Tag Archives: transgender

New Hampshire legislature blocks bill on transgender rights

File Photo: A man holds a flag as he takes part in an annual Gay Pride Parade in Toronto June 28, 2009. REUTERS/Mark Blinch

By Scott Malone

(Reuters) – State legislators in New Hampshire narrowly blocked a bill on Thursday that would have prohibited discrimination against transgender people, including allowing them to use the public bathrooms that match the gender with which they identify.

Transgender rights are a politically charged issue in the United States. Supporters say bills like the one blocked on Thursday protect people who do not conform to their birth gender, while opponents say they could give cover to voyeurs and sexual predators.

The 187-179 vote by the Republican-controlled New Hampshire House of Representatives to table the bill without debate came one day after Governor Chris Sununu, also a Republican, said he had no position on the matter.

Many Democrats had supported the bill.

“With Sununu’s support, the bill, which was tabled by a slim margin, would be on its way to the corner office,” said Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. “His silence and apathy are a tacit endorsement of discrimination, and he will have to live with the fact that he denied many transgender people the freedom that is granted through equality under the law.”

A spokesman for Sununu whose father, John Sununu, was a New Hampshire governor and later White House chief of staff in the first Bush administration, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This was the latest in a string of defeats for transgender rights this week. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lower court ruling in favor of a Virginia transgender student after President Donald Trump rescinded a policy put in place last year protecting such youths.

A Texas Senate committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would require people to use public restrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates.

That measure is similar to one passed last year in North Carolina, which sparked boycotts that are estimated to have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars. Due to economic concerns, analysts do not expect the Texas measure to pass the state House.

Despite their dominance in New Hampshire’s government, Republicans in the state legislature do not unanimously support the party’s national agenda. Last month state legislators blocked a bill that would have allowed employees in union-represented jobs not to pay dues.

(Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Eleven U.S. states to drop suit over transgender bathroom order

An activist waves a rainbow flag during the "Queer and Trans Dance Party" in protest of U.S. President Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, U.S., February 26, 2017. REUTERS/Darren Ornitz

(Reuters) – Eleven U.S. states have agreed to drop a lawsuit against an Obama administration order for transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice after the measure was revoked by President Donald Trump, a court filing showed on Thursday.

In a filing in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Justice Department said the states, led by Texas, had agreed to drop the lawsuit, and it was dropping its appeal against a federal judge’s August stay on the Obama directive.

In their suit in May, the states said Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration overstepped its authority by ordering public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms matching their gender identity, rather than their birth gender, or risk losing federal funding.

Obama officials had said that barring students from such bathrooms violated Title IX, the federal law that forbids sex discrimination in education.

But the directive enraged conservatives who say federal civil rights protections cover biological sex, not gender identity. Obama was succeeded by Trump, a Republican, when he left office in January.

Texas was joined in the lawsuit by Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. The Arizona Department of Education, Maine Republican Governor Paul LePage and two school districts also were parties to the suit.

A federal judge in August barred adoption of the order during the hearing of the case. The Justice Department appealed the stay, saying it should only apply to the states challenging the order.

Last week, the Trump administration rescinded the order, leaving states and school boards to decide how to accommodate transgender students.

Other lawsuits about the rights of transgender students are being heard in the courts.

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on March 28 addressing the question of whether the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia can block a female-born transgender student from using the boys’ bathroom.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

School board in key transgender case seeks U.S. high court delay

File Photo: A bathroom sign welcomes both genders at the Cacao Cinnamon coffee shop in Durham, North Carolina, United States on May 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake/File Photo

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Virginia school board sued by a student over bathroom access in a major transgender rights case asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to delay the matter until at least April, when President Donald Trump’s conservative nominee could be on the bench and potentially cast the deciding vote.

Lawyers on both sides of the dispute urged the justices to decide the case even though the Trump administration on Feb. 22 rescinded Obama administration guidance to public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. The Gloucester County School Board asked for the delay so the Trump administration, which is not a party in the case, can file a brief providing its views.

The court, currently one justice short, has scheduled oral arguments for March 28 on whether the school board violated a federal anti-discrimination law when it blocked Gavin Grimm, a female-born transgender high school student who identifies as male, from using the boys’ bathroom. A ruling is due by the end of June.

Trump on Jan. 31 nominated appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy on the court caused by the February 2016 death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia. The Senate has scheduled Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings to begin on March 20 and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he hopes Gorsuch will be confirmed before the start of a Senate recess in mid-April.

The court currently has four conservatives and four liberals. Gorsuch’s confirmation would restore a long-standing conservative majority.

If the justices delay arguments until the court’s two-week session beginning April 17 or even put it over until the next court term starts in October, Gorsuch potentially could participate. If the court hears the case with eight justices, it could split 4-4, which would leave in place a lower court’s ruling favoring the student, Gavin Grimm, but set no nationwide legal precedent.

The justice asked both sides to weigh in after the Trump administration’s action.

Although Trump’s decision to roll back Obama’s May 2016 guidance effectively knocked out one of the legal questions in the case, lawyers on both sides said the justices can still decide whether a federal law, known as Title IX, that bars sex discrimination in education covers transgender students.

Trump’s move “makes resolution of that question more urgent than ever,” said Joshua Block, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents Grimm and opposed a postponement.

“Delaying resolution of that question will only lead to further harm, confusion and protracted litigation for transgender students and school districts across the country,” Block added.

The court could take a more cautious approach and send the case back to the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its April 2016 ruling in favor of Grimm in light of the Trump administration’s action.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

NAACP calls for boycott of North Carolina over voting, bathroom laws

Cornell William Brooks, President and CEO of the NAACP, speaks at the 46th NAACP Image Awards in Pasadena, California, U.S. on February 6, 2015. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok/File Photo

By Colleen Jenkins

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Friday said it would not hold its convention in North Carolina and urged other organizations to boycott the state in protest of laws adopted by the Republican-led legislature.

The civil rights groups described the move as the first step in an economic boycott that could be expanded in North Carolina and replicated in other states that enact laws limiting voting rights and protections for gay and transgender people.

NAACP leaders asked artists, religious groups, educators and sports leagues to join the effort.

“If we demonstrate the power of the purse, then we will demonstrate the power of democracy,” the NAACP’s president and CEO, Cornell William Brooks, told reporters in Raleigh.

Brooks did not provide a timeline for a wider boycott, but the organization said an internal task force would explore it.

The NAACP said it was calling for the boycott in response to North Carolina laws such as House Bill 2, which bars transgender people from using government-operated bathrooms that match their gender identity and bans cities from setting a minimum wage above the state level.

The organization said state lawmakers need to create fair election districts that do not dilute the black vote and repeal a new measure seen as weakening the executive powers of newly elected Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

“What has happened in North Carolina makes this state one of the battlegrounds over the soul of America,” said the Rev. William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP chapter.

Conventions, corporations and sports leagues including the National Basketball Association already relocated events or halted new jobs planned for North Carolina after lawmakers passed H.B. 2 last March, costing the state more than $560 million, according to the online magazine Facing South.

So far, however, efforts to repeal the measure have failed.

Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican, said Cooper should take a stance against the NAACP’s boycott.

“It’s time for him to show some leadership as North Carolina’s governor, condemn William Barber’s attempt to inflict economic harm on our citizens, and work toward a reasonable compromise that keeps men out of women’s bathrooms,” Berger said in a statement.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Trump’s transgender move puts spotlight on Supreme Court case

FILE PHOTO - A bathroom sign welcomes both genders at the Cacao Cinnamon coffee shop in Durham, North Carolina, United States on May 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake/File Photo

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration’s move on Wednesday to rescind guidance allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice has raised the stakes for an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that could deliver a landmark decision on the issue.

The eight justices are due to hear oral arguments on March 28 on whether the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia can block Gavin Grimm, a female-born transgender high school student, from using the boys’ bathroom. A ruling is due by the end of June.

A key question in the case is whether a federal law, known as Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in education, covers transgender students. The Education Department under Democratic President Barack Obama said in guidance to public schools last May that it does, but the Republican Trump administration withdrew that finding on Wednesday.

The high court on Thursday asked the lawyers involved to file letters by March 1 giving their views on how the Trump action should affect consideration of the case.

Lawyers for Grimm say that the definition of sex discrimination in Title IX is broad and includes gender identity. The school board maintains that the law was enacted purely to address “physiological distinctions between men and women.”

If the Supreme Court rules that Title IX protects transgender students, the decision would become the law of the land, binding the Trump administration and the states.

“This is an incredibly urgent issue for Gavin and these other kids across the country,” said Joshua Block, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who represents Grimm.

The Trump administration’s announcement “only underscores the need for the Supreme Court to bring some clarity here,” he added.

The administration on Wednesday did not offer its own interpretation of Title IX, with the Justice Department telling the court only that it plans to “consider further and more completely the legal issues involved.”

The administration is not directly involved in the case.

Lawyers for both Grimm and the Gloucester County School Board have urged the court to decide whether Title IX applies to transgender students rather than taking a narrower approach by sending the case back to a lower court.

In a court filing on Thursday, the ACLU said that, regardless of the administration’s position, the court “can – and should – resolve the underlying question of whether the Board’s policy violates Title IX.”

The school board’s lawyers made similar comments in their most recent court filing, saying that the meaning of the federal law is “plain and may be resolved as a matter of straightforward interpretation.”

But the court could take a more cautious approach and send the case back to the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court’s April 2016 ruling in favor of Grimm relied on the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law.

Kyle Duncan, a lawyer representing the school board, said the court must at a minimum throw out the appeals court decision because “the entire basis for that opinion” was the no-longer extant Obama administration interpretation.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: PIVOTAL VOTE?

With the eight-justice court likely to be closely divided, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, conservative appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch, could end up casting the deciding vote if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate in time. Otherwise, the court, which is divided equally between liberals and conservatives, could split 4-4, which would set no nationwide legal precedent.

Clues as to how the high court could rule can be gleaned from its decision last August to temporarily block the appeals court decision in Grimm’s case from going into effect. That emergency request from the school board did not require the justices to decide the merits of the case.

The vote in favor of the school board was 5-3, with Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, joining the four conservative justices. Breyer made clear in a statement at the time that his vote would not dictate how he would approach the case if the court took the issue up.

That decision indicated that the court is likely to be closely divided at oral argument. Grimm’s hopes may rest in Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who voted against Grimm last summer but has sometimes sided with liberals in major cases, including several on gay rights.

But even lawyers closely following the case are not sure which way Kennedy could go.

“If I could predict that, I would be down in the casino,” said Gary McCaleb, a lawyer with conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which backs the school board.

For graphic on transgender rights and “bathroom bills”, click: http://tmsnrt.rs/2l529J9

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; editing by Noeleen Walder and Jonathan Oatis)

North Carolina governor-elect says deal could repeal transgender bathroom law

North Carolina Governor-elect Roy Cooper speaks to supporters at a victory rally the day after his Republican opponent and incumbent Pat McCrory conceded in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.

Dec 19 (Reuters) – North Carolina’s governor-elect said on Monday that a deal was in the works to repeal a law limiting bathroom access for transgender people after the legislation led to economic boycotts and criticism from rights groups.

Incoming governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said Republican leaders of the state legislature planned to call a special session on Tuesday to repeal the law, known as HB 2.

Under the law enacted in March, North Carolina is the only U.S. state to require that transgender people use bathrooms in publicly owned buildings that correspond with the sex listed on their birth certificates.

“I hope they will keep their word to me,” Cooper said in a statement. “Full repeal will help to bring jobs, sports and entertainment events back and will provide the opportunity for strong LGBT protections in our state.”

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by W Simon and Lisa Von
Ahn)

Transgender student asks U.S. high court to keep out of bathroom case

A sign protesting a recent North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access in Durham, North Carolina

By David Ingram

(Reuters) – Lawyers for a transgender high school student in Virginia asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to keep out of a legal dispute about bathroom rights, an issue that has emerged as an increasingly divisive one in the United States.

In court papers, lawyers for the student, Gavin Grimm, urged the Supreme Court to leave in place a lower court’s order in favor of Grimm while the litigation goes on.

The case is the first time the fight over transgender bathroom rights has reached the Supreme Court.

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued on behalf of Grimm to challenge the Gloucester County School Board’s bathroom policy, which requires transgender students to use alternative restroom facilities.

Grimm, 17, was born a girl but now identifies as male.

A federal district court in June ordered the school board to allow Grimm to use the boys’ restroom for now, and this month the school board asked the Supreme Court for an emergency stay of that order.

Seeking to keep the order in place, ACLU lawyers wrote that no “irreparable harm” will occur if the Supreme Court keeps out of the case and Grimm uses the boys’ bathroom.

“In every context outside school, he uses the boys’ restrooms, just like any other boy would,” they wrote.

The school board’s application for a stay was directed to Chief Justice John Roberts, who has responsibility for emergency actions that arise from the appeals court that covers Virginia. Roberts could act alone or refer the matter to all eight justices. Five votes are needed to grant a stay application.

In court papers this month, the school board’s lawyers said the lower court wrongly deferred to President Barack Obama’s administration’s view that prohibitions on sex discrimination under federal law also apply to gender identity.

In May, the Obama administration directed public schools nationwide to allow transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity or risk losing federal funding. So far, 23 states have sued to block the directive.

Separately, the Justice Department sued North Carolina over a state law requiring people to use public bathrooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificates.

An April ruling by the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of Grimm was the first by an appeals court to find that transgender students are protected under federal laws that bar sex-based discrimination.

(Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington)

Thirteen U.S. States ask court to halt transgender bathroom policy

A sign protesting a recent North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access is seen in the bathroom stalls at the 21C Museum Hotel in Durham, North Carolina

By Julia Harte

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Thirteen states that have sued the Obama administration over its policy on transgender access to bathrooms asked a federal court in Texas on Wednesday to prevent the administration from enforcing the policy while their lawsuit proceeds.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the motion in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of the state coalition.

“Schools are facing the potential loss of funding for simply exercising the authority to implement the policies that best protect their students,” Paxton said in a statement on Wednesday.

The 13-state coalition’s lawsuit is one of several state-based challenges to the federal government’s May directive that public schools must allow transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity or face the loss of federal funding.

The issue has thrown transgender rights into the national spotlight and enraged social conservatives who say federal civil rights protections encompass biological sex, not gender identity.

A Justice Department official told the states’ lawyers that the department opposed the motion, but agreed to respond to it faster than usual so that the matter could be resolved before the start of the 2016-17 school year, according to the injunction motion.

The Justice Department declined to comment, “due to pending litigation.” It must respond to the injunction request by July 27, according to the motion.

The lawsuit is expected to be heard by conservative judges at the district and appeals court levels, and could end up heading to the U.S. Supreme Court if the appeals court rules against the Obama administration.

The Justice Department is also battling North Carolina in federal court over a North Carolina state law approved in March that prohibits people from using public restrooms not corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates.

The Justice Department asked the court in that case to enjoin the North Carolina law late on Tuesday.

In June, a Virginia school board announced that it would seek Supreme Court review of a court ruling that gave a transgender high-school student access to the bathroom of his gender identity.

(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Judge blocks Mississippi law allowing denial of services to LGBT people

Rainbow flag flying next to rainbow in the sky

(Reuters) – A day before it was due to come into effect, a federal judge has blocked a Mississippi law permitting those with religious objections to deny wedding services to same-sex couples and impose dress and bathroom restrictions on transgender people.

Mississippi is among a handful of southern U.S. states on the front lines of legal battles over equality, privacy and religious freedom after the U.S. Supreme Court last year legalized same-sex marriage.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves found on Thursday the wide-ranging law adopted this spring unconstitutionally discriminated against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and others who do not share the view that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Reeves issued an injunction blocking the law that was to take effect on Friday.

He agreed with opponents of the law who argued that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on making laws that establish religion.

Mississippi’s “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act” shields those believing that marriage involves a man and a woman, and sexual relations should occur within such marriages. It protects the belief that gender is defined by sex at birth.

The law allows people to refuse to provide wide-ranging services by citing the religious grounds, from baking a wedding cake for a same-sex couple to counseling and fertility services. It would also permit dress code and bathroom restrictions to be imposed on transgender people.

The law “does not honor that tradition of religion freedom, nor does it respect the equal dignity of all of Mississippi’s citizens,” Reeves wrote in his decision.

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, a Republican, in April signed the measure into law. The state has defended it as a reasonable accommodation intended to protect businesses and individuals seeking to exercise their religious views.

His staff was unavailable for comment early on Friday.

Critics say the Mississippi law is so broad that it could apply to nearly anyone in a sexual relationship outside of heterosexual marriage, including single mothers. Several lawsuits have challenged various aspects of the law.

Earlier this week, Reeves addressed a provision allowing clerks to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples based on religious beliefs, saying they had to fulfill their duties under the Supreme Court ruling.

His ruling on Thursday came after religious leaders, including an Episcopal vicar and a Jewish rabbi, last week testified in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi that the law did not reflect their religious views. He also heard about its harmful potential from members of the gay community.

“I am grateful that the court has blocked this divisive law. As a member of the LGBT community and as minister of the Gospel, I am thankful that justice prevailed,” said Rev. Susan Hrostowski, an Episcopal priest who is a plaintiff in the case.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Toby Chopra)

College dorms, new front in U.S. Battle over transgender rights

A gender neutral bathroom is seen at the University of California Irvine

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) – As lawmakers across the United States battle over whether to allow transgender Americans to use public restrooms that match their gender identities, universities are scrambling to ensure that dorms meet federal standards.

At a time of year when the nation’s 2,100 residential colleges and universities are sorting out student housing assignments, they also are poring over a May letter from the Obama administration that thrusts them into the national debate on transgender rights.

Known as the “dear colleague” letter, it makes clear that federal law protects transgender students’ right to live in housing that reflects their gender identity.

Schools that fail to provide adequate housing to transgender students could face lawsuits or the loss of any federal funding they rely on.

Although hundreds of universities had begun to offer gender-inclusive housing in response to student demand in recent years, many are now reviewing or expediting their plans so they can provide the option to incoming students for the first time this fall.

The policies are intended not only to accommodate transgender students, university officials say, but to help siblings, gay students who want to live with straight friends of the opposite gender or simply groups comfortable with mixed-gender housing.

The May letter from the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice invoked Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting gender discrimination at schools that receive federal funds.

“Title IX and the ‘dear colleague’ letters make all of us, all institutions, more accountable for students who may be on the margins,” said Darryl Holloman, dean of students at Georgia State University, which offered gender-inclusive housing options for the first time in the 2015-2016 academic year.

‘ONLY A MATTER OF TIME’

There are no official U.S. statistics on the number of colleges that offer gender-inclusive housing, although a count by Campus Pride, a non-profit that focuses on supporting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students in U.S. higher education, found it could be as low as one in 10.

The author of that study, Genny Beemyn, director of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Stonewall Center, acknowledged the count, which shows just 203 universities, may underestimate the number of schools that offer gender-inclusive housing.

“More and more schools are grappling with it,” Beemyn said. “It’s only a matter of time until this becomes a much bigger issue.”

Universities in the Northeast and along the West Coast have been quickest to allow gender-inclusive housing, with those in the South and religiously affiliated schools least likely to do so, according to observers, including Demoya Gordon, transgender rights project attorney with Lambda Legal, an LGBT rights advocacy group.

The Association of College and University Housing Officers-International has seen an increase in the number of questions it gets about transgender housing, said spokesman James Baumann.

“It is certainly something that has gained momentum,” Baumann said. “When I first started 10 years ago the questions was, ‘Should we?’ And now the question is, ‘How can we?'”

The same letter that has universities examining their transgender housing policies sparked a broader fight by telling U.S. public grammar and high schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that reflect their gender identities.

Thirteen U.S. states joined a lawsuit accusing the Obama administration of overreaching, attempting to add transgender protections to a 1972 law that never mentioned the subject.

LESS OPPOSITION

The university moves have been less controversial in part because the population affected is one of the segments of society most comfortable with transgender issues.

Some 57 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds told a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken April 14 through May 3 that they believed people should use public restrooms that match the gender with which they identify. That is a far higher percentage than the 40 percent of Americans of all ages who held that view. The poll included responses from 6,723 people and has a credibility interval of 1.4 percentage points.

Few students are choosing gender-inclusive housing. At Georgia Tech’s Atlanta campus, 42 out of some 4,100 students housed in dorms sought it last year.

When Johns Hopkins University first offered it in the 2014-2015 academic year, 30 out of some 2,500 students enrolled, a number that doubled to 60 the following year.

“There are certainly some transgender students for whom it matters a lot but if it’s a gay man whose best friend is a lesbian and they decide they want to live together, this is an option,” said Demere Woolway, director of LGBTQ life at the Baltimore university.

College officials interviewed also emphasized they have no plans to phase out traditional gender-segregated housing.

“We have students … who want to maintain spaces where they are with people who have the same gender identity,” said Elizabeth Lee Agosto, senior associate dean of student affairs at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, which has offered gender-inclusive housing since 2007. “It’s important to have the full spectrum.”

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Bill Trott)