For his decision, Durán cited federal court decisions, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Virginia’s Department of Education introduced policies last week that would force students to use bathrooms, pronouns, and names that align with their sex assigned at birth. The guidelines went into effect immediately.
“I reaffirm our unwavering support for our LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and community. I want our transgender, non-binary, and gender fluid students to hear loud and clear that you belong here, you are valued, and we stand with and support you,” Durán said.
“I oppose any policy that infringes upon the rights of our students and threatens the safety and well-being of our LGBTQIA+ students. APS will continue to uphold our core mission and follow our policies to ensure that every child receives equal educational access and opportunities. We fully support our transgender and LGBTQIA+ students and value the many diverse identities within our schools, where every student can authentically express themselves, feel valued and have a genuine sense of belonging.”
Youngkin’s 2022 election campaign highlighted “parents’ rights” in opposition to so-called “woke” anti-racist education and trans-inclusive school policies. The VDOE’s new policies will affect the estimated 4,000 transgender students in Virginia among the state’s 1.2 million public school students.
The state’s previous governor enacted policies allowing students to use school facilities and participate in programs matching their gender identities. The earlier policies also required schools to accommodate students’ chosen names and pronouns.
“We will continue to model and live our values in support of inclusion, belonging, well-being, and access to quality education,” Durán told parents. “To this end, our current policies and procedures that protect, affirm, and celebrate transgender, non-binary, and gender-fluid students are of paramount importance in adhering to these ideals.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that bans transgender individuals from receiving gender-affirming care, changing their gender in official documents and public records, fostering or adopting children, and having a legal marriage. Marriages involving at least one trans person will be annulled.
Legislators who promoted the new law said it is necessary to protect Russia’s “traditional values” against “Western anti-family ideology,” including the “pure satanism” of transitioning, The Guardian reported. Similar rhetoric has been used to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a deadly ongoing attack now entering its 516th day.
“There will be suicides in the trans community, no doubt because [the law] will make some people feel really hopeless and trapped,” one trans Russian told the BBC. The law may also create a dangerous black market for hormones that are unregulated by medical authorities, an expert told the Bangkok Post.
Between 2016 and 2022, 2,990 Russians legally changed gender, the Post reports. Russia also granted gender marker updates on ID starting in 1997. But anti-LGBTQ+ authoritarianism has grown in the country since Putin rose to power in 1999.
ILGA-Europe, a continental LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group, said that the new law “flagrantly violates fundamental human rights standards and principles.”
“The trans and gender diverse community in Russia [and their] rights and wellbeing are under attack,” the group added. “Everyone has the right to self-determination, privacy, and the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
The group also noted that denying trans people healthcare will worsen their mental health. Furthermore, denying trans people the rights to correct gender markers on documents, to marriage, and to raise children will place them “in legal” limbo, ILGA-Europe noted, reinforcing negative stereotypes about trans people harming children and creating “unnecessary burdens on trans people, forcing them to disclose their private and medical history and exposing them to discrimination, harassment, and violence.”
Yan Dvorkin — a 32-year-old psychologist who works with the non-governmental trans advocacy organization Russian Centre T — called the law “fascist” and said it will be “difficult for people to hear that the state thinks of them as ‘enemies of the people,’ takes away their rights… and puts them beyond the law.”
The law is just part of Russia’s ongoing and years-long crackdown against LGBTQ+ individuals. Putin first signed a law banning so-called “gay propaganda” in Russia in June 2013. The law ostensibly sought to “protect children” from any “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships,” as stated in the law’s text.
The law has mostly been used to silence LGBTQ+ activist organizations, events, websites, and media, as well as to break up families and harass teachers. It has also been roundly condemned by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as civil rights activists around the world.
Last December, Putin signed a law expanding the country’s prohibition on LGBTQ+ “propaganda.” The newly signed law effectively outlaws any public expression of LGBTQ+ life in Russia by banning “any action or the spreading of any information that is considered an attempt to promote homosexuality in public, online, or in films, books or advertising,” Reuters reported.
Critics say the updated law will further endanger the lives of Russia’s LGBTQ+ population, which has already suffered increased harassment, violence, and hostility in recent years. It has been used to prosecute a 40-year-old German teacher for sexually propositioning another adult man and also to prosecute a same-sex couple for sharing their relationship on social media.
Anti-LGBTQ+ religious leaders and right-wing political figures in the U.S. have praised Putin for his law. Indeed, Republican legislators, so-called “parents’ rights groups,” and right-wing pundits have increasingly moved to ban American kids from accessing any LGBTQ+ content, gender-affirming healthcare, or drag shows over untrue claims that these “sexualize” and “groom” children.
In 2013, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) President Austin Ruse said Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws were a “good thing” that “most of the people in the United States” would support. In 2014, anti-LGBTQ+ evangelical leader Franklin Graham also defended the law.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgment-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.
On the most recent episode of her MSNBC show, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki devoted a segment to exposing the right-wing extremist agenda of the anti-LGBTQ+ organization Moms for Liberty.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the frequent chaos and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric at school board meetings nationwide and efforts to ban books by and about LGBTQ+ people and people of color, you’re already well aware of what Moms for Liberty stands for.
SPLC said the hate group is “at the forefront” of the “mobilization” of right-wing extremist groups claiming to fight for “parents’ rights.”
But as Psaki noted on the July 16 episode of Inside with Jen Psaki, the organization claims to be non-partisan. That, along with the group’s misleading and innocuous-sounding name, has left many people confused about Moms for Liberty’s agenda — even after they themselves get involved with the group.
“Moms: great, sounds good. Liberty: awesome, who doesn’t like liberty? ‘Moms for Liberty.’ As the mom of two young kids, that even sounds good to me,” Psaki said. “But it’s vague enough, that even some of its own members are pretty unclear as to what the group is really all about, what they’re a part of.”
“Well, I’m here to help,” she continued. “Because as benign as Moms for Liberty may sound, its agenda is unmistakably extreme.”
She went on to catalog the group’s tactics and causes, including leading the movement to ban books, turning school board meetings into screaming matches, and intimidating both local officials and others in their communities.
“Chapters and members across the country have led campaigns targeting community advocates, school board members, and opposing groups,” Psaki explained. “They’ve repeatedly sent intimidating messages, openly threatened officials, and even baselessly leveled charges of child abuse and sympathizing with pedophilia.”
She also noted that one Indiana chapter infamously included an Adolph Hitler quote in a newsletter. The group apologized but later defended the inclusion of the quote.
Psaki also demolished Moms for Liberty’s claim that it is a nonpartisan organization. “Consider this,” she said. “One of the founders, whose name is notably omitted from its website, is a current Republican school board member who is married to the now-chairman of the Florida Republican Party. In 2021, he told the Washington Post, ‘I have been trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year-old females involved with the Republican Party. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me.’”
“So, below the surface of their friendly-sounding name, and politically vague taglines,” Psaki concluded, “they’re an unapologetically extreme organization that has built a long record of harassment and controversy, in a pretty short period of time.”
A transgender male wheelchair user was shot five times with a pellet gun during an anti-LGBTQ+ assault. He’s now sharing his story to highlight both the attack and the poor hospital care he allegedly received afterward. He also hopes to encourage other trans people to speak out about their own experiences.
Around midnight on Saturday, July 15, Andrew Jonathan Blake-Newton of Pontiac, Michigan rode in his power wheelchair to get groceries at a store about two blocks away from his home. During his trip, a person in a small beige 4-door car began shooting him and then drove away while laughing and calling him a “tra**y fa**ot.”
Several bones in his face were fractured in the attack.
The pellets were embedded in his right wrist, right side, right leg, and left leg, with blood leaking out from each small wound. Blake-Newton — who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair full-time — immediately contacted his husband, who called an ambulance.
But Blake-Newton said the care staff at St. Joseph Mercy Oakland Hospital provided inadequate care.
“They got the pellets out, caused me severe pain by taking their sweet time doing X-rays while I sobbed on the metal table trapped on my back,” he stated in a public Facebook video.
He worried that the puncture wounds could become seriously infected but said the hospital staff’s wound dressings all came off in under 15 minutes after they were applied. He also said that hospital workers refused to provide “anti-infection and wound care supplies,” and he had no way to get home since the ambulance had no space to accommodate his wheelchair.
Though he notified the police, he didn’t get a plate number and couldn’t describe the assailant since he has facial blindness, so he’s doubtful that anything will be done.
The Human Rights Campaign, which tracks each year’s anti-trans murders, has said that transphobic assaults have increased over the past few years as conservatives have increasingly accused trans, queer, and allied individuals of “grooming,” “sexualizing,” and “mutilating” children. The true number of anti-trans assaults in the U.S. is difficult to quantify since some police and media reports don’t record trans survivors’ gender identities, and some trans survivors don’t report attacks for fear of police mistreatment.
Nonetheless, Blake-Newton wrote, “No trans person should have to fear leaving their home… My hope is that my story will spread and that one trans voice, one trans experience will encourage other trans voices to join until we finally become loud enough to be heard and that real change will be made.”
In an address to Russia’s Duma last month, Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy summed up his government’s rationale for a recent onslaught of discriminatory legislation and government action targeting the LGBTQ+ community in the country.
The occasion was the introduction of a bill to outlaw gender-affirming care and surgery and gender ID changes in the country.
“This is another step in protecting national interests,” Tolstoy told the Duma on June 14.
Referring to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine starting in February last year, Tolstoy said, “We are implementing this because Russia has changed since the beginning of the special military operation. And those guys who today defend our country with weapons in their hands, they must return to another country, not to the one that was before.”
For Vladimir Putin and his rubber-stamp parliament, the war in Ukraine is an effort not only to remake Russia geographically but an opportunity to transform the country into a Greater Russia free of the “moral decay” and “pure Satanism” they say has infected the country since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
“We are preserving Russia for posterity, with its cultural and family values, traditional foundations, and putting up a barrier to the penetration of Western anti-family ideology,” Tolstoy said during the bill’s first reading in June.
The new law is the latest in a slew of government actions aimed at erasing LGBTQ+ identity in Russia.
In December, Putin signed legislation banning “LGBT propaganda,” which includes any public reference to “non-traditional lifestyles,” along with a crackdown on the conflated sins of “pedophilia and gender reassignment.”
Bookshops have been forced to remove LGBTQ+ content from shelves, while gaming and streaming platforms have pulled down content, including same-sex pornography. Google was fined in May for refusing to remove LGBTQ+ videos from YouTube in Russia.
The same law has been used to target consensual sex among LGBTQ+ people in the country. In May, a 40-year-old German teacher was convicted of violating the law for inviting a 25-year-old man to his hotel room for sex. In March, a same-sex couple was prosecuted for going public with their relationship on TikTok.
Earlier legislation, including a law passed in 2013 that placed a limit on LGBTQ+-affirmative content disseminated to minors, has been used to shut down Pride marches, detain activists, and lay the foundation of the culture of fear overwhelming the LGBTQ+ community in Russia today.
The latest legislation would ban gender-affirming care for trans people of any age in the country and overturn the ability of trans individuals to change gender on official documents.
Richard Volkov, a 26-year-old trans musician from Moscow, told Reuters trans men he knows in Russia are scrambling to change IDs and start hormone treatment.
“This is the worst thing my country could do,” he said from Sagarejo in Georgia, where he fled after the war began. “It seems that if I simply tell myself that I exist, I am already violating the law.”
36-year-old Elle Solomina, another trans political refugee in Georgia, calls the pending legislation a purely “fascist law.”
“I have not found any explanation for it,” she said in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, “except that in a totalitarian system, the population must live in fear.”
Russia has granted gender ID changes since 1997, four years after it decriminalized homosexuality in the wake of the Soviet Union’s breakup.
But the tide has turned since those liberalizing policies accompanied Russia’s brief opening to the West.
Now Vladimir Putin is invoking the bad old days of the Soviet Union in a call to form a new institute to study LGBTQ+ behavior at the state-run Serbsky Psychiatric Center, notorious in mid-20th century Soviet Russia for its mental and physical torture of dissidents.
Chick-fil-A is one of the top 10 largest fast-food chains in the U.S. with a widely loved offering of chicken sandwiches and an estimated 2022 revenue of $6.4 billion, according to Zippia.com. However, the company has also had a long history of supporting anti-LGBTQ+ causes.
Here’s an overview of its queerphobic actions and how social pressure has caused the company to shift its attention away from anti-LGBTQ+ efforts in recent years.
A history of Chick-fil-A’s controversial actions
Since 2003, the WinShape Foundation, a charity co-founded by Chick-fil-A’s now-deceased founder S. Truett Cathy and his wife Jeanette Cathy, has donated over $1 million to groups that actively oppose same-sex marriage, including Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum; the anti-LGBTQ Christian group Focus on the Family; the SLPC-certified hate group Family Research Council; the now-defunct ex-gay therapy group Exodus International; the exclusively for-heterosexuals-only Marriage & Family Legacy Fund; and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), a religious groups whose “sexual purity policy” prohibits any homosexual acts.
In 2009, Chick Fil-a doubled that amount to $2 million. In January 2011, Chick-fil-A co-sponsored a marriage conference with the Pennsylvania Family Institute, a group that opposes expanded LGBTQ+ civil rights. In 2012, Chick-fil-A executives promised to stop supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations.
However, The Chick-fil-A Foundation’s IRS filings from 2015 revealed that the foundation donated $1 million to the FCA; $200,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home, a Georgia-based residential home for troubled youth which said that child abuse causes homosexuality; and $130,000 to the Salvation Army, a religious international charity that has long opposed same-sex marriage and anti-LGBTQ housing discrimination protectionswhile supporting religious exemptions from LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination laws. In 2017, Chick-fil-A’s donations to these groups equaled nearly $2 million.
Dan Cathy’s statements against same-sex marriage
YouTube screenshotDan Cathy
In 2012, Chick fil-A’s then-president and chief operating officer Dan Cathy made repeated comments against same-sex marriage. On June 16, 2012, Cathy said on The Ken Coleman Show that the United States was “inviting God’s judgment” upon it by redefining marriage to include same-sex spouses. “I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about,” Cathy said.
In a July 2, 2012 interview with Biblical Recorder, Dan Cathy said he was “guilty as charged”when asked about Chick-fil-A’s “support of the traditional family.” In June 2013, the day the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Cathy tweeted (and quickly deleted), “Sad day for our nation; founding fathers would be ashamed of our gen. to abandon wisdom of the ages re: cornerstone of strong societies.”
By 2014, Cathy said it was a “mistake” to involve his company in the public debate against same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, even into 2021, Cathy — who still serves as the company’s chairman — continued using his money to fund the National Christian Charitable Foundation and its “dark money operations” supporting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Chick-fil-A’s corporate policies and employee treatment
Shutterstock
Chick-fil-A’s current statement on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) says that the company doesn’t allow employment discrimination or harassment based on “sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression,” or other personal characteristics, like religion.
Despite this, in 2002, a Muslim employee of a Houston location sued the chain, alleging that he had been fired for refusing to pray to Jesus with other employees — the company settled the suit out of court. In 2022, a transgender female Chick-fil-A employee sued the restaurant chain after her co-worker allegedly began making violent, racist, and queerphobic threats.
LGBTQ+ Chick-fil-A employees have variously spoken out for and against the company. One anonymous gay worker discouraged boycotts, noting that they would mostly harm the chain’s LGBTQ+ employees, but also accused the restaurant’s anti-gay and Christian supporters of being self-righteous, arrogant, and blind to LGBTQ+ suffering.
Several gay employees said some customers offered homophobic words of support for the business while other people yelled at employees for supporting a homophobic company. Others said that their Chick-fil-A co-workers and supervisors didn’t tolerate homophobic behavior from colleagues.
Chick-fil-A’s philanthropy shifts show the power of consumer advocacy
Twitter/Greg AbbottTexas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) surrounded by Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A’s supporters have encouraged the company to embrace its anti-gay social stances, while its critics have urged the company to turn away from its anti-LGBTQ+ practices.
In 2012, gay activists and allies staged a national boycott of the chain after one location donated food to a seminar hosted by the anti-gay Pennsylvania Family Institute. To combat the boycotts, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) declared August 1, 2012 as Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.
In support of the day, Huckabee wrote, “Let’s affirm a business that operates on Christian principles and whose executives are willing to take a stand for the godly values we espouse…. Too often, those on the left make corporate statements to show support for same-sex marriage, abortion, or profanity, but if Christians affirm traditional values, we’re considered homophobic, fundamentalists, hate-mongers, and intolerant.”
The chain said the day’s resulting sales helped set a record for profits.
On August 3, 2012, however, gay rights activists around the nation held kiss-in protests in opposition to the restaurant’s anti-LGBTQ+ donations and Dan Cathy’s views against same-sex marriage. Some of the protests occurred inside and outside of the restaurants. Other LGBTQ+ allies encouraged people to donate money that they would’ve spent at the restaurant to queer organizations like GLAAD.
Chick-fil-A announced in 2017 that that would be the last year in which it would donate to the Paul Anderson Youth Home. In a November 18, 2019 interview, Chick-fil-A president Tim Tassopoulos said the company would no longer donate to the FCA and The Salvation Army. Tassopoulos also said Chick-fil-A would continue to donate to “faith-based [and] non-faith-based” groups.
In response to Tassopoulos’s announcement, the Christian consumer organization 2nd Vote denounced and boycotted Chick-fil-A for pledging not to donate to anti-LGBTQ+ organizations. The American Family Association also circulated a petition which stated, “It looks like you (Chick-fil-A) are abandoning Christian values and agreeing with homosexual activists who say believing the Bible makes you a hater. Please clarify that you still hold to biblical teachings regarding human sexuality, marriage, and family, and reinstate these Christian ministries.”
In a statement released in 2020, the Chick-fil-A Foundation announced that it would donate $9 million equally to promote youth education through Junior Achievement USA, combat youth homelessness via the LGBTQ+-inclusive charity Covenant House International, and fight hunger by giving to local food banks in cities where it opened new locations.
The anti-LGBTQ+ Family Research Council (FRC) criticized Chick-fil-A for publicly withdrawing its support from the FCA and Salvation Army and announcing its support for Covenant House International, something the FRC called “an endorsement of an LGBT agenda.”
Assessing Chick-fil-A’s progress & its potential for change
ShutterstockFast food chain Chick-fil-A is owned by religious conservatives and closed on Sundays.
While Chick-fil-A’s donation strategy has changed for the time being, it still carries an image of being anti-gay. This image has led city airports and college campuses to protest the openings of new Chick-fil-A restaurants. In response, conservative politicians have continued to defend the company’s Christian beliefs.
Apart from rehabbing its public image, the company could do more to welcome its own LGBTQ+ employees.
In 2019, the LGBTQ+ rights organization the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the queer media watchdog group GLAAD both said that they wanted Chick-fil-A to implement fair hiring practices, transparency about donations, and proof that Chick-fil-A has actually stopped donating to anti-LGBTQ+ organizations.
The company could certainly do more to become more LGBTQ+-inclusive. The company has never participated in the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index measuring the company’s own queer-inclusive workplace policies. The company also has no internal employee resource groups for addressing the needs of LGBTQ+-identified team members. It’s unclear if the company offers LGBTQ+-inclusive anti-discrimination training or equal employee benefits, like parental leave and domestic partner benefits, regardless of workers’ sexual orientations or gender identities.
Other businesses have contrasted themselves with Chick-fil-A to highlight their own inclusive business practices and the importance of informed consumption and supporting LGBTQ+-friendly businesses.
In June 2021, for instance, Burger King launched the Ch’King sandwich, which closely resembled Chick-fil-A’s trademark chicken sandwich. In a June 3, 2021 tweet, Burger King wrote, “The #ChKing says LGBTQ+ rights!” It also announced that it would donate 40₵ to the HRC for every Ch’King sandwich sold (with a maximum donation of $250,000).
In September 2022, Alexandre’s Bar in the Dallas gayborhood of Oak Lawn announced the sale of its own “Chick-fil-gAy” sandwich that was only available on Sundays (the day on which all Chick-fil-A locations are closed).
Recent polling shows that 70% of non-LGBTQ+ Americans believe that companies should publicly support the queer community through inclusive policies, advertising, and sponsorships — this belief held especially true for younger consumers. In short, Chick-fil-A could invest in its future by continuing to distance itself from its past anti-gay actions.
Diversity is delicious, homophobia is not
Chick-fil-A has given to groups that oppose LGBTQ+ identities and civil rights. Its current chairman, Dan Cathy, has also made several statements against same-sex marriage. This has tarnished the company’s image, even as it has gradually distanced itself from these positions.
While the company remains very successful, its recent changes in donation and anti-discrimination policies show the impact that consumers have made by advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and supporting inclusive business practices. LGBTQ+ people and allies support and remain loyal to companies that support their queer employees and the larger queer community. It pays to research and patronize such supportive businesses so we can all put our money where our mouths are.
More than half of LGBTQ+ social media users are turning their backs on mainstream platforms over toxicity and safety concerns, a new report indicates.
Communia – the world’s first social media platform for women and marginalised genders – published its “exposé on women’s and marginalised genders’ social media experiences” report on Monday (10 July).
The research, which was conducted between 20-22 June 2023, surveyed 2,058 women and marginalised genders – including 237 LGBTQ+ people – in the UK who are current or past users of social media.
The survey saw almost two in three (60 per cent) of LGBTQ+ respondents state that they are turning their backs on mainstream social platforms due to safety concerns or toxic environments.
Just over a third (34 per cent) of straight respondents said the same.
Further findings show that almost half (46 per cent) of LGBTQ+ respondents feel unsafe online, compared to just under a third (29 per cent) of straight respondents.
Almost a quarter (24 per cent) of respondents said they felt unsafe online due to leaving a digital footprint and data privacy.
Just under three-quarters (73 per cent) of LGBTQ+ users said they had been a victim of online abuse – more than double the proportion among straight respondents.
The survey also found more than half of the queer respondents (59 per cent) had considered cosmetic surgery as a result of social media, while more than four in five (85 per cent) said social media makes them feel less confident in their life choices. Only 54 per cent of straight respondents said the same.
The LGBTQ+ community also ranked highest for having had a partner control or try to control their digital interactions, with 61 per cent answering “yes” compared to 27 per cent of straight respondents.
‘Take important steps to improve the digital world’
Communia’s founder, Olivia DeRamus, said of the findings: “This survey should encourage big tech companies, the UK government, and consumers themselves to take important steps to improve the digital world and make it safe from predatory behaviour, hate speech, trolling, and other forms of abuse.
“I encourage the broader tech community to emulate Communia’s safety and digital well-being strategies. Suggestions include: making it as easy as possible to report abuse, verifying users’ identities, banning those who spread hate at the first incident, and uncensoring the words women need to talk about our own experiences.”
The billionaire, who bought Twitter in October 2022, quietly dropped the platform’s policyprotecting trans people from deadnaming and misgendering in April 2023.
Following his takeover, transphobic remarks were found to have risen by at least 1,458 times per day across the remainder of last year. Additionally, racist, anti-Black comments increased to a height of 3,876 times a day.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R) has filed a lawsuit to force the state government to discriminate against trans people on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates.
The suit asks the court to demand the Department of Revenue’s Division of Vehicles comply with S.B. 180, a sweeping new anti-trans law that, among other things, bans trans people from updating the gender marker on their birth certificates and driver’s licenses.
This is Kobach’s latest move in an ongoing battle between himself and the state’s Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.
In April, Kelly vetoed S.B. 180, but the state’s Republican-led legislature overrode her veto to pass the bill. Once the bill took effect on July 1, Kelly directed state agencies to continue to allow transgender citizens to change the gender markers on their birth certificates and driver’s licenses in defiance of Kobach.
A banner at the top of the Department of Revenue’s website declares that the “enactment of Senate Bill 180 on July 1 will not impact the longstanding procedures for obtaining, renewing, and updating a Kansas driver’s license as they pertain to gender markers.”
Kobach – who also lost to Kelly in the 2018 gubernatorial race – also filed a motion in June to end a 2019 consent decree settling a 2018 lawsuit brought by four transgender residents who claimed that the state’s refusal to correct birth certificates violated their constitutional right to equal protection.
In conjunction with that motion, Kobach announced that trans people who already had a birth certificate or license changed could keep the documents but that the state’s data would revert back to their sex assigned at birth.
Prior to Kobach’s announcement, legal experts had assumed that the state would not move to change gender markers that had already been updated under the 2019 consent decree, leading many transgender Kansans to rush to update their documents before the law was scheduled to take effect.
Kobach’s current lawsuit against the Department of Revenue blasts Kelly, declaring she “cannot pick and choose which laws she will enforce and which she will ignore.”
“She does not possess the power that English monarchs claimed prior to the ‘Glorius Revolution’ of 1688,” the suit continues, “namely, the power to suspend the operation of statutes.”
Yet Kobach has also been accused of failing to enforce the law in his attempt to retroactively remove gender markers from the documents of trans citizens who received their licenses before the law took effect.
American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas executive director Micah Kubic told KMUW that S.B. 180 does not require the measures Kobach has announced. “These are of his own volition and interpretation, driven by his own extreme ideological perspective, not by requirements of the law, the constitution, or the best interests of Kansans.”
“The laws should not be considered retroactive,” UMKC Law School professor Steve Leben told KCTV5 News. “The law itself says it’s effective July 1, takes effect and it’s enforced from that date.”
Kobach also argues in the lawsuit that the state has already been using sex and gender synonymously since state statute says driver’s licenses must reflect an individual’s “gender” but the actual documents issued use the word “sex.”
Today, only three days after Kobach filed the lawsuit, District Judge Teresa Watson ordered the Kansas Department of Revenue to immediately stop allowing gender changes. The order will last up to two weeks but can be extended as the hearing goes on.
S.B. 180 has been characterized as a “women’s bill of rights” by Republican supporters who claim it is necessary to keep transgender women and girls out of women’s restrooms and locker rooms. In addition to legally defining “sex” in terms of reproductive biology, the law also bans trans people from accessing facilities that correspond with their gender identity in schools, prisons, women’s shelters, rape crisis shelters, and locker rooms.
Ivan Miadini said it was like a scene out of the Old Testament.
He and his husband were walking their dog a week ago Saturday night in Drogheda, north of the Irish capital in Dublin, when a gang of teenage boys starting verbally abusing them, calling them “f****t bastards”, “queers” and “pedophiles.”
“They threatened to kill us, rape our dog and told us to go back to our own countries,” Miadini told the Independent. “They were going to chase us off the island.”
The incident escalated as the teenagers started hurling stones at the couple and their dog and then physically attacked them. Both men were punched in the head and face. One man suffered a broken nose.
The attack lasted over a minute.
Despite the violence, Miadini managed to record most of the incident — he said the boys knocked his phone from his hands twice — and he posted it online in hopes local residents would come forward with information about the attackers’ identities.
Remarkably, the couple hasn’t contacted cops.
Referring to the state police in Ireland, Miadini told a local radio station, “I didn’t film with the intention of sharing it with the Garda. I think there is another way to go here.”
“I am sharing this with various outlets, with people I know to share it among themselves so we can find out who these people are and see what their situation is.”
“I really want to know before taking this further down the line.”
A local Garda source told the Irish Mirror police are aware of the video online and that it was a “shocking” attack. He hopes the couple comes forward.
“These teenage gangs should not get away with this,” he said. “There is no excuse for such vile homophobic and racist abuse.”
Imelda Munster, a member of the Irish Parliament representing Drogheda, said she’s spoken to the victims and condemned the attack.
“These are two law-abiding citizens going out for a walk with their dog when they are attacked in broad daylight because of who they are.
“Under no circumstances should these thugs get away with this. It was a frightening incident and everyone in Drogheda is shocked and angry.”
For their part, the couple, who recently relocated from Dublin, think their attackers should avoid jail time and be directed on a path to community service.
“I don’t think the solution here is just to throw the book at them with a criminal prosecution,” Miadini said.
“If these young people aren’t educated, they will grow up to carry out worse assaults.”
“Hopefully it doesn’t take root,” said Miadini, “because that kind of hate can only grow.”
On Wednesday, Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a trio of anti-trans bills passed by wide margins in the Republican-controlled state House and Senate. The three bills would ban gender-affirming care for minors, prohibit trans athletes in school sports, and limit classroom discussions about gender and sexuality.
Despite the governor’s vetoes, prospects for killing the legislation are poor. Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both state chambers.
Cooper condemned the bills as “a triple threat of political culture wars” and accused Republicans of “scheming for the next election” at the expense of vulnerable children.
“A doctor’s office is no place for politicians,” said Copper, echoing a popular line of defense among Democrats defending trans minors. “North Carolina should continue to let parents and medical professionals make decisions about the best way to offer gender care for their children.”
“Ordering doctors to stop following approved medical protocols sets a troubling precedent and is dangerous for vulnerable youth and their mental health,” Cooper said, referring to H.B. 808, which would ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans youth in the state.
Cooper also vetoed H.B. 574, a ban on athletes competing on middle school, high school, and college sports teams that align with their gender identity. A “student’s sex shall be recognized based solely on the student’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” the bill reads. Sports teams would be designated for males, men or boys; females, women or girls; or coed or mixed by those strict gender definitions.
The third bill vetoed by Cooper, S.B. 49, would ban instruction on “gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality” in kindergarten through fourth grade and require parents to be notified “prior to any changes in the name or pronoun used for a student in school records or by school personnel.”
Cooper denounced that measure as hampering “the important and sometimes lifesaving role of educators as trusted advisers when students have nowhere else to turn.”
Conservatives in North Carolina were trailblazers, pioneering the transphobic moral panic that has swept red states in the last two years.
In 2016, the state’s notorious “bathroom bill,” which banned trans people from public restrooms and shut down local efforts to enact anti-discrimination measures, cost North Carolina millions in lost business and was a national embarrassment. The law was partly repealed in 2017.
While Cooper’s vetoes will likely be overridden, activists hold out hope the courts will intervene, as they did then, on at least some of the legislation.
More than 20 states have enacted bans on gender-affirming care for minors, but almost all face court challenges. In June, a federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban as unconstitutional, and federal judges have temporarily blocked bans in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Plaintiffs in Florida won a reprieve when a federal judge there blocked enforcement for three minor children.
