Transgender People See Wins in Oregon and Montana
Leading Off: Judges in Oregon and Montana defend trans people, the fight to keep trans women from being jailed in men’s prisons continues. The top headlines as we start out our week.
by Valorie Van-Dieman
In a rare instance of good news these days, an Oregon judge has struck down Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s Department of Health and Human Services declaration which sought to impose wide limitations on gender affirming care for minors. On April 18th, District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai issued his final judgement against the Health Secretary’s attempted action.
In the opinion accompanying the ruling, Kasubhai called the order “unlawful” and stated in plain language the potential harm of the order. Throughout the opinion, the judge called the declaration and the health secretary himself “unserious” and “cruel” for issuing a declaration with no apparent purpose but to cause harm.
This ruling is the latest result in repeated actions and lawsuits opposing the Trump regime by coalitions of blue state AGs.
In further good news, the Montana Supreme Court has blocked an anti-trans policy which sought to prevent trans Montanans from changing gender markers on government documents, finding the policy unconstitutional. The court, which ruled in favor of the two trans plaintiffs 5-2, found that the policy which discriminated against trans people was “by its very nature, sex discrimination.”
In the majority opinion, the court laid out the numerous ways that transgender people necessarily having documents not matching their identity opens them up to further discrimination, “during a traffic stop, to vote, to apply for employment, or to board a plane — they must disclose they are transgender,” going on to say, “It is the state’s policies that cause plaintiffs to suffer these real and repeated injuries.”
A DC Appeals Court has declined to uphold a block on the transfer of eighteen transgender prisoners to men’s prisons. This ruling comes following a temporary block last year on the transfer which argued that placing trans women in men’s facilities was a violation of their constitutional rights and placed them at risk of serious harm.
Now, the DC Court argues that the judge who issued the block did not explain how each of the individual women being transferred were more vulnerable to abuse in men’s prisons. The case has been remanded to a lower court for additional fact-finding and to make the rulings for each inmate individually. In the meantime, the inmates cannot yet be transferred to men’s prisons.
Assigned Media is one hundred percent supported by our readers. Become a member today and get a members-only essay every Thursday.