Sex and gender

ACLU - Donald Trump’s administration initiated a sustained, years-long effort to erase protections for LGBTQ people. This included an effort to “define ‘transgender’ out of existence,” erode protections for transgender students and workers, and weaken access to gender-affirming health care that most transgender people already struggled to access.While President Joe Biden’s administration reversed much of the Trump-era abuses, just last month on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to dismantle a new Biden administration policy that will offer protections for transgender students under Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

Trump has promised that, if reelected, his administration will rescind federal policies that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and will assert that federal civil rights laws don’t cover anti-LGBTQ discrimination. In addition to rolling back existing protections, a second Trump administration will proactively mandate discrimination by the federal government wherever it can. Lastly, and perhaps most ominously, if Trump returns to the White House, we expect his administration to use federal law – including laws meant to safeguard civil rights – as a cudgel to override critical state-level protections for transgender students and to force state and local governments, as well as private organizations, to allow or even perpetuate discrimination. A second Trump administration would strip LGBTQ people of protections against discrimination in many contexts, including employment, housing, education, health care, and a range of federal government programs. The Trump administration’s proposed policies would ban transgender people from serving openly in the armed forces and block gender-affirming medical care for transgender people enrolled in federal healthcare programs, such as Medicare. The effects of these cruel – and unconstitutional – discrimination efforts would be devastating, as thousands of transgender people would immediately lose access to needed medical care and the right to live freely without fear. In essence, a potential second Trump administration would seek to erase transgender people from public life entirely by using federal laws – including obscenity laws – to criminalize gender nonconformity.