Latest news with #transAmericans
CNN
30-06-2025
- Health
- CNN
SCOTUS orders judges to revisit decisions on transgender health plans, birth certificates in wake of blockbuster ruling
The Supreme Court on Monday tossed aside a handful of lower court rulings that sided with transgender Americans, requiring that judges in those cases revisit their decisions in the wake of a blockbuster ruling this month that upheld a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth. The justices upended rulings that blocked state policies excluding coverage for gender-affirming care in state-sponsored health insurance plans. In a loss for the transgender Americans who sued, those decisions will now be reviewed again. The high court also upended an appeals court ruling that went against Oklahoma in a challenge to the state's effort to ban transgender residents from changing the sex designation on their birth certificates. Lower courts must now review the trio of cases again in light of the Supreme Court's major decision on June 18 that upheld Tennessee's ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans minors. The 6-3 ruling in US v. Skrmetti steered clear of discussion about other laws involving transgender Americans, but it also did little to protect them in other cases. The court ruled that Tennessee had not discriminated on the basis of sex, which gave the state far more room to regulate medical care. The court also held that the law did not discriminate on the basis of transgender status. This story is breaking and will be updated.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Yahoo
'The Beyoncé of our city.' Friends mourn Laura Schueler as police investigate her death
Friends and family are mourning the death of Laura Schueler, a 47-year-old woman found shot and killed the morning of Saturday June 7, in Evanston. Schueler's death is part of a larger trend of violence agains trans and gender-nonconforming Americans that has between 12 and 59 people killed every year since 2013. Last year, the majority of trans people killed in the United States were Black transgender women, according to data from the Human Rights Campaign. Jonathan Cunningham, the public information officer for the Cincinnati Police Department, said that police are investigating but have not yet made an arrest in connection with Schueler's death. When asked whether it would be investigated as a hate crime, Cunningham said the investigation was too early to address motive. 'I'm just heartbroken," said De'Whitney "Tiger" Hankins, Schueler's close friend of over 30 years, during an interview. 'She was one of a kind.' Facebook posts and conversations with friends reveal a vibrant member of Cincinnati's queer community who was beloved for her style and generosity. 'Laura was the Beyoncé of our city," said Tyson Carter, another close friend. "She knew how to dress. She was respected. You put out the red carpet when you see Miss Laura.' Carter said he regarded Schueler as an older sister and recalled how she'd call to check on him every day when she knew he was struggling with his mental health. 'She kept me under her wing,' said Carter. 'She was there for me, no matter what.' Schueler loved spending time in nature as much as she loved fashion, said Hankins. She was fiercely loyal to her friends, often taking on their issues as her own. 'She would be like, 'Hold on, I'm on my way,'" remembered Carter. "'Whatever happened to you, I'm on my way.'' At least 365 trans and gender non-conforming people in the United States have been killed in the past 12 years, according to data collected by the Human Rights Campaign, though the true number is likely to be higher due to underreporting. Black trans women take the brunt of the violence: 75% of identified victims between 2013 and 2023 were trans women of color, and 62% of all known victims were Black trans women. Violence is the main reason behind the high death rate of trans Americans of color, said Karen Harmon, a member of the Greater Cincinnati Human Rights Campaign's board of governors, among others. "They're murdered at an extremely high rate, or they're left without employment or housing," said Harmon. She also pointed to discriminatory policies from the state and federal government as a reason why the lives of trans people have become "extremely difficult." "Especially now in this climate, people need to know her name," Harmon said. "They need to hear her story." This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: 'The Beyonce of our city.' Friends mourn Laura Schueler
The Independent
02-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump will unfreeze Maine funding after trans athlete lawsuit: ‘We took him to court and we won'
Donald Trump 's administration will unfreeze federal funding for Maine's child nutrition programs following a legal battle between the state and the president over transgender athletes. The administration agreed that it will not interfere with the state's access to Department of Agriculture funding, and in turn, the state will drop its lawsuit against the agency. The settlement does not constitute an admission of guilt from either party. In remarks on Friday, Maine's Democratic Governor Janet Mills hailed the settlement as a 'victory' for its state after a 'blatantly illegal' threat to block critical funding for school food programs. 'It's good to feel a victory like this,' she said. 'We took him to court and we won.' The legal battle was sparked after a confrontational meeting at the White House, where the president told Mills to comply with an executive order banning transgender women and girls from women's sports. 'Are you not going to comply with it?' Trump asked Mills. 'I'm complying with state and federal laws,' she replied. 'We are federal law,' Trump said. 'You better do it. You better do it, because you're not going to get federal funding … Your population doesn't want men in women's sports.' 'We'll see you in court,' Mills replied. 'Good. I'll see you in court. I'll look forward to that. That should be a real easy one,' Trump said. 'And enjoy your life after, governor, because I don't think you'll be in elected politics.' In the ensuing lawsuit, Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the state of violating Title IX, the 1972 civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination at schools that receive federal funding. Maine violated the law by 'discriminating against women by failing to protect women in women's sports,' according to Bondi's lawsuit. 'By prioritizing gender identity over biological reality, Maine's policies deprive girl athletes of fair competition, deny them equal athletic opportunities, and expose them to heightened risks of physical injury and psychological harm,' the lawsuit stated. In February, Trump signed an executive order to end the 'dangerous and unfair participation of men in women's sports' by directing federal law enforcement agencies to take 'immediate action' against schools and associations that 'deny women single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms,' according to a summary from the White House. During a signing ceremony surrounded by young girls, Trump claimed that the 'radical left' had 'waged an all-out campaign to erase the very concept of biological sex and replace it with a militant transgender ideology.' The order followed a sweeping executive order impacting virtually every aspect of public life for trans Americans by erasing 'gender' as a concept across federal agencies and effectively denying the existence of transgender, intersex and nonbinary people. Separate executive orders have targeted access to gender-affirming healthcare for trans people under 19 and have sought to ban trans service members from the U.S. military. The lawsuit followed a letter to the state from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on April 2, which Mills likened to a 'ransom note' written by a child in her remarks on Friday. 'A demand letter that was outrageous at the time and remains outrageous today,' she said Friday. On April 11, District Judge John Woodcock Jr. ordered the USDA to immediately unfreeze any withheld federal funding to the state. 'It's unfortunate that my office had to resort to federal court just to get USDA to comply with the law and its own regulations,' Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said in a statement. 'But we are pleased that the lawsuit has now been resolved and that Maine will continue to receive funds as directed by Congress to feed children and vulnerable adults.'
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
BREAKING: Trump Justice Department asks Supreme Court to reinstate trans military ban blocked by courts
President Donald Trump's administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to reinstate his sweeping ban on transgender military service—just two days after Justice Department attorneys faced sharp skepticism from a federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C. Keep up with the latest in + news and politics. In an emergency filing, the DOJ asked the court to lift a nationwide injunction issued by Washington state U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle in Shilling v. United States. Settle blocked the enforcement of Trump's January executive order banning transgender people's service. He ruled that the policy likely violates the Fifth Amendment's equal protection guarantee and called it 'dramatic and facially unfair,' citing a lack of evidence that transgender troops harm military readiness. The filing argues the policy is legally indistinguishable from a 2018 'Mattis policy,' which the high court previously allowed to take effect. Related: DOJ appeals block on Pentagon's transgender military ban The DOJ says courts should give broad leeway to military decisions and claims the policy only needs to be 'rational'—meaning it just has to make some sense, even if it's flawed or controversial. That legal test, rational-basis review, is the most forgiving standard in constitutional law. The government claims that allowing transgender people with gender dysphoria to serve would impact military effectiveness and increase health care costs. 'The Department has found the current policy to be inconsistent with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service,' the DOJ wrote, warning the injunction could undermine national security. Related: Trump's DOJ struggles defending trans military ban during D.C. appeals court hearing Lower court judges have said that the government is misinterpreting its reports and that the government spends far more on erectile dysfunction medications annually than it has for gender-affirming care in ten years. Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings told The Advocate that the organization will challenge the DOJ's Supreme Court claim. 'Lambda Legal will shortly file a response asking the Supreme Court to uphold our victory and allow patriotic trans Americans to continue to serve our country,' Jennings said. The named lead plaintiff in the case now before the high court is Commander Emily Shilling, a transgender woman and decorated Navy officer who has served more than two decades, including 60 combat missions. Her case represents a group of active-duty transgender service members and a transgender man seeking to enlist, all of whom face discharge or denial of service under Trump's order. 'This is just pure bigotry. Plain and simple," Jennings said. "Bigotry is not rational. It's irrational, and what the Trump administration is doing is irrational because trans service members like Commander Shilling, who we're representing, who has flown over 60 combat missions for this country, serve with distinction and honor. There's no reason for this ban beyond bigotry.' Jennings noted that Lambda Legal is committed to the long haul. 'We don't file a case unless we plan to stick with it to the end,' he said. 'We will stay with the suit for a decade if we have to. We've done that before.' He added that the plaintiffs are ordinary Americans who stepped up because of injustice. 'They're not trying to be heroes. They're just trying to live their lives—and serve their country,' he said. 'They often get enormous hate mail and harassment, but they do it not just for themselves but for the whole community.' And in a final note, Jennings pointed to the irony of Trump—who dodged the draft—trying to purge volunteers from the armed forces. 'We don't have a draft anymore. Everybody in our military volunteered,' Jennings said. 'Who's the real patriot here? The man who dodged the draft, or the trans woman who flew over 60 combat missions?'The filing follows a rough showing for the government in Talbott v. United States on Tuesday, a parallel case in which a D.C. Circuit panel questioned the administration's legal rationale. DOJ attorney Jason Manion admitted under oath that he could not answer how the policy would be implemented or enforced or whether similar automatic discharges existed for any other condition. 'You can serve as a transgender person as long as you don't serve as a transgender person?' Judge Cornelia Pillard asked, summarizing the policy's contradictions. Related: Appeals court denies Trump DOJ's request to halt injunction on trans military ban — for now Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which, along with GLAD Law, is representing the Talbott plaintiffs, told The Advocate that he wasn't surprised by the government's move. "We expected the government would ask the Supreme Court for an emergency stay as the administration has been doing that routinely, in the hope that the Supreme Court will override lower court decisions enjoining blatantly unconstitutional actions," Minter said. "The Talbott service members will urge the court to reject this request. There is no basis for a stay, so we are hopeful the court will deny it and allow the normal judicial process to continue." The government's Supreme Court request follows the Ninth Circuit's upholding a similar injunction in Shilling. Both cases challenge Executive Order 14183, which claims that transgender identity is incompatible with military service. D.C. District Judge Ana Reyes, who issued the Talbott injunction, described the ban as 'soaked in animus and dripping with pretext.' Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional reporting.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Jewish Americans feel echoes of history in transgender passport restrictions
Camins Bretts, who is 61 and lives in Seattle, has crossed the Canada-United States border many times for work, family and romantic partners. But because he's a transgender man, at least half a dozen of those trips ended in him being detained by U.S. border officials. At various points Bretts has been pulled aside and questioned for traveling with identity documents that list him as male, as well as papers that identified him as female. Because of his gender expression, he has frequently been accused of lying about who he is. To find a solution, Bretts applied for a passport with an 'X' gender marker on January 22. He was denied. By that time, the Trump administration had begun blocking new passports for trans Americans. All of this feels familiar to Bretts. It reminds him of how Jewish people were kept from accessing legitimate travel documents when Nazi Germany was in power — leaving Jews across multiple countries unable to flee rising violence. It reminds him of what happened to his family. He's not alone. As the Trump administration targets marginalized groups, including migrants and trans people, LGBTQ+ Jewish people told The 19th that they increasingly feel that history is in danger of repeating itself. As the Nazis invaded the Baltic states in the 1940s, scores of Bretts' relatives died in Lithuania. Their travel documents identified them as Jews, so they were barred from leaving the country to escape violence. Their rights were curtailed. The people who would have been Bretts' great-aunts and great-uncles disappeared, with no records of their death or last known locations. He assumes they were killed in anti-Jewish raids, or pogroms, carried out by locals. Bretts sees his new passport as an invitation for abuse. Just as his family was forced to use documentation that exposed them to violence, he and other trans Americans are carrying documentation that exposes them to abuse when they travel, he said. Preventing trans Americans from accessing accurate passports is just one more way to make life intolerable — and it's intentional, Bretts said. The confusion that trans people now face when they travel, and the decisions they have to make, are designed to frighten and destabilize them, he said. 'It's the same story, in miniature, of what happened to my family. They had the wrong thing stamped on their identity documents,' he said. 'I'm not expecting what's going on in the U.S. to get to the point of, you know, impromptu death squads … but nonetheless, I, like many other people with non-matching identity documents, am now stuck.' For over 30 years, Bretts has lived publicly as a man. Now he has been given a passport that says he's a woman. Although it's a valid American passport, Bretts knows from experience that U.S. border officials often poorly handle inconsistencies between someone's gender and their paperwork. He's already canceled three trips and sought legal advice on whether he should leave the state, let alone the country. The answer he's gotten so far is to stay put. Due to the Trump administration's new policies, transgender Americans across the country now hold passports that out them as being trans and leave them at risk of being harassed if they use these for travel. Their passports are labeled with a gender marker that is at odds with how these travelers look and, in many cases, how they are classified on their other identity documents. Federal agencies are carrying out executive orders from President Donald Trump that all share a common goal: removing transgender and nonbinary people from public life wherever possible. That includes restricting access to accurate federal identity documents. The State Department is no longer issuing U.S. passports with 'X' gender markers, and applications from Americans seeking to update their passports with a new gender marker are being denied. In some cases, trans people have tried to renew expired passports that were already aligned with their gender identity only to receive passports that list their birth sex. Kris Haas and Jordan Gregor have also been feeling on edge, though it's not just because of how the Trump administration has targeted transgender Americans. As a lesbian, Jewish couple, they feel their religion is being used as an excuse to target vulnerable people, like the foreign college students who are being detained and deported by the federal government for their pro-Palestinian advocacy or sympathy while living legally in the United States. Trump has accused these students of engaging in 'pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity.' Haas, who is nonbinary, said they are frightened of what they see as parallels between Adolf Hitler's actions and rhetoric in the 1920s and 1930s and those of the current U.S. president. They listed examples: In his rise to power, Hitler contested election results, railed against the failings of representational democracy and relied on emotion rather than logic when giving speeches. Then, there's Elon Musk, the billionaire who has spearheaded an effort to purge the federal government through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). At President Trump's inauguration celebration in Washington, D.C., Musk made a gesture that many people, including neo-Nazis, interpreted as a Nazi salute. He has denied that it was his intention. 'We know where this train continues to,' Haas said. 'We need to stop it now.' Robbie Medwed isn't trans, but he has watched the Trump administration's escalating attacks on transgender Americans with growing fear of what comes next. He sees many similarities between this administration and the authoritarian playbook that Hitler used to come into power — especially in the focus on trans people, a sliver of the country's population. For Medwed, a gay and cisgender Jewish man, the parallels between political conservative calls to 'eradicate transgenderism' and the rhetoric that fueled laws outlawing Judaism are clear. 'I think there's a very obvious effort right now to target, other and remove trans people — at the very least, from public life, and at the very worst, prohibiting trans existence,' he said. And although transgender people are an easy target, since many people still have no idea what being transgender means, Medwed doubts they'll be the last target. And that feeling, too, comes from family experience. Medwed's grandparents were Holocaust survivors. As he grew up, his parents and grandparents shared a common refrain, a frequent reminder for their family: 'Every good Jew has a passport. Every great Jew has two.' Growing up, Medwed thought this was a joke. Now, that often-repeated saying from his childhood has started echoing in his ears again. As he watches trans Americans being denied passports that accurately reflect who they are, he has gotten nervous about the possibility of his own documentation being taken away. He renewed his passport in February. 'I absolutely think that Trump has been using what I call Hitler's playbook,' he said. 'I don't think we're at 1939 or 1940. I think we're at 1933, at the very beginning of all the laws coming to place that were set into motion to start to other and outlaw Jews and Judaism. We're not there yet, but I absolutely think we are on the way.' These parallels have been on Rabbi Micah Buck-Yael's mind for years. In 2023, when states faced a significant onslaught of anti-trans bills, they watched as access to gender-affirming care and discrimination protections for trans people in Missouri came under attack. As a transgender rabbi, they were shaken; they considered moving their family out of the state. In an op-ed written in 2023, the rabbi detailed how they struggled with the decision: 'It's deeply frightening and personal. Every trans person I know is asking themselves the same questions that I am: Should I leave now? If not now, when? And how will I know?' He continued: 'I keep thinking about my mother and her parents who, as persecuted Jews, fled Egypt in the 1950s. I remember my grandmother Juliette telling me about the nights they spent by the radio, listening to the news and deciding when or whether to flee.' Ultimately, they decided to stay in Missouri. That's where their community is. Now, as more trans Americans wonder if they should leave the country, he is reflecting once again on how Jewish transgender people are grappling with deep-seated, intergenerational trauma as they weigh the same questions that their ancestors did. 'Not having access to a passport, not being able to renew a passport, lands as particularly terrifying for people who carry that story,' he told The 19th. Although Medwed sees the United States moving in a dangerous direction, he doesn't think it's too late to change that trajectory. Other cisgender people, and anyone else with the safety and privilege to be loud in opposition to hateful policies, need to step up, he said. 'I think it's our responsibility to step in front sometimes and do the loud yelling because we're not going to be in danger in the same way. Don't talk over people, but have those conversations where others aren't able to,' he said. The post Jewish Americans feel echoes of history in transgender passport restrictions appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
