The Donald Trump administration launched a years-long, ongoing effort to eliminate protections for LGBTQ people, including efforts to “define ‘transgender’ as if it doesn’t exist,” weaken protections for transgender students and workers, and weaken access to gender-affirming health care that most transgender people already struggle to access.
President Joe Biden’s administration has reversed many of the Trump-era abuses, but during a campaign rally last month, Trump vowed to repeal the Biden administration’s new policy that protects transgender students under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans sex discrimination in education.
The ACLU stands ready to defend the LGBTQ community, including transgender people, from the second Trump administration’s expected attempts to weaponize federal law against them. For more information, see our analysis below.
Fact: If re-elected, Trump has promised to roll back federal policies banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and to assert that federal civil rights laws do not cover anti-LGBTQ discrimination. In addition to rolling back existing protections, a second Trump administration would aggressively mandate federal discrimination wherever possible. Finally, and perhaps most ominously, if Trump returns to the White House, his administration would be expected to use federal law, including laws intended to protect civil rights, as a cudgel to ignore important state-level protections for transgender students and to force state and local governments, as well as private organizations, to tolerate or perpetuate discrimination.
Why it matters: A second Trump administration would strip LGBTQ people of discrimination protections in many settings, including employment, housing, education, health care, and a variety of federal programs. Policies proposed by the Trump administration would ban transgender people from serving openly in the military and block gender-affirming medical care for transgender people enrolled in federal health care programs such as Medicare. The impact of these cruel and unconstitutional discriminatory acts would be devastating, causing thousands of transgender people to immediately lose access to necessary health care and their right to live freely without fear. In essence, a second Trump administration would seek to completely remove transgender people from public life by using federal laws, including obscenity laws, to criminalize gender nonconformity.
History: The Trump Administration has been openly hostile to the LGBTQ community and vehemently opposed the Equality Act, which would have ensured that existing civil rights protections would apply to sexual orientation and gender identity, just as they already do to race, disability, veteran status, etc. The Trump Administration also blocked basic employment protections for LGBTQ people, arguing that employers should have the freedom to fire workers because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Under the Trump Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services also repealed non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people established under the Affordable Care Act.
Importantly, the Trump administration has had a tremendous influence on the courts, including the Supreme Court. Getting the courts to understand the experiences of transgender people and the impact that discriminatory policies have on their lives was difficult even before Trump overhauled the justice system. It is even more difficult today because of the views of the justices and judges that Trump has appointed to the federal and Supreme Courts.
Our Roadmap: If the Trump Administration wins a second term, the ACLU will use the courts to ensure that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination under federal law, invalidate policies that mandate discrimination across the federal government, and block Trump’s expected efforts to weaponize the Constitution and federal law to mandate discrimination against LGBTQ people by state and local governments and private entities.
Litigation is not the only tool we have to fight anti-LGBTQ policies. Congress can and must use its financial power and oversight and investigative authority to rein in the extreme anti-LGBTQ policies of a second Trump administration. The ACLU will aggressively lobby lawmakers who support the transgender community to use the appropriations process, especially to stop Trump from mandating anti-trans discrimination and using federal law as a weapon against LGBTQ rights.
The ACLU also has a comprehensive plan of attack at the state level. We will advocate for states and school boards to protect LGBTQ students by enacting guidelines for updating student names and pronouns, creating comprehensive rules for gender-based activities, best practices for school records, and ways to support transgender students when the federal government discriminates. We will also urge states to support policies that will prevent the government from joining the second Trump administration’s efforts to attack the legitimacy of transgender people in our world. Finally, we will rally public support on behalf of vulnerable children and youth to block even more draconian policies and reframe the political narrative on transgender justice.
What the experts say: “We have seen the devastating results of this hateful campaign that targets LGBTQ people and their families with discriminatory laws that drive many from their homes and deny even more the freedom to access the health care they need to live openly, or even to decide what name to use. We are committed to opposing any attempt to take away LGBTQ people’s freedom to live and love openly, with every fiber of our being.” – Mike Zamor, National Director of Policy and Government Relations
“For four years, President Trump and his administration have done everything in their power to attack LGBTQ people’s right to live and work as they please. We believe a second Trump administration will go even further, weaponizing federal law to ignore state-level protections and mandate non-discrimination at schools and health care providers across the country. Regardless of the outcome of the election, we are ready to fight to protect our constitutional guarantee of fundamental freedom to live the life we choose.” – James Essex, LGBTQ & HIV Project Director at the ACLU.
What you can do today: With a wave of extreme measures criminalizing transgender people and stripping them of their rights and safety, the time to act is now. Tell your lawmakers to protect transgender people from discrimination.
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