On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders that repealed protections for transgender people and athletes across the United States. But it sounds like California is planning to push back against those protections.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump signed executive orders that say his administration will recognize only “two sexes, male and female” in federal policy, and not “gender identity” that differs from “biological reality.”
As legal experts pointed out to the Los Angeles Times, these executive orders make no mention of transgender people and conflict with laws in California and other blue states that forbid discrimination based on gender identity.
As a result, it sounds like California will be pushing back against the Trump administration.
“In practice, what this order means is that the administration is not only denying that transgender people have rights, but that they exist,” Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, the former legal director for the ACLU, told the Los Angeles Times. “There are about 1.5 million people in the United States who are transgender, and that reality cannot be denied with an executive order.”
Jennifer Pizer, legal director for Lambda Legal in Los Angeles, thinks that these laws will lead to a long legal battle.
“This is an ideological crusade trying to turn the clock back. They are trying to establish the principle that there’s no duty to respect trans people,” she said. “Trans people exist. We can’t erase them by writing a new definition.”
It’s not entirely clear what Trump’s executive order will mean for California and other states with protections for transgender people and athletes. But it is pretty clear that there will be a legal battle.
“At this point, it is hard to know what [Trump’s order] will mean in California. The executive order by itself applied only to the federal government,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School. “The impact on states with different policies is unclear at this point.”
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