Bisexual Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is being shredded for upholding the Senate filibuster and blocking possible gun reform even as she expressed heartbreak over Tuesday’s Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting that killed 19 children and 2 adults.
“We are horrified and heartbroken by the senseless tragedy unfolding at Robb Elementary School in Texas and grateful to the first responders for acting swiftly. No families should ever have to fear violence in their children’s schools,” Sinema wrote in a May 24 tweet.
“Just stop,” Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) tweeted in response. “Unless you are willing to break the filibuster to actually pass sensible gun control measures you might as well just say ‘thoughts and prayers’.”
Republican politicians are notorious for offering “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting while avoiding any measures to actually prevent the massacres. Since Joe Biden was elected president, Sinema has slowly become more and more Republican-lite in her politics.
The 18-year-old shooter entered the predominantly Latino and lower-income Robb Elementary School on Tuesday morning clad in body armor and carrying a handgun and rifle. The shooter then killed 20 individuals located inside a fourth-grade classroom. He barricaded himself in the school and traded fire with police officials until an officer shot him dead. The massacre marks the 27th school shooting this year alone.
While Democrats have long sought federal gun control measures to help reduce mass shootings, the likelihood of passing any such legislation remains unlikely due to the Senate filibuster. Filibuster rules require 60 Senators to vote in favor of legislation before it can become law.
With the Senate split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans (and Republicans uniformly opposed to any gun control laws), the only way that Democrats can possibly pass national firearm reform would be to eliminate the filibuster. Eliminating it would allow the Democrats to unanimously vote in favor of such legislation while relying on a tiebreaking vote from Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
However, both Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema have long opposed repealing the filibuster. In a January 2022 speech, Sinema said, “There is no need for me to restate my long-standing support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation. There’s no need for me to restate its role protecting our country from wild reversals in federal policy.”
“What is the legislative filibuster other than a tool that requires new federal policy to be broadly supported by Senators representing a broader cross-section of Americans – a guardrail, inevitably viewed as an obstacle by whoever holds the Senate majority, but which in reality ensures that millions of Americans represented by the minority party have a voice in the process?” she added.
Numerous pundits and commenters have pointed out that the filibuster has also resulted in the blocking of pro-LGBTQ, pro-reproductive rights, pro-voting rights and other progressive legislation supported by wide swaths of Americans. Approximately 52 percent of U.S. voters support stricter gun laws, according to a 2021 Gallup poll.
Sinema’s opposition to filibuster reform has led various Twitter commenters to criticize her tweet expressing heartbreak over the school shooting victims.
It’s been a month since a Montana judge temporarily blocked enforcement of a state law that required transgender people to undergo surgery before they could change their gender on their birth certificate, and the state still isn’t in compliance with the court order, the ACLU of Montana said.
Jon Ebelt, spokesperson for the state health department, said the agency is still working with the Department of Justice to review the April 21 ruling and its implications. He did not respond to an email asking if that meant the state was evaluating whether to appeal the order.
“We have continued to be patient in allowing the state time to comply with the court ordered preliminary injunction,” the ACLU of Montana said in a recent statement. “However, close to one month has passed and the State’s willful indifference to the court order is inexcusable.”
Montana is among a growing list of Republican-controlled states that have moved to restrict transgender rights, including requiring student-athletes to participate in sports based on their gender assigned at birth or making it illegal for transgender minors to be treated with hormones or puberty blockers.
Beginning in late 2017, transgender residents could apply to change the gender on their Montana birth certificate by filing a sworn affidavit with the health department. District Court Judge Michael Moses’ order requires the state to revert back to that process while the challenge to the new law is pending.
“The fact that the state refuses … evidences its lack of respect for the judiciary and utter disregard for the transgender Montanans who seek to have a birth certificate that accurately indicates what they know their sex to be,” the ACLU said.
If the state continues to violate the preliminary injunction, ACLU of Montana staff attorney Akila Lane said the organization would ask the court to step in.
“We’re only looking for the state to comply” with the preliminary injunction, Lane said Friday.
Get the Morning Rundown
Get a head start on the morning’s top stories.SIGN UPTHIS SITE IS PROTECTED BY RECAPTCHA PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS OF SERVICE
A week after the ruling was issued, Billings attorney Colin Gersten inquired about an updated gender designation application form on behalf of a friend. The Office of Vital Records responded saying: “We will contact you once we are able to discuss your options.”
Gersten made another inquiry about the proper form on May 11 and did not receive a reply, according to emails shared with The Associated Press.
Many transgender people choose not to undergo gender-confirmation surgeries. Such procedures are sometimes deemed unnecessary or too expensive, two transgender Montanans argued in their July 2021 lawsuit.
Republican state Sen. Carl Glimm, who sponsored the legislation, has argued that the Department of Public Health and Human Services overstepped its authority in 2017 by changing the designation on a birth certificate from “sex” to “gender” and then setting rules by which the designation could be changed.
Half the states, plus the District of Columbia, allow transgender residents to change the gender designation on their birth certificates without surgical requirements or court orders, according to the policy organization Movement Advancement Project. Just over a dozen states require surgical intervention, and such barriers are being challenged in several states, including Montana.
Over the past few years, other legislation has been aimed at transgender people, and the new laws are being challenged in court.
Alabama passed a law making it a felony to prescribe gender-confirming puberty blockers and hormones to transgender minors, but a judge has blocked the law. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered child welfare officials to investigate parents of children receiving puberty blockers and other gender-confirming care as potential abuse. That, too, was blocked by a judge.
At least a dozen states have recently passed laws to ban transgender girls and women from participating in female sports, most recently Utah.
Sam, a transgender woman who lives in Georgia, said that on Tuesday evening, Reddit users started commenting on a photo of her that she had shared on the platform three months ago.
They told her the photo was being shared on 4chan, a forum website with little moderation, and people were saying that it showed the shooter who killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. The shooter, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was killed on the scene by police.
Sam, 20, who asked to go by her first name to protect her privacy and safety, told NBC News that the photo and others were taken from her personal Instagram page, and that she’s faced harassment and threats as the image has spread.
“This isn’t the first time I was harassed, but it is the first time I’ve been accused of murder,” she said.The false claims started shortly after news of the shooting first broke. A photo of Sam was posted to 4chan on Tuesday afternoon, in a post that began with “here’s the shooter’s reddit” before linking to her Reddit account and posting a transphobic slur. While some users said they did not believe the photo was of the shooter, other users posted new threads soon afterward, using pictures with fewer details of Sam’s face from her profile.
She said she’s feeling annoyed more than anything: “I’m more worried about the families of the victims of the attack,” she told NBC News.
Social media users and trolls on 4chan, Twitter and Facebook are using Sam’s photos and images of at least two other transgender women to spread the baseless theory that the shooter was transgender. In some cases, they have created collages that place the women’s photos alongside images from an Instagram page believed to have belonged to the shooter.
The claims were spread by some prominent conservatives on Tuesday.
Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, said of the shooter in a since-deleted tweet, “It’s a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos.” Gosar has not returned a request for comment.
One of Sam’s photos was shared by the Young Conservatives of Southern Indiana Facebook page, which has more than 4,000 followers.
Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who was successfully sued for defamation for falsely claiming the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax, also echoed the misinformation that the Uvalde shooting suspect was trans. Representatives for Jones’ website did not immediately respond for comment.
Conservative personality Candace Owens joined in on Wednesday, referencing “cross-dressing” photos she said she’d seen of the suspect. Owens has previously shared misinformation in her feeds and unsuccessfully sued Facebook in 2021 after the company added a fact-checking warning to one of her posts.
The photos that social media users are claiming show the shooter are actually of three different transgender women wearing skirts, including Sam, according to Trans Safety Network, a U.K.-based group that monitors online threats made against the transgender community. The group wrote in a post that all three women have confirmed they are alive.
In an effort to debunk the theory, Sam shared a photo of herself standing in front of a transgender Pride flag on Reddit Tuesday evening and wrote, “It’s not me, I don’t even live in Texas.” In response to a comment on the post, she said she just wants “to live without being attacked when I leave my house.” She also shared another photo of herself holding a piece of paper with the date on it.
She encouraged people to be careful about what they see online.
“Transphobic people exist and people are quick to blame someone for terrible things instead of looking for the truth about what actually happened,” Sam told NBC News.
Get the Morning Rundown
Get a head start on the morning’s top stories.SIGN UPTHIS SITE IS PROTECTED BY RECAPTCHA PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS OF SERVICE
Despite the fact that the posts including Sam’s photos violate Twitter and Facebook’s misinformation policies, the platforms have done little to combat the emerging false narrative.
A review of posts on Twitter and Facebook Wednesday morning found numerous tweets and posts using Sam’s image and labeling her as the shooter. In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson said, “In line with our hateful conduct policy, we will require the removal of Tweets that share misleading claims about the identity of the perpetrator with the intent to incite fear or spread fearful stereotypes about a protected category.” Additionally, the spokesperson said, “In line with our synthetic and manipulated media policy, we will require Tweets to be removed if they contain media that present false or misleading context surrounding the identity of the perpetrator.”
A Meta spokesperson said the company is removing content that violates its Bullying & Harassment policy, which forbids content “in which criminal allegations pose off-line harm to the named individual.”
“They’ve been relying on me and others to report the misinformation before doing anything,” Sam said.
Some advocates condemned the basely theory that the shooter was transgender.
“This has GOT to stop,” Erin Reed, a trans advocate, said on Twitter. She went on to reference investigations that Texas opened into the parents of some transgender youths in March following a directive from Gov. Greg Abbott that ordered state agencies to investigate claims of parents providing gender-affirming medical care to minors.
“A sitting congressman just spread a lie about the Texas shooter to pin it on transgender people spread by troll sites, in a state where they are spending more time banning trans kids than they are spending regulating guns,” she said.
Another advocate, Charlotte Clymer, criticized Gosar and said he “owes the public an apology.”
“It’s pathetic that @DrPaulGosar sought to exploit this horrific tragedy for anti-trans propaganda,” she said. “There is zero evidence that the shooter is transgender.”
Reporter and MSNBC contributor Katelyn Burns said this isn’t the first time “right wing liars have tried to falsely claim a mass shooter was trans.” She referenced an article she wrote in April 2018 following a shooting at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, in which three people were wounded.
The shooter died by suicide by the time police arrived at the scene, and afterward, some far-right websites and conservative critics speculated, without evidence, that the shooter was transgender.
Similarly, Burns noted that following a 2015 shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, that left three people dead, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, shared the unsubstantiated theory that the shooter was transgender after a far-right outlet reported that he registered to vote as a woman.
“Well, it’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a woman and transgendered leftist activist, if that’s what he is,” Cruz said during a campaign event in 2015, according to audio obtained by the Texas Tribune.
Cruz’s campaign later told news outlets that he was trying to make a point that there were still many unknown details about the shooter.
It turns out that a large number of Republicans believe that teachers can actually make children turn queer.
40% of Republican adults said that they believe teachers can influence students’ sexuality and gender identity, according to a new Morning Consult poll. Only 27% of Democrats and 29% of independents agreed.
Respondents were more likely in the poll to say that teachers can affect students’ academic performance, social skills, intelligence, values, and even religious views, but the alarmingly large number who believe that sexual orientation and gender identity are learned at school may be why so many Republican parents don’t want LGBTQ people to work with children.
The survey found that 31% of Republican parents are “uncomfortable” with LGBTQ people working with their kids, and another 13% had no opinion. Slightly over half – 57% – said they were “comfortable” with LGBTQ people working with their children.
In contrast, 84% of Democratic parents said that they were “comfortable” with LGBTQ people working with their kids and only 10% were “uncomfortable.”
The survey also asked parents if they were comfortable with lessons about “the LGBTQ civil rights movement” being taught in school, and compared that to whether they were comfortable with discussions of “sexual orientation and gender identity.” Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law bans discussions of “sexual orientation and gender identity” in early grades and requires them to be “developmentally appropriate” in older grades – without defining what that means – and many advocates on both sides have taken that language to mean that discussions about LGBTQ people are restricted.
59% of Republican parents said that they oppose lessons about the LGBTQ civil rights movement in schools, and 60% opposed lessons about sexual orientation and gender identity. Democratic parents were less homophobic; only 25% opposed lessons about the LGBTQ civil rights movement and 29% oppose lessons about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Conservative pundits have been saying that parents, generally, don’t want LGBTQ people mentioned in schools. But it looks like it may just be Republican parents who get upset with teachers who mention their same-sex spouses (but never their opposite-sex spouses).
Health authorities in Spain have attributed the majority of monkeypox infections in the country to a single outbreak in a now-closed gay sauna in the Madrid region.
At least 30 cases of monkeypox have so far been confirmed across Spain – with Britain, Portugal and the US also reporting a surge in cases of the rare viral infection.
The UK Health Security Agency noted that cases have predominantly been found in gay and bisexual men, but have been clear that monkeypox usually poses little risk as the majority of patients make a full recovery.
Twenty-three new cases were confirmed in Spain on Friday (May 20), with regional health chief Enrique Ruiz Escudero telling reporters that most of the cases had been traced from a single adult sauna, used by queer men for sex, according to Reuters.
Escudero confirmed that the Public Health Department of Spain will be carrying out further analysis to “control contagion, cut the chains of transmission and try to mitigate the transmission of this virus as much as possible”.
Fifteen of the cases in Spain are in the Madrid region, with another 18 suspected cases under investigation across the country. The Extremadura region confirmed its first case on Friday and 23 cases have been noted in neighbouring Portugal.
“The health department of the Belgian government has confirmed three cases of the monkeypox virus linked to visitors at Darklands,” read a statement on the festival’s website.
“There’s reason to assume that the virus has been brought in by visitors from abroad to the festival after recent cases in other countries.
Around 100 cases of monkeypox, which is rarely found outside parts of Central and West Africa, have been detected across Europe. While some have been associated with overseas travel, UK health officials believe that local cases are a result of transmission throughout the LGBTQ+ community.
As the summer approaches, Dr Hans Kluge, the World Health Organisation(WHO) regional director for Europe, is “concerned that transmission could accelerate” with “mass gatherings, festivals and parties as the cases currently being detected are among those engaging in sexual activity and the symptoms are unfamiliar to many”.
“I would like to emphasise that individuals contracting monkeypox must not be stigmatised or discriminated against in any way” he continued. “Timely risk communication with the general public is important, and public health bodies should widely disseminate accurate and practical advice on prevention, diagnosis and treatment.”
Dr Kluge urged anyone who is “concerned about an unusual rash” to consult their healthcare provider.
Video taken at night caught footage of a “person of interest” allegedly vandalizing the Little Queer Library, a rainbow-colored roadside book box maintained by a female couple in Waltham, Massachusetts. The incident marks the fourth time that the library has been vandalized in the last three months.
The May 11 footage showed a person removing all of the library’s books and placing them into bags. After doing this for about 10 minutes, the person then walked away with the books, removing nearly $1,000 worth of materials, library curators Krysta Petrie and Katie Cohen told WCVB.
Cohen and her wife, Petrie, established the Little Queer Library during the pandemic. It offers informative LGBTQ books for children and young adult readers. The couple said they wanted the library to be a community resource for people who might feel fearful about checking out queer content from schools or local public libraries.
“We want to be a place where people are accepted and seen and celebrate who they are,” Cohen said. “[The recent vandalism] really feels a lot like censorship.”
Petrie added, “There’s really only a couple of reasons why [such vandalism] could happen: One is straight-up hate, LGBT hate. They just don’t want to see the community or something.”
A doctor refused to let a Republican Congressman derail a House Judiciary Hearing by asking for a definition of the word “woman.”
The hearing was held to look address how the Supreme Court is probably going to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the federal right to an abortion in the U.S., and Dr. Yashica Robinson, who provides abortions in Alabama and is on the board of directors of the group Physicians for Reproductive Health, was called to testify about abortion access.
But that didn’t stop Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) from trying to troll her and bringing up a random conservative grievance about the practice of sharing one’s pronouns to help others avoid misgendering people.
“In your written testimony, I noticed you said that you use she/her pronouns,” Rep. Bishop asked her in the hearing. “You’re a medical doctor. What’s a woman?”
“It’s important for you to understand why I said I use she/her pronouns,” Dr. Robinson responded.
Bishop tried to stop her from explaining why she shared her pronouns and again asked, “What is a woman?”
Robinson wasn’t deterred: “I think it’s important that we educate people like you about why we’re doing the things that we do.”
“So the reason I use she and her pronouns is because I understand that there are people who become pregnant that may not identify that way and I think it is discriminatory to speak to people or to call them in such a way as they desire not to be called,” she continued. “It’s important that we respect each individual person.”
Bishop cut her off again: “Can you answer my question of what’s a woman?”
“I’m a woman,” she said.
“Is that as comprehensive of a definition as you can give me?” Bishop asked.
Robinson had had enough and reminded Bishop that the hearing was about abortion, not pronouns or the definition of a woman: “That’s as comprehensive of a definition as I will give you today because I think that it’s important that we focus on what we’re here for, and it’s to talk about access to abortion.”
A Trump-appointed judge just blocked federal agencies from enforcing part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on the grounds that it would require doctors to perform gender-affirming care, including surgery, on babies. The wild claim is patently false.
Section 1557 of the ACA states that healthcare cannot be denied to any individual because of discrimination based on their sex, race, disability status, and a variety of other reasons.
Jump to October 2021, the Christian Employers Alliance alleged that the implementation of section 1557 of the ACA was an affront to their religious freedom. Essentially, the suit said that being required to treat patients with gender dysphoria would “[prevent] them from maintaining views and facilities in accordance with their religious beliefs.”
The suit sought to bring an injunction barring the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from carrying out their job duties by ensuring transgender patients are not discriminated against.
Judge Daniel Traynor, a Trump appointee, sided with the Christian Employers Alliance in saying that refusing care to transgender people was an expression of the plaintiff’s religious freedom.
Traynor’s opinion seems to be founded upon the idea that the HHS will be prosecuting doctors for refusing to medically transition infants.
“The thought that a newborn child could be surgically altered to change gender is the result of the Biden HHS Notification and HHS Guidance that brands a medical professional’s refusal to do so as discrimination,” the suit reads. “Indeed, the HHS Guidance specifically invites the public to file complaints for acting in a manner the Alliance says is consistent with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
The judge has essentially implied that the Christian Employers Alliance’s religious freedom outweighs transgender people’s right to be treated for their gender dysphoria, on the false claim that babies are being transitioned.
A basic search shows that no infants are transitioning. Puberty blockers, the first step for childhood transition, cannot be prescribed until age 12.
What is an issue, though, is the effects of living without proper gender-affirming care.
“Gender dysphoria can have serious health impacts,” wrote Samantha Schmidt for The Washington Post in February. “It can affect a person’s ability to function at school or work and can lead to intense anxiety, depression and suicide risk.”
So a Trump-appointed judge saw fit to side with a religious organization, prioritizing their religious freedom so as to ensure babies don’t transition, something that isn’t an issue to begin with, and as a result, transgender people are in danger of not receiving life-saving healthcare.
Several major anti-LGBTQ politicians – including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) – won their primary elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia yesterday and Texas’s run-off elections.
Greene – who tried to shut down the House of Representatives twice because it was debating a ban on anti-LGBTQ discrimination and who has a transphobic sign in front of her office – won her primary yesterday with 69% of the vote in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. 73% of her district voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 elections, so she has an advantage going into the general election.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) won his primary after being challenged by Trump-endorsed former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA). Kemp signed three anti-LGBTQ bills in April, which banned trans athletes from participating in school sports, allowed parents to challenge any material taught in school, and banned “offensive” books from school libraries, which has been understood to include books with LGBTQ content.
Also in Georgia, former NFL player Herschel Walker won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate and will face Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in the general election.
“Don’t call- Don’t put that ghetto g-word on me,” he said in a Twitch stream in January. “I just like masculine men. I’m not a— I don’t wanna be lumped in with the rainbow people.”
In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey (R) won her primary yesterday with 54% of the votes counted so far. Ivey signed a law earlier this month that would throw doctors in jail for providing gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth and young adults, but a federal court stopped the state from implementing it.
“I thank you with all my soul,” Ivey said on Tuesday night. “I am so proud to be your governor.”
In Texas, the incumbent Paxton won his run-off election for state attorney general against George P. Bush. While Paxton got the most votes in Texas’s primary in March, he didn’t get a majority of the vote and had to face Bush in a run-off yesterday.
Bush said that he challenged Paxton because he wanted to advance “good government.”
“This campaign is about good government – making sure we don’t have indicted felons serving at the top of the chain of command of our law enforcement officials here in Texas,” he said on Texas Public Radio.
Earlier this year, Paxton published a non-binding opinion that allowing transgender youth to transition violates their constitutional right to reproduce, a right that is not mentioned in the Constitution. His opinion was so full of medical errors related to transgender people that Yale medical and legal researchers published a report about it and said it was “not grounded in reputable science and are full of errors of omission and inclusion.”
“These errors, taken together, thoroughly discredit the AG opinion’s claim that standard medical care for transgender children and adolescents constitutes child abuse,” the Yale researchers wrote.
Trump-era White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders won the Republican primary for Arkansas governor, winning a campaign where she avoided talking about state issues and instead focused on national Republican talking points.
Sanders attacked LGBTQ equality repeatedly when she was at the White House, including saying that “religious liberty” requires allowing “a baker to put a sign in his window saying we don’t bake cakes for gay weddings” and saying that allowing transgender people to serve openly in the military is “a very expensive and disruptive policy,” even though experts did not agree with that statement.
A federal judge struck down a Tennessee law Tuesday that would have required businesses in the state to post warning notices on their public restrooms if they have policies allowing transgender patrons to use the facilities that match their gender identities.
The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law in June on behalf of two business owners — the owner of Sanctuary, a performing arts and community center in Chattanooga, and the owner of Fido, a restaurant in Nashville, among other businesses.
The law went into effect on July 1, but U.S. District Judge Aleta A. Trauger issued a preliminary injunction against it a week later. Then on Tuesday, Trauger permanently blocked the law by granting the ACLU’s motion for summary judgment, which asks a court to decide a case without a full trial.
She wrote in a 40-page decision that the law violates the First Amendment of the Constitution because it compels speech that is controversial and with which the plaintiffs disagree.
“It would do a disservice to the First Amendment to judge the Act for anything other than what it is: a brazen attempt to single out trans-inclusive establishments and force them to parrot a message that they reasonably believe would sow fear and misunderstanding about the very transgender Tennesseans whom those establishments are trying to provide with some semblance of a safe and welcoming environment,” Trauger wrote.
Glenn Funk and Neal Pinkston, both district attorneys; Christopher Bainbridge, the state director of code enforcement; and Carter Lawrence, the state fire marshal, are named as defendants. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A representative for Gov. Bill Lee has also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The law required business owners with even informal policies that allow people to use whichever bathroom they want to post a sign that reads, “This facility maintains a policy of allowing the use of restrooms by either biological sex regardless of the designation on the restroom,” at the entrances of single-sex public restrooms, locker rooms, dressing areas or other facilities that are “designated for a specific biological sex … where a person would have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
The law said the sign must be at least 8 inches wide and 6 inches tall and use the colors red and yellow, with a boldface typeface, among other requirements.
Representatives for the state argued that the law is a “content-neutral” rule meant to clarify restroom signage and is not meant to be an endorsement of how gender identity should be understood, according to the opinion. The ACLU’s clients, they argued, have “imagined an idiosyncratic, hidden undertone to the [required] signage.”
Trauger, who was appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton, disagreed, noting that the government’s preferred view of how gender works — that it is dictated by “biological sex,” which is assigned at birth and is limited to male or female — is contested.
“The only thing that is imaginary in this case, though, is the imagined consensus on issues of sex and gender on which the defendants seek to rely,” Trauger wrote. “Transgender Tennesseans are real. The businesses and establishments that wish to welcome them are real. And the viewpoints that those individuals and businesses hold are real, even if they differ from the views of some legislators or government officials.”
Get the Morning Rundown
Get a head start on the morning’s top stories.SIGN UPTHIS SITE IS PROTECTED BY RECAPTCHA PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS OF SERVICE
“We applaud the court for recognizing that this law violates the First Amendment and harms transgender people,” Hedy Weinberg, the executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee, said in a statement.“Transgender individuals should be able to live their lives free of harassment and discrimination. Today’s decision ensures that the businesses who welcome them are not forced to become instruments for politicians’ discrimination.”
Bob Bernstein, the owner of the Nashville restaurant Fido, has an informal policy that allows customers to use the restroom they feel is most appropriate. He said he has not had any complaints or concerns about the policy, and he objected to the “stigmatizing” message the law required.
“As a former journalist, I believe strongly in free speech,” Bernstein said in a statement. “The government can’t just force people to post discriminatory, inaccurate, and divisive signs in their places of business. I am glad that the court recognized that this law violates the First Amendment.”
Advocates have described the law as a new iteration of “bathroom bills” passed in 2016, such as House Bill 2 in North Carolina, which sought to bar trans people from using the bathrooms that aligned with their gender identities.
The sponsor of Tennessee’s law, Rep. Tim Rudd, R-Murfreesboro, said in legislative debate in May 2021 that the bill is meant to protect women and children “against sexual predators that could be taking advantage of policies, executive orders or legislation that may allow the opposite sex to enter a restroom, shower or locker room,” the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.
Trauger wrote in her opinion that Rudd “was unable to provide examples or evidence of such a problem,” although he argued that “we shouldn’t wait for people’s rights to be abused” to potentially prevent “an attack.”
The issue is not new, advocates have said, and proponents of bathroom bills passed in 2016 cited similar arguments. A 2018 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found there is no evidence that trans-inclusive policies for public facilities increase safety risks.