The Trump administration on Wednesday filed a brief arguing that businesses have the right to fire transgender workers
Bloomberg reports: “Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the high court that a civil rights law banning sex discrimination on the job doesn’t cover transgender bias. That approach already has created a rift within the Trump administration, contradicting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s view of the law it’s tasked with enforcing. A Michigan funeral home wants the high court to overturn a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decision finding that the company violated federal workplace discrimination law when it fired Aimee Stephens, a transgender worker. The EEOC successfully sued on behalf of Stephens in that case, but the Justice Department has the sole authority to represent the government before the Supreme Court. Francisco told the high court that the Sixth Circuit got the case wrong.”
#BREAKING: The @realDonaldTrump admin has doubled down (again) on its attempt to de-legitimize the existence of #transgender people. @TheJusticeDept just filed a brief arguing that trans employment discrimination is lawful. Read it here: https://t.co/KOs7Q0htYL #WontBeErased pic.twitter.com/prK4rG24qW
— Lambda Legal (@LambdaLegal) October 24, 2018
The New York Times published a report on Sunday that his administration plans to define transgender people out of existence by defining gender by genitalia at birth.
Trump commented on the report Monday evening: “We’re looking at it. We have a lot of different concepts right now. They have a lot of different things happening with respect to transgender right now. You know that as well as I do, and we’re looking at it very seriously. I’m protecting everybody. You know what I’m doing? I’m protecting everybody. I want to protect our country.”
The plans are the latest, and most draconian, of a series of efforts the Trump administration has been making to remove and restrict the rights of transgender individuals, including military service, federal prison rights, health care, schools, the CDC, the judiciary, and more.
According to the memo seen by the NYT, the HHS proposes that “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth. The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
READ THIS: Trump Plans to Legally Abolish Transgender People, Define Gender by Genitalia at Birth: Memo
Right Wing Watch reports: ‘The effort is being led by Roger Severino, who has taken the anti-LGBT agenda of his former employer, the Heritage Foundation, into the Trump administration as director of the civil rights division at HHS. When he was named to that position, a dozen U.S. senators objected, citing Severino’s “long history of making bigoted statements toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and attacking women’s access to health care services and reproductive rights.” One of Severino’s former colleagues at the Heritage Foundation, Ryan Anderson, is at the forefront of the Religious Right’s anti-trans crusade. Anderson’s latest book is “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.” Anderson argues that gender cannot be severed from biological sex, and that “taking our sexual embodiment seriously in public policy is not discriminatory.”’
