Brooklyn Boro

New York AG urges Trump to abandon ‘discriminatory’ gender policy

November 20, 2018 By Christina Carrega Brooklyn Daily Eagle
The National Center for Transgender Equality, NCTE and the Human Rights Campaign gather on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House on Oct. 22 for a #WontBeErased rally. AP Photo by Carolyn Kaster
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The state’s Attorney General is joining with 19 other offices to stop the feds from enforcing a definition of genders that would exclude the existence of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals.

Last month, key officials in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services were considering adopting a definition of sex as an immutable, binary biological trait determined by or before birth — and they were urging other agencies, including the Department of Education, to do the same.

“The Trump administration is attempting to write transgender Americans out of existence. This policy is deeply cruel and simply unacceptable — and my office will do everything in our power to protect the rights of transgender and gender nonconforming New Yorkers,” said Attorney General Barbara Underwood. 

The state’s Attorney General Office has fought to protect transgender and gender nonconforming New Yorkers in a variety of ways, such as issuing guidance on school districts’ duties to protect students from discrimination and harassment, fighting the Trump administration’s transgender military ban and more, said Underwood in a press release issued on Monday. 

In a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Attorneys General from 20 states, including New York, agree that “despite clear evidence of the serious harms that discrimination continues to inflict on the transgender community, the Administration seems intent not only on rolling back existing federal civil rights protections for this vulnerable population, but also denying transgender people even basic recognition.

The letter was signed by the Attorneys General of Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington state.  

 

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