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Gov. Susana Martinez has signed legislation that would ban the use on minors of conversion therapy that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The measure was among dozens signed by the Republican governor as the Friday deadline approached for her to act on legislation passed during the session that ended March 18.Bill sponsor Democrat Sen. Jacob Candelaria of Albuquerque called the signing historic, saying New Mexico has a commitment to protect all children from abuse and that the issue transcends party labels and ideological differences.

The prohibition will apply to licensed physicians, nurses, psychologists and other health practitioners who apply conversion therapy to people under 18. It changes provisions of a consumer protection law and outlines disciplinary measures that can be taken by state licensing boards.

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The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed a legal motion today to defend the Boyertown Area School District’s practice of allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.

The motion to intervene in the case was submitted in a federal lawsuit that is seeking to overturn the practice. The ACLU’s action was filed on behalf of Aidan DeStefano, a student at Boyertown Area Senior High who is transgender, and the Pennsylvania Youth Congress, a coalition of LGBTQ youth leaders and youth organizations. One of the organizations is the Boyertown Gay-Straight Alliance, whose members include transgender students who would be harmed by the lawsuit.

“Transgender students just want what everyone else wants, to be accepted for who we are,” said DeStefano. “Reversing the practices that have allowed me and other trans kids to thrive at school would be devastating.”

Jason Landau Goodman of the Pennsylvania Youth Congress said, “Schools that foster inclusive environments for all students, including transgender youth, should be commended, not sued.”

The lawsuit against the school district was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by a pair of conservative legal organizations, the Alliance Defending Freedom and Independence Law Center. This case is similar to lawsuits filed by those organizations around the country that seek to exclude transgender students from locker rooms and restrooms that match their gender identity.

“It’s important that trans students are given the opportunity to defend themselves against these shameful attempts to isolate and stigmatize them,” said Leslie Cooper, senior staff attorney at the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project. “Schools can and should provide extra privacy protections or private restroom or changing areas for any student who requests it. But no student has a right to demand that transgender students be segregated from their peers.”

“The Boyertown Area School District did the right thing in affirming and respecting their students’ gender identity,” said Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “To foster a positive learning environment, students need an atmosphere that is supportive and respectful of who they are. Boyertown did that and we intend to defend that practice in the interests of our clients.”

Counsel on the motion to intervene includes Mary Catherine Roper of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, Cooper of the ACLU, and Amanda Nelson and Harper Seldin of the law firm Cozen O’Connor.

The brief in support of the motion to intervene can be found here.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) led 86 Members of Congress in sending a bicameral letter to the U.S. Census Bureau Director John Thompson and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney, expressing strong disapproval of the Census Bureau’s decision to remove data collection on LGBT individuals for consideration for the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey (ACS). The Census Director said, “Our review concluded there was no federal data need to change the planned census and ACS subjects.”

The federal government, states, and local communities use census data to determine how to allocate resources to meet the needs of certain populations. Despite this critical mission, no comprehensive federal population survey currently asks respondents to share their sexual orientation and gender identity, meaning that even the most basic of statistics – the number of people who identify as LGBT – is undeterminable.

Representative Grijalva and Senator Baldwin introduced the LGBT Data Inclusion Act last year which would require federal agencies to collect data on this population in federal population surveys to ensure policymakers have the data necessary to address the communities’ needs. Representative Schiff led a letter for FY 2017 and FY 2018 to House appropriators requesting funding for the U.S. Census Bureau to conduct data collection on the LGBT community. 

The text of the lawmakers’ letter is below.

Dear Directors Thompson and Mulvaney:

We write to express our strong disapproval of the Census Bureau’s decision to not include consideration of data collection on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals in the 2020 Census and American Community Survey. While the Subjects Planned for the 2020 Census and American Community Survey (ACS) report released on Tuesday, March 28th appears to have initially considered including sexual orientation and gender identity as a proposed subject, we are concerned that the finalized report does not include any reference to proposed inclusion of LGBT identities in the Census or ACS. Additionally, we are deeply troubled that in follow-up statements, Director Thompson claims that the rationale for excluding LGBT identities is that there is no federal need for such information.

As you know, the Bureau routinely collects demographic information through the decennial census and the annual ACS. The federal government, states, and local communities rely on Census and ACS data to determine how resources should be allocated to meet the needs of certain populations. Despite this critical mission, neither of these assessments, nor any other major federal population survey, currently asks respondents to share their sexual orientation and gender identity. This means that even the most basic of statistics – the number of people who identify as LGBT – cannot be counted.

A number of pieces of federal legislation passed by Congress, implicitly or explicitly, include protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Countless programs implemented under these, and other laws, serve LGBT people; some to a distinctly disproportionate extent. There is no doubt that there is both a statutory benefit and a programmatic need to collect sexual orientation and gender identity data if we want federal agencies to undertake their work in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

Despite tremendous progress in the fight to secure equal recognition under the law, LGBT Americans continue to face discrimination in facets of everyday life such as in employment, housing, and even in the justice system. There is also compelling evidence that many, particularly transgender people, are at greater risk of being victimized by violence and experience significant health disparities and vulnerability to poverty. While the Census Bureau took an important step forward in 2013 by including the marital status of same-sex couples as part of ACS data on families, the fact remains that we know little else about the social and economic circumstances of the LGBT population at large.

Expanded data collection on LGBT people is needed to help policymakers and community stakeholders understand the full extent of these disparities, as well as identifying the needs of these communities so they can be better served. It is also crucial to our ability to respond with effective and sensible policy solutions that address the unique needs of this vulnerable population. For these reasons, we believe that the Census Bureau should advance plans to expand LGBT data collection in future national surveys and urge you to assist us in reaching this goal.

In your recent statement, you said that the Census Bureau’s goal is to conduct a “complete and accurate census.” If this is indeed the goal, then the availability of data on the size, location, and circumstances of the LGBT population should be taken into account. Therefore, the Bureau must acknowledge the concerns regarding the lack of reliable data on the LGBT population in the United States. We ask that you provide additional explanation as to why sexual orientation and gender identity were not included in the Subjects Planned for the 2020 Census and American Community Survey (ACS) report, including justification for stating there being no federal need for data on the LGBT population.

The Census Bureau’s data collection efforts have always played a significant role in our ability to understand the communities that we represent and how best to serve them. LGBT Americans – like every American – deserve to be counted and recognized in all federally-supported surveys. We appreciate your attention to this important matter and look forward to your response.

Some Tennessee state lawmakers appear to have gotten a public radio reporter fired for a story about their opposition to transgender equality.

Earlier this month, Jacqui Helbert of WUTC, the NPR affiliate at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), accompanied a high school gay-straight alliance from Cleveland, Tennessee to the capitol in Nashville as they spoke with lawmakers who were supporting an anti-transgender bill. That legislation would have required public schools and universities to discriminate against transgender students, but it died in committee last week. It was still, however, a live concern when the students made their visit.

Helbert, decked out in her recording gear, followed the students to the office of Sen. Mike Bell (R), a supporter of the anti-transgender bill. After referencing an unconfirmed report from Breitbart News about a trans woman supposedly raping students in a women’s prison, he said to the students, “Is it how I feel on Monday? I feel different on Tuesday? Wednesday I might feel like a dog.” He went on to reject the legitimacy of transgender identities, calling them “hogwash.” “It’s my DNA. It doesn’t matter what I present myself as. It’s my DNA. It’s science.” Helbert recorded two of the students crying after they left the meeting because of how incendiary his remarks were.

The students also met with Sen. Kevin Brooks (R), who actually said he probably would not support the bill, describing it as “divisive solution in search of a problem.”

After the story ran on WUTC on March 9 and again on March 13, Bell and Brooks both objected to being included. Brooks’ concern was specifically that the comments might make him sound like he supports LGBT equality, which he doesn’t. They claimed that Helbert had not properly identified herself as a reporter during the meetings and that the 32-year-old must have been trying to hide among the high school students. This was despite the fact she was wearing an NPR press pass, headphones, and pointing a 22-inch fuzzy microphone at the lawmakers as they spoke. “I even had to fumble with all my equipment to shake Bell’s hand,” she told the Times Free Press.

Bell complained to the station as well as to some of his colleagues, who happened to be meeting with university officials a week later on unrelated business. At the end of that conversation, Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R), who represents the district that contains UTC, mentioned Helbert’s story, expressing his own “issues with the journalistic ethics of the reporter.” At least one of the lawmakers in that meeting also mentioned the fact that UTC receives funding from the state.

After this meeting, the university fired Helbert and removed her story from WUTC’s site — decisions apparently made without the input of any of the editorial staff at the station, which receives over half a million dollars in support from the university.

Though the article has been officially taken down, it remains archived, so anybody can still listen to it in its entirety.

George Heddleston, senior associate vice chancellor of marketing and communications for UTC, said in a statement that Helbert was fired “based on a violation of journalism ethics.”

Helbert’s termination letter from Heddleston likewise stated, “A review of the matter was conducted and it has been concluded that you did not identify yourself properly as a journalist.”

Nashville Scene talked to Helbert, as well as many of the students she was following, about her actions, how small the rooms were, and how unlikely it was that either lawmaker was unaware of her presence and her recording equipment. Brooks nevertheless insisted, “I have no recollection of anyone who looked like they were recording anything.”

Helbert’s supervisor, news director Mike Miller, was sympathetic to Bell’s concerns, telling her after the lawmaker complained that she had essentially goofed by not publicly stating that she would be recording, but that he otherwise believed she was “doing a great job, and I’m not criticizing you.” Helbert had only been working for the station for six months, having been trained by The Transom workshop, which teaches new journalists about narrative storytelling.

Nashville Scene’s reporting takes issue with UTC’s version of events. At one point, Heddleston seemed to invent a new concern that Helbert had “edited comments from Brooks that seemed to fit her story.” This was never mentioned in any of his actual meetings with her, nor did it come up in his letter of termination. As part if its apparent investigation, the university notably never spoke with the students or teachers who she accompanied to hear their version of events.

Terry Denniston, chief of staff in the chancellor’s office, likewise insisted that the lawmakers did not threaten funding. “At the end of the meeting, funding for the station came up — it was just mentioned, that’s all,” he told the Nashville Scene.

With all this controversy brewing over the weekend, NPR officially weighed in on Monday, defending both Helbert and the station. A statement from Michael Oreskes, senior vice president of news and editorial director, and Mark Memmott, supervising senior editor for standards & practices, made the following points:

• The decision to fire Helbert “was made by university officials, not the news editors at WUTC.”
• The decision to remove Helbert’s story from WUTC’s website was also made by university officials, “not WUTC’s editors.” Oreskes and Memmott link to the archived story.
• Citing Nashville Scene’s reporting, the NPR officials believe “serious questions have been raised about whether university officials were pressured to take those actions by state lawmakers — who could cut state funding to the school and WUTC.”
• “Her mistake was not, her editors say, a firing offense. Instead, it was a learning moment for a new reporter and she was counseled about her mistake. Her editors did not view the story as fatally flawed — she had not hidden her equipment or misled anyone. They say they would not have removed it from WUTC’s website if they had not been ordered to do so. Removing a story — except in the most extreme circumstances — is a breach of the standards practiced by NPR and other credible news organizations.”
• UTC and WUTC should “reach an agreement that ensures the station’s editorial independence in the future.”

So far, the university’s only response has been to defend its intervention, because “the station is part of UTC’s Marketing and Communications division.”

Helbert, on the other hand, told the Times Free Press that she feels vindicated, defending her editors who were “caught in the crossfire” from the university. “They are a scapegoat just like I am,” she said.

Gardenhire, the senator who complained to the university on behalf of his colleagues, accused Helbert of being a “martyr” who “dug her own grave.”

Here again is the link to listen to or read Helbert’s story, complete with the recordings she made of Senators Bell and Brooks.