#WontBeErased: reports of US trans policy shift spark protests

Transgender rights activists are calling for protests outside the White House on Monday, after reports that the Trump administration was planning new reversals to Obama-era recognitions of gender fluidity.

It is feared the proposed change to the legal definition of sex in a key civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education would eradicate federal recognition of Americans who have chosen to switch gender.

The revision is the latest attempt by Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle official recognition of the about 1.4 million Americans who identify as transgender.

On Sunday night, several hundred people gathered in Washington Square Park in New York to protest against the proposal, joining thousands of others who posted their condemnation and pictures of themselves to social media under the hashtag #WontBeErased.

The National Center for Transgender Equality NCTE) has called for a demonstration in Washington DC to gather at Pennsylvania Avenue at 12.30pm local time (1730 BST) before marching to the White House.

“They are saying we don’t exist,” said Mara Keisling, the NCTE director, who described the government’s proposed reform as a “super-aggressive, dismissive, dangerous move”.

According to the New York Times (NYT), a memo from the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) calls for a tightening of the legal definition of sex under the Title IX law, which bans gender discrimination in government-funded education programmes, according to “a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable”.

“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the NYT reported the memo as saying. “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.”

It follows recent moves to ban transgender people from serving in the US military. Under Trump, several agencies have withdrawn policies that recognise transgender identity in schools, prisons and homeless shelters, and there was even an attempt to withdraw questions about gender identity from the 2020 census.

Officials at the department have argued that “sex” was never meant to include gender identity, so the Obama administration’s moves to allow individuals to define themselves as anything other than their birth gender was illegitimate, according to the NYT.

An HHS spokeswoman declined to comment on what she called “allegedly leaked documents” but cited a ruling by a conservative US district judge as a guide to transgender policy.

A 2016 ruling by a judge in Texas in response to one aspect of the Affordable Care Act found there was no protection against discrimination on the basis of gender identity.