Today, members of the U.S. House of Representatives held a forum on the broad threats to Americans’ civil rights under the Trump Administration, led by House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), House Committee on Education and the Workforce Ranking Member Bobby Scott (D-VA), and Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA), Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
“In less than three months, the administration has begun a sweeping attack on civil rights in the workplace, schools, housing, health care, and the ballot box; enacted a bigoted Muslim travel ban; initiated dangerous efforts to break up immigrant families and abandon critical police accountability measures; and appointed a slew of hardline civil rights opponents to key posts,” said NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling. “The transgender community—comprised of over 1.5 million Americans—is just one of many communities being callously targeted by the administration’s actions and rhetoric. Congress and the American people must recognize this threat for what it is and stand up for the dignity and equality of all Americans.”
Panelists at today’s forum included Gavin Grimm, the Virginia teen whose challenge to years of anti-transgender discrimination by his high school was returned to a lower court by the Supreme Court after the Trump administration withdrew critical guidance supporting transgender students. Former Assistant Secretary of Education and current U.S. Civil Rights Commission Chair Catherine Lhamon, who coauthored that guidance based on over a decade of case law and the experiences of thousands of schools around the country, was also on the panel.
Since February 22, when the Departments of Justice and Education withdrew landmark guidance explaining how schools must protect transgender students under the federal Title IX law, the Trump administration has taken numerous additional actions to undermine the civil rights of transgender Americans, including:
- April 3: The Justice Department announced it would review and possibly seek to scale back numerous civil rights settlements with police departments, including many that contain critical protections for LGBT people.
- March 28: The Census Bureau retracted a proposal to collect demographic information on LGBT people in the 2020 Census.
- March 27: President Trump rescinded a 2014 executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose information about their compliance with civil rights laws, including protections for LGBT employees.
- March 13: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that its national survey of critical programs for older adults would no longer collect information on LGBT participants. HHS initially claimed in its Federal Register announcement that it was making “no changes” to the survey.
- March 13: The State Department announced that the official U.S. delegation to the UN’s 61st annual Commission on the Status of Women conference would include two outspoken anti-LGBT human rights opponents, including a representative of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM), an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
- March 10: HHS revised its Annual Program Performance Report for Centers for Independent Living to remove demographic questions about LGBT people. This report helps HHS evaluate programs that serve people with disabilities.
- March 10: The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced it would withdraw two important agency notices aimed at protecting LGBT people experiencing homelessness.
- One notice provided a posting to notify residents of HUD-funded emergency shelters that under existing HUD regulations, they had the right to be free from anti-LGBT discrimination.
- The other announced a survey to evaluate the impact of the LGBTQ Youth Homelessness Prevention Initiative implemented by HUD and other agencies over the last three years.
- March 2: The Department of Justice abandoned its request for a preliminary injunction against North Carolina’s anti-transgender House Bill 2.
- March 1: The Department of Justice took the highly unusual step of declining to appeal a nationwide preliminary injunction by a district court judge, which prevents HHS from acting to protect transgender people from health care discrimination under the Affordable Care Act.
