Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to legally abolish transgender people at a federal level, and define gender “as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth” according to a report in the NYT.
The NYT: “The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined ‘on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.’ The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.”
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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.”
HHS is pushing the Departments of Education, Justice, and Labor to adopt its definition as well so it will have a better chance of winning in courts.
The proposal is based upon HHS’s “own reading of the laws and from a court decision,” according to the paper, which notes that it would affect the more than 1.4 million Americans that have identified as transgender.
