lambda Legal, the law firm that represented two transgender women whose lawsuit led to the court ruling, said Idaho could be straying from its legal obligations.
“The court recognized that the government shouldn’t be in the business of putting up senseless roadblocks for transgender people seeking to correct their birth certificates,” he said Thursday in a statement to The Associated Press.
The Idaho attorney general’s office had no comment, spokesman Scott Graf said.
After Idaho lost the lawsuit forcing it to change the birth certificate law, it paid $75,000 in court-ordered attorney fees to the winning side.
At least 25 Illinois prison employees participated in online conversations that mocked, demeaned or disclosed personal and medical information about transgender inmates, an investigation has found.
A report by Injustice Watch andBuzzFeed News revealed that extreme transphobic comments were posted by a range of corrections staff in two private Facebook groups, each with more than 4,000 members.
The degrading posts were written by low-level officers, sergeants, lieutenants, and other correctional staffers — including a counsellor and a parole officer — from across the state.
Members of the group also outed LGBT+ inmates and openly discussed private information about them, including alleged sexual acts and medical treatments they received.
Hampton was repeatedly misgendered in the Facebook groups, but we have corrected this in the following comments so as not to cause offence.
“I’ve seen this motherfucker with a beard. The state is stupid I’d chop [her] pecker off for [her] then [she] can be ‘female,’” wrote correctional officer James Schaefer.
Another correctional officer, Kenneth Mottershaw, added: “Know [sic] matter way you look at it, it’s a freak’n male inmate. Transgenders are a fucking joke in my view.”
“O hope this ‘it’ is paying all legal fees!” wrote another officer, Richard Glazik.
“Hell, give [her] clemency….then the state can stop paying for the dumb bastard’s hormones and psych meds,” wrote a further correctional officer.
The comments emerged amid a series of lawsuits against the Illinois Department of Corrections, including a class-action claim brought by six transgender women.
Among them is Strawberry Hampton, who filed two lawsuits alleging abuse and mistreatment. She accuses prison officials of consistently refusing to acknowledge her gender and repeatedly and deliberately placing her in environments detrimental to her physical, mental and emotional health.
The offensive posts continued even after three correctional officers were put on leave following a September Injustice Watch report about ‘homophobic’ posts on public Facebook pages.
Department of Corrections, Cook County, Chicago, IL (Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group/Getty)
When this report was shared in one of the private Facebook groups, correctional food service supervisor Scott Evans replied: “So I can’t say I’m anti-transgender????? Well guess what… I am very much so!”
Both groups are named “Behind the Walls,” but with different spellings of “Illinois Department of Corrections”. In one, members are warned that “snitches will be permanently banned from the group. No warnings, no second chances: zero tolerance.”
After a Buzzfeed reporter confronted the department on the Facebook posts, officials said they do not tolerate bigotry.
In a statement, Illinois Department of Corrections Acting Director Rob Jeffreys said the department is “firmly dedicated to fostering a culture of tolerance, inclusion, and respect in our correctional facilities.”
None of the named Facebook commenters responded to Buzzfeed News’ requests for comment.
The death of a comedian who was recently referenced in Dave Chapelle’s Netflix special “Sticks and Stones” has underscored the disproportionately high suicidality rate among transgender people.
“I love you all. I’m sorry,” trans comedian Daphne Dorman wrote on Facebook on Oct. 11. “Please help my daughter, Naia, understand that none of this is her fault. Please remind her that I loved her with every fiber of my being.”
Her sister Becky Kugler confirmed Dorman’s death in the comment section of the post. “I so wish we could all have helped you through your darkness,” Kugler wrote. “We’ll always love you, fly high sweet angel.”
Clair Farley, who is a senior adviser to San Francisco Mayor London Breed and who leads the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives, said that Daphne was a fixture in the city’s LGBTQ community and taught coding classes through the office’s Trans Code program.
“Daphne was one of the kindest and funniest people in the world. She never let anything get to her and she was always giving back,” Farley wrote in an emailed statement. “She was also an incredible mom to her daughter, she will be missed by many.”
The U.S. suicide rate increased 33 percent between 1999 and 2017, despite falling in many other developed countries, including most of Western Europe, according to CDC data. And while this national trend is worrisome, the suicide rates for transgender and gender-nonconforming people are much higher than the national averages. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality’s 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 40 percent of adult respondents reported having attempted suicide in their lifetime — almost nine times the attempted suicide rate in the general U.S. population.
A 2018 study from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that the risks are equally as fraught for trans youth. More than half of transgender male teens who participated in the survey reported attempting suicide in their lifetime, while almost 30 percent of transgender female teens said they attempted suicide. Among nonbinary youth, more than 40 percent stated that they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives.
“We have to make sure Daphne’s story is told with the broader context of how trans people are at a greater risk of dying by suicide,” Bri Barnett, the director of development and communications at Trans Lifeline, a hotline and nonprofit organization offering support to trans people in crisis, told NBC News. “At the same time, her experience is unique, too, and her own experiences in the world contributed to this.”
Barnett added that trans suicide is “not a personal failing,” but rather “the product of a transphobic society that isolates trans people from support and resources and surrounds them with constant messages in the news, movies and sometimes comedy that they are freakish, wrong and unlovable.”
Gillian Branstetter, the media relations manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality, concurred, stating that while the risks of suicide are “complex and varied,” there are common experiences that can amplify the risk for trans people. She said these include alienation and marginalization, lack of systems of support, lack of access to adequate and affirming mental health care and the inaccessibility of information about what it’s like to be trans.
Both Branstetter and Barnett noted there are a number of misconceptions surrounding the disproportionately high transgender suicide rate.
“A lot of the focus has rightfully been on family acceptance, but acceptance at school, extracurricular activities and work also make a difference,” Branstetter said. “Research has shown that doing something as simple as referring to trans people by their chosen name can lower the risks of them attempting suicide. Constantly being misgendered takes a toll on people.”
Barnett said that’s there’s a “failure” to contextualize the material conditions that affect trans people’s mental health, including the fact that trans individuals are more susceptible to experiencing homelessness, harassment and violence.
Approximately 30 percent of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey respondents reported that they had experienced homelessness at some point in their lifetime, and almost half of respondents reported having been verbally harassed or physically attacked in the year prior to the survey.
The current political environment has also negatively impacted trans people’s mental health, according to Barnett. She said calls to Trans Lifeline have increased by 20 to 30 percent every year for the last five years. She attributes this increase both to trans people feeling more comfortable with coming out and trans rights being viewed as a “wedge issue.” The day after a leaked memo from President Donald Trump’s administration announced it would push to define gender solely as male or female, Barnett said the hotline received four times the amount of calls it usually does.
Maceo Persson, the civic engagement and operations manager for the Office of Transgender Initiatives, said the trans community in San Francisco was paying close attention to the Supreme Court as it heard oral arguments last week regarding whether “sex” discrimination includes anti-LGBTQ bias under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“It’s difficult to watch people discuss whether we’re entitled to our rights and humanity,” Persson said. “It’s a difficult time right now in the community and can trigger a lot of responses in folks, so we want to emphasize that there are resources and support for those who need it.”
Some of those resources include the Office of Transgender Initiatives, which launched the first city-funded program in the United States to find trans people work in 2007. Others include Trans Lifeline and The Trevor Project.
“Suicide is the most commonly shared experience in the trans community, and we continue to work to reduce the cost that any one person should have to pay for being themselves,” Branstetter said. “There are no easy solutions, but the complexity is not an excuse for inaction.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
A transgender man was attacked by two assailants Sunday night inside a Philadelphia 7-Eleven, according to his family.
The man stopped in the store around 9 p.m. after OutFest, an annual block party celebrating the city’s LGBTQ community.
Video surveillance footage from inside the gas station shows the 30-year-old being repeatedly punched and thrown onto the ground. Two of the victim’s sisters, who did not want to be identified, told WCAU, NBC’s local Philadelphia affiliate, that their brother was kicked in the head multiple times.
The victim was wearing a “Trans Lives Matter” sweatshirt, which his family believes may have caused the ambush.
“I’m very hurt that my brother is sitting very hurt with a broken jaw, eyes messed up and nobody helped him,” one sister said. “I just want the people to get caught.”
One worker who claimed he was at the store at the time of the incident told WCAU that he wasn’t sure how the altercation began.
The family said they reported the incident to the police, however the Philadelphia Police Department denied NBC News’ request for information regarding whether it planned to open an investigation into the incident.
Since 2014, the total number of hate crimes motivated by anti-LGBTQ bias has increased every year, rising 3 percent in 2017, according to the FBI. A separate survey from Gallup found that almost 17 percent of all reported hate crime victims are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Trans people of color remain an especially vulnerable population. Since the beginning of 2019, at least 19 trans people have been killed, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
“What hope do we have to be ourselves if we can’t be out here and be ourselves?” the victim’s other sister told WCAU.
The U.S. isn’t the only country plagued by anti-trans attacks. According to a Home Office report released Tuesday, over the past year hate crimes against transgender people in England and Wales have risen by 37 percent. From April 2018 to March 2019, there were 2,333 reported hate crimes against transgender people, up from 1,703 the previous year.
For the first time, hundreds of sex workers marched through the streets of Stockholm calling for sex workers’ rights and the decriminalisation of the sex industry.
The sex workers’ rights protestors demanded that the government end the “harmful”, “unjust” and “stigmatising” criminalisation of sex work.
At the September 29 protest, activists urged the government to listen to their condemnation of the Swedish model – the sex-work law that criminalises sex workers’ clients and is broadly opposed by sex-worker organisations globally.
rans sex workers told PinkNews how the lethal combination of transphobic discrimination and the criminalisation of sex work puts their safety and survival on the line.
“Transgender people and queer people in general in Norway are still stigmatised and discriminated against to begin with,” says Lilith, from Norwegian sex workers organisation PION. “So we are as a community are often overrepresented in the sex industry.”
We are seen as the parasites, the monsters that the world needs to abolish.
“When the Swedish law criminalises our clients, it also creates this notion that we are a criminal enterprise. Yes, it only criminalises clients, but it creates this illusion that the whole sex industry is criminal. As such, we are seen as the parasites, the monsters that the world needs to abolish,” she says.
Placard at the march in Stockholm. (Twitter/SWARM)
Sex worker rights are human rights.
The Swedish – also called Nordic – model, which makes it illegal to buy sex, was hailed as progressive by feminist organisations when it was introduced in 1999. Versions of the law have since been introduced in other countries including Norway, Iceland, Ireland and Canada.
In 2016, Amnesty International said sex work has to be decriminalised worldwide, because the current models of partial criminalisation prevent the “realisation of the human rights of sex workers“.
Criminalisation impacts trans sex workers twofold, Dinah, from Trans United Netherlands, told PinkNews.
“Decriminalisation for trans sex workers is very important because we are already discriminated [against] and actually criminalised as trans people, we are very much on the forefront of being visible in society and then the only way that we can do work, many times, is sex work,” she says.
There is a double criminalisation – one on being LGBTIQ and one on being a sex worker.
“Criminalisation of sex work means that there is a double criminalisation, in fact. One on being LGBTIQ and one on being a sex worker.”
The protest in Stockholm was organised by sex-worker organisation Fuckförbundet. (Twitter/SWARM)
Trans sex workers vital to gay rights movement.
Red Canary Song is a New York-based, migrant sex-worker grassroots organisation that fights for justice and police accountability, after the death of Chinese massage worker, Yang Song, during a police raid in Flushing in November 2017.
The organisation’s director, Kate Zen, says that US anti-trafficking laws similar to the Swedish model increase policing of sex workers and “primarily harm migrants, trans, and street-based sex workers, while doing little to actually reduce the factors driving trafficking: poverty, migration laws, lack of adequate and accessible housing and healthcare”.
“Migrant, black, brown, and trans sex workers are overrepresented in police arrests, and report rampant police violence, including sexual violence,” she says. “Ironically, these are also the groups of people that pro-police/anti-prostitution organisations say they want to help. Their help is clearly misdirected, and actually harming the very people who are most vulnerable in society.”
The leaders of LGBTQ movements in NYC during the Stonewall Rebellion were trans sex workers of colour.
“More than 50% of sex workers in the US say that they have turned to sex work in order to survive, pay for medical procedures, due to employment discrimination in other jobs. LGBTQ people are overrepresented in the sex industry, and the leaders of LGBTQ movements in NYC during the Stonewall Rebellion were trans sex workers of colour – Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson,” Kate says.
Dozens of sex worker organisations went to the protest in Stockholm on Sunday.
Henna, from sex-worker led activist organisation FTS Finland, says that Finnish sex workers went to the protest in solidarity with their Swedish colleagues “as well as any other colleague who is affected by the Swedish model”.
Listen to us, please!
“Be that trans sex workers or cis, both are affected by this model which doesn’t hear what the sex workers are saying. Listen to us, please!” she says.
Only one country in the world has listened to sex workers and decriminalised sex work – New Zealand.
The New Zealand model aims to uphold the human rights of sex workers and to decriminalise sex work. It was introduced in 2003.
While New Zealand’s approach appears to be moving towards ensuring safety for sex workers, other countries appear to be moving backwards.
Mimi, a trans migrant sex worker from French sex-work union STRASS, told PinkNews that laws criminalising clients – introduced in France in 2016 – are negatively affecting many trans sex workers.
“Especially those who are trans migrant sex workers, who face a lot of discrimination, especially when they are undocumented and working on the streets. Many of them face more insecurity, especially more aggression and more violence.
“More physical violence and any kind of attack, because right now, trans migrant sex workers need to isolate themselves in order to hide their clients from the police, and this is the reason, this is why they are more exposed to violence than before, because they are afraid that their clients will be arrested.
“This, and the fact that there are fewer clients, is a direct result of the criminalisation of the clients.”
Red umbrellas – the worldwide symbol of the sex workers’ rights movement – at the Stockholm march. (Twitter/SWARM)
Criminalisation increases police violence against sex workers.
Police violence as a result of the criminalisation of clients is also being experienced by sex workers in Ireland, according to Adi, from the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland.
Ireland brought in laws making it illegal to buy sex in 2017, but has only seen two clients prosecuted since then – while in that time “we’ve seen a 92 percent increase in violent crime against sex workers”, she says.
“In Ireland, and elsewhere, it’s impossible to find employment in any other field other than sex work – I’ve tried, over and over again, to find other types of work, but nobody’s willing to hire you,” Adi says. “And then in sex work, you’re constantly facing Gardaí harassment, which in my case resulted in my eviction from the premises in which I was working.”
LGBT+ people are overrepresented in the sex-work industry.
The widespread impacts of the criminalisation of sex work have catalysed the sex workers’ rights movement around the world. Luca Stevenson, coordinator at the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), says ICSRE also joined the Stockholm protest “in support of decriminalisation of sex work”.
Many LGBTI people sell sexual services to survive.
“Most LGBTI organisations around the world – Transgender Europe, ILGA Europe, ILGA World – are supporting the decriminalisation of sex work. We know that many LGBTI people sell sexual services to live, to survive,” he says.
A faith-based Anchorage women’s shelter claimed victory Monday in a lawsuit against the city over a requirement that it accept transgender women.
The city has agreed to make permanent a judge’s recent order affecting the downtown Hope Center shelter, conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom and city attorneys said in documents filed Monday in federal court. In August, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason issued an injunction preventing the city from applying its gender identity law to the shelter.
The injunction showed the city it was unlikely to succeed in further litigation, Anchorage Municipal Attorney Becky Windt Pearson said. The consent decree filed Monday treats the shelter as a private accommodation, which means the public protection law does not apply to it, she said.
“We had a fairly clear message from the federal court through Judge Gleason’s order that she did not think that we would prevail in our argument that downtown Hope Center fell within the definition of public accommodation,” Windt Pearson said.
As part of the consent decree filed Monday, the city also has agreed to pay the shelter $1 in damages and $100,000 in attorneys’ fees and other costs.
Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the shelter, said the agreement was the right outcome.
“Faith-based nonprofits should be free to serve consistently with their beliefs and mission,” alliance attorney Ryan Tucker said in a statement. “The end of this case means the center can continue its critically needed work to help the vulnerable women it serves and fulfill its duty to do everything it can to protect them.”
The shelter operators sued the city and its Equal Rights Commission last year, months after a transgender woman complained to the commission that she was denied entry at the shelter. The lawsuit said homeless shelters are exempt from the local law and that constitutional principles of privacy and religious freedom are at stake.
The complaint with the commission was dismissed after the August injunction, according to municipal lawyers.
Alliance attorneys have said many women at the shelter are survivors of violence and allowing biological men would be highly traumatic for them. They said biological men are free to use the shelter during the day, adding there are other shelters in the city where men can sleep.
The plaintiffs maintain the person identified only as “Jessie Doe” showed up inebriated after hours in January 2018 and was not turned away because of gender. The shelter officials even paid for a taxi to take her to a hospital for treatment of a forehead wound from fighting at another shelter, according to alliance attorneys.
The same individual showed up the following day and again was denied entry, according to the motion for a preliminary injunction. Plaintiffs say they want the federal court to make clear that the shelter is not violating the law.
Alliance Defending Freedom also represented a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. In a limited decision, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the baker, but it did not rule on the larger issue of whether businesses can invoke religious objections to refuse service to gays and lesbians.
Aimee Stephens lost her job at a suburban Detroit funeral home and she could lose her Supreme Court case over discrimination against transgender people. Amid her legal fight, her health is failing.
But seven years after Stephens thought seriously of suicide and six years after she announced that she would henceforth be known as Aimee instead of her given name, she has something no one can take away.
“I’m happy being me,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It’s taken a long time.”
The Supreme Court will hear Stephens’ case Oct. 8 over whether federal civil rights law that bars job discrimination on the basis of sex protects transgender people. Other arguments that day deal with whether the same law covers sexual orientation.
The cases are the first involving LGBTQ rights since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s gay-rights champion and decisive vote on those issues. They probably won’t be decided before spring, during the 2020 presidential campaign.
The 58-year-old Stephens plans to attend the arguments despite dialysis treatments three times a week to deal with kidney failure and breathing problems that require further treatment. She used a walker the day she spoke to AP at an LGBTQ support center in the Ferndale suburb north of Detroit.
“I felt what they did to me wasn’t right. In fact, it was downright wrong,” Stephens said, her North Carolina roots evident in her speech. “But I also realized it wasn’t just me, that there were others in the world facing the same tune.”
On the other side of the case is the R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, whose owner worries that a ruling for Stephens also would prohibit sex-specific sleeping facilities in shelters, as well as showers, restrooms and locker rooms. Congress can change the law to make explicit protections for LGBTQ people if it wishes, owner Thomas Rost says in court papers.
More than half the states do not prohibit discrimination in employment because of gender identity or sexual orientation, despite the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that made same-sex marriage legal across the United States. In Michigan, the state’s civil rights commission last year decided to interpret existing state law to protect LGBTQ people from workplace bias. But that wouldn’t affect Stephens, who was fired in 2013.
There’s no dispute over the sequence of events that led to the Supreme Court case. Stephens was once a Baptist minister in North Carolina and she said she always liked “comforting people in need.” She spent nearly six years as a licensed funeral home director and embalmer at the company’s Garden City, Michigan, location. Stephens came to work every day in a dark suit, white shirt and tie.
At the end of July 2013, Stephens met with Rost in the home’s chapel and handed him a letter in which Stephens revealed she had struggled with gender most of her life and had, at long last, “decided to become the person that my mind already is.” Stephens wrote, “As distressing as this is sure to be to my friends and some of my family, I need to do this for myself and for my own peace of mind and to end the agony in my soul.”
Following a vacation, Stephens said she would report to work wearing a conservative skirt suit or dress that Rost required for women who worked at his three funeral homes.
“He read the letter, folded it up and put in his pocket and we were basically done for that day,” Stephens recalled. Two weeks later, Rost and Stephens met again, briefly. “He handed me a letter and said this is not going to work,” she said.
The letter was a termination notice and the offer of a modest severance payment, Stephens said. She turned down the severance because it would have meant signing away her right to sue, she said.
Stephens took her complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which agreed to sue the company. During the Obama years, the EEOC had changed its longstanding interpretation of civil rights law to include discrimination against LGBTQ people. The law’s Title 7 prohibits discrimination because of sex, but has no specific protection for sexual orientation or gender identity.
A trial judge ruled against her, but the federal appeals court in Cincinnati sustained the complaint. The court found that discrimination on the basis of transgender status is sex discrimination. The appeals court also separately found that Rost fired Stephens because of his sex stereotypes about Stephens’ appearance and dress.
The funeral home appealed, and the justices agreed to hear the case. Appeals courts in Chicago and New York issued similar rulings bringing sexual orientation under the rights law, while the appeals court in Atlanta declined to do so. The justices also will weigh in on that issue.
Rost’s family has been in the funeral home business since 1910. He testified that Stephens dressed in women’s clothing would be “a distraction that is not appropriate” for grieving families.
Rost declined an interview request, but his lawyer described him as a caring man whose service to clients is paramount.
“Tom has gone out and gotten groceries for widows who were incapable of doing it,” lawyer John Bursch said.
In firing Stephens, Rost was not trying to prevent her from dressing as she wants on her own time, Bursch said, though he declined to use female pronouns to describe Stephens.
“To say this is somehow rolling back respect for people is just a false premise,” Bursch said.
The issue, he said, is the extent of federal civil rights law. “It’s asking to have a right recognized which has never existed,” he said.
Congress has never expressly included sexual orientation or gender identity in Title 7’s prohibition on discrimination “because of…sex,” though pending legislation would do so. The bill’s prospects are slim.
The Trump administration has reversed course from the Obama administration and has sided with employers who argue that the civil rights law does not protect LGBTQ people. The change of position puts Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco in the odd position of representing the EEOC at the Supreme Court, where he will argue against the EEOC’s stance.
Trump’s election and his rollback of Obama administration policies allowing transgender people to use school bathrooms corresponding to their identity, and to serve openly in the military are major reasons why Stephens has persisted in her fight, even as her health struggles have mounted.
“With all the things that have come out, with the way that transgender people are being treated, basically trying to be forcibly erased from society, I have no regrets at all about it,” she said.
An individual who is born female but later becomes male and gives birth to a child should be legally regarded as a mother, England’s High Court ruled on Wednesday.
Fred McConnell, a transgender man, wanted to be recognized as the father of his son, who was born last year, on the official registration of the child’s birth but was told he would have to be registered as the mother.
He sought legal action to quash that decision, saying it breached his and his son’s rights but in a landmark ruling, Andrew McFarlane, President of the High Court’s Family Division, dismissed his claim and concluded that McConnell was the mother.
“It is now medically and legally possible for an individual, whose gender is recognized in law as male, to become pregnant and give birth to their child,” McFarlane said.
“Whilst that person’s gender is ‘male’, their parental status, which derives from their biological role in giving birth, is that of ‘mother.'”
McConnell, who was registered as female at birth, transitioned to live as male when aged 22, later undergoing a double mastectomy and testosterone therapy. Official details, such as his passport and health records, were amended to show his gender as male, court papers said.
In 2016, he suspended the testosterone treatment and became pregnant after undergoing intrauterine insemination fertility treatment using donor sperm, with the baby born in January 2018.
McFarlane said the issue had been “most properly and bravely” raised by McConnell and was an important matter for public debate, but related more to public policy than law.
“Down the centuries, no court has previously been required to determine the definition of ‘mother’ under English common law and, it seems, that there have been few comparable decisions made in other courts elsewhere in the Western World,” he said.
Police in Dallas say a transgender woman was seriously wounded after being shot several times and they are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
Investigators say a man driving a pickup truck pulled alongside the woman late Friday, yelled slurs about her gender identity and fired several times, striking her in the chest and arm.
Authorities say the woman’s injuries prevented her from speaking with them until Sunday when she relayed details of the shooting.
Police are searching for a red four-door pickup with large wheel rims, and released images and details of the crime on their website. The Dallas Police Department is offering a $5,000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest and indictment.
Friday’s shooting follows three fatal attacks on transgender women in Texas this year — two in Dallas. Weeks after her beating was caught on tape, Muhlaysia Booker, 23, was found shot dead in Dallas on May 18, and a 33-year-old man was arrested in connection with her death and the deaths of two other women. Chynal Lindsey, 26, was found dead in a Dallas lake on June 1, and a 22-year-old man was arrested as a suspect in her killing. Tracy Single, 22, was killed in Houston on July 30, and a 25-year-old man was arrested in connection with her death.
The issue of violence against transgender women of color has become an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign. At an LGBTQ Presidential Forum in Iowa on Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., drew attention to the violence faced by transgender women of color by reading their names as part of her opening statement.
Two other Senate Democrats running for president, Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, have used their social media platforms to speak out on the issue, and Booker brought up the issue in the Democratic debate in Miami in June.
“We do not talk enough about trans Americans, especially trans African Americans and the especially high rates of murder right now,” Booker tweeted soon after that debate. “It’s not enough just to be on the Equality Act, we need to have a president who will fight to protect LGBTQ Americans every day.”
The 19th reported killing of a trans American this year alone took place on Friday in Kansas City, Kansas, and has been named by loved ones and activists as Ja’leyah-Jamar.
The victim was identified as in their 20s and was shot to death on the corner of North 60 Street and Leavenworth Road, according to Kansas City Police Department news release.
Law enforcement were called to investigate a shooting at 2:38pm in the outer town area, filled with auto repair shops and community churches. They arrived to find the injured victim in the middle of the road.
Jamar was quickly taken to hospital and tended by medics. But died shortly after from her injuries, the release stated.
While authorities have not released a name of the victim, family, friends and activists identified her.
The victim was, according to local police, killed on the corner of North 60th Street and Leavenworth Road.
Family and trans activists mourn the loss.
Adriana Sanders, the victim’s cousin, posted on Facebook: “Ja’leyah-Jamar didn’t ask for this life… No one can control who they love, God made us to live and love and to grow.
“It’s not our fault as a transgender woman or a homosexual man to want to live a normal life, wanting to be in love, have a family, build your own legacy and, because a man could not accept who he was as himself and an individual, he felt the need to take my cousin’s life,” she wrote, according to The Advocate.
Local LGBT+ advocates have also joined in mourning the loss of yet another trans woman of colour in a country experiencing an alarming epidemic of transphobic cruelty.
“Another black trans woman was killed in Kansas City this weekend!” activist Merrique Jenson posted on Facebook.
“Kansas City is one of the epicentres of violence towards trans women of colour, particularly black trans women, in this country!”
Jenson was one of the first to confirm the identity of the victim, claiming she had corroborated with local trans women who knew Jamar “directly”.
“While she is still being misgendered and misidentified by most [Kansas City] media outlets, community advocates have already begun to share updates as we learn more.
“I encourage agencies with social, political and financial power to do something about this.”
The 32-year-old, who enjoyed make-up, dancing in front of the mirror, and once talked of adopting a child, became the 11th reported trans woman of colour to be killed in the US this year. She was found by locals murdered across the state line in Kansas City.
PinkNews have contacted the Kansas City Police Department for further information.
Police release photos of unidentified man and vehicle sought in connection.
Investigators released a photograph of a suspect last week.
They described the man as a person of interest on a news release, as well as two photos of a vehicle – a white 2006 Pontiac G6 with Kansas tag 038 LXW.
The vehicle was found near 13th Street and Euclid Avenue.
Moreover, the suspect was reportedly last seen walking west from that location.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Kansas City Police Department’s TIPS Hotline at (816) 474-8477.
19 trans people killed in 2019.
Jamar is the latest victim of a spectre of violence against trans people, in particular black trans women.
