It's hard to find the silver lining in the confused and unsettled results over last week's Anchorage Proposition 5 vote — that city's effort to pass by popular vote a law that would protect LGBT people from discrimination in employment, housing, and access to business serving the public. Perhaps when the votes are all counted, we'll discover that the announced loss was premature and inaccurate.
Earlier this week, we got the good news — the six-year battle was over. Wisconsin's anti-transgender Inmate Sex Change Prevention Act was a thing of the past. The act was a one-of-a kind law banning prison medical care for a medical condition that is unique to transgender persons. The law prevented prison doctors from ever prescribing transition-related medical treatment, including hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery, to transgender prisoners. In May 2010, a federal district court struck the law down as unconstitutional and in August 2011, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. The third and final act of this legal drama was the U.S. Supreme Court's denial of certiorari on Monday.
By James Esseks, Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project at 3:31pm
Last Friday, we got a fabulous ruling from a federal appeals court striking down a Wisconsin law that prohibited prison doctors from prescribing medically necessary treatments for transgender prisoners. It’s a great step forward in the ACLU’s continuing effort to explain to courts and to the country that transgender people have health needs that should be taken seriously by our health care system.
By James Esseks, Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project at 2:34pm
Last fall, K.L., an Alaskan who transitioned to living as a woman two years ago, got her local Department of Motor Vehicles office to change the gender marker on her driver’s license from M to F. She was thrilled to have her identity documents reflect her true gender. Then she got the letter from the state – prove you’ve had sex reassignment surgery or we’ll take the new license back.
In Alaska, if you're a transgender person, the state requires you to have surgery to change the gender marker on your driver's license. Today, the ACLU filed a brief challenging this state surgery requirement on behalf of a transgender woman, K.L.
K.L. has lived as a woman for two years, and whose work documents and even her U.S. passport all identify her as female. But when she tried to change the gender on her state driver's license, she was told she had to submit proof of having undergone sex reassignment surgery.
Most Americans can say that they’ve never had the pleasure of spending time in jail or prison. And we don’t really expect jails or prisons to be posh places, but we do expect them to keep those who end up there safe. Transgender Americans, on the other hand, face a different reality. Even a short jail experience, if you’re transgender, can be fraught with indignities, hostility, even violence or sexual assault.
By James Esseks, Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project at 4:41pm
The ACLU LGBT Project recently got a great decision (PDF) on a transgender rights issue from a federal court in Wisconsin. The result and the reasoning are a welcome sign that courts are starting to take transgender rights more seriously, and all the more heartening since the case arises in a prison context.
By Ian S. Thompson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 6:17pm
Thinking about applying for one of the more than 20,000 current job openings with the federal government? Is workplace fairness and equality important to you? Boy do I have some good news for you!
Beginning this month, the Obama administration, through the Office of Personnel Management (sort of the HR department of the federal government), has started to list gender identity among the classes protected by federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policies. While a long-standing federal law prohibits any federal employment decisions that are not based on merit and another law prohibits sex discrimination, the new EEO policy marks the first time that gender identity discrimination has been explicitly banned from the federal workplace.
Just as the school year ended, Oregon passed a law adding sexual orientation and gender identity/expression to its anti-bullying law, becoming the seventh state to specifically protect LGBT students from harassment. One month later, North Carolina became the eighth state to do so, when Governor Beverly Purdue signed that state’s first anti-bullying law. The Minnesota legislature passed a similar bill, but it was vetoed by Governor Tim Pawlenty, who had previously said he would sign it. The New York Assembly passed LGBT-specific anti-bullying legislation, but the bill died in the Senate. Bills were also introduced in Arizona, Michigan, Missouri and Virginia.
