Denying people the ability to update the gender marker on their identification is not only discriminatory; it is dangerous. In an increasingly hostile climate, mismatched identification can expose individuals to harassment, threats, and violence. It can also create serious barriers to employment, housing, and access to essential services.
The original legal case concerned a doctor who was prosecuted for performing gender reassignment surgery on transgender women, amid law enforcement frustrations that female-presenting transgender sex workers could not be prosecuted for their profession due to their being legally male. The doctor was found guilty of violating Japan's eugenics laws, which prohibited surgeries resulting in sterilisation if they were deemed inessential.
The state of Indiana just banned trans people from updating the gender markers on their driver's licenses. Advocate reports that the state's Bureau of Motor Vehicles added a small statement to its website on Monday saying that it will no longer allow people to change their gender on state IDs, even if they have a court order. The notice can be found by clicking through several webpages on the state's BMV website:
The Indiana state Senate passed in a 37 to 8 vote last week S.B. 182, which would create legal definitions of "male" and "female" based on sex assigned at birth, or as the bill states, "anatomy, hormones, and the gametes oriented toward fertilization without regard to the individual's psychological, behavioral, social, chosen, or subjective experience of gender." It now heads to the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives.
Along with using his wife's pregnancy announcement as proof that he gets action (shudder), Vice President JD Vance used his speech at the March for Life rally on Friday to announce a devastating expansion of the Trump administration's global gag rule. The rule, which already blocked federal funding for global organizations that even dare utter the word "abortion," will now include any organization that the administration deems as promoting transgender rights or diversity inclusion initiatives.
Guidance on how to implement the landmark supreme court ruling on gender is being adapted to lessen its impact on businesses and to ensure it tries to balance single-sex spaces with the lives of transgender people, the Guardian has been told. Lawyers from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are understood to be in discussions with government lawyers over the practicalities of guiding businesses and other institutions about last year's ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex only.
The funding - supporting hospital clinics, HIV/AIDS programs, educational institutions, and more - would be conditioned on sweeping new restrictions barring "social transition" and gender-affirming care at any age, including therapy and counseling. While the administration has already frozen large portions of foreign aid, this rule would formalize those efforts and dramatically expand their reach, with potentially severe consequences for transgender people worldwide as the administration escalates its campaign against transgender lives both at home and abroad.
Anti-trans politics dominated the 2024 election season when Donald Trump painted former Vice President Kamala Harris as too far to the left on the issue and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads to hammer the message: "Kamala Harris is for they/them, President Trump is for you." The Harris-Walz campaign largely tried to avoid the issue, perhaps hoping voters would believe that Harris' position on trans rights was not that important in determining who should be president.
Griffin-Gracy, born in Chicago, spoke about her move to NYC in her youth on the LGBTQ&A podcast in 2021. "The trans community was everywhere," she reflected, "I went immediately to 42nd Street. Everybody went to 42nd Street: trans girls, everybody. Finding them was not a problem.... I found an apartment that I moved into. It was six floors of nothing but trans girls. It was fabulous. There were so many of us that it was a full life."
The sweeping bill replaces the term gender with sex in the state; repeals previous provisions related to gender identity (including protections for housing, employment, and crime); prohibits amendments to the sex designation field of a birth certificate; requires use of the term "biological sex" when referring to gender on state documents;
This week, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it had initiated investigations into more than a dozen K-12 school districts in mostly blue states across the country. The investigations stem from complaints OCR has received alleging the districts are violating the presidential administration's anti-trans interpretation of Title IX by allowing transgender girls to participate in girls' athletics.
Professionally, the impact was absolute. For decades, I managed complex IT projects for global giants and, most recently, for Sanford Health. I am a builder of systems. But this year, I watched the federal government systematically dismantle the data structures that acknowledge LGBTQ+ people exist. When the administration stopped collecting Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) data, it wasn't just a policy change; it was an erasure.
"But you got to win the midterms, because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be - I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me," he said. "I'll get impeached." "We don't impeach them. You know why? Because they're meaner than we are. We should have impeached Joe Biden for 100 different things. They are mean and smart. But fortunately for you, they have horrible policy," he continued.
"During a Board meeting prior to the December break, there was a discussion regarding Policy AC (Nondiscrimination/Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action)," Superintendent Audra Beauvais said in a statement.
