Trans Americans, Citing Hostile Politics, Seek Safer Homes, Survey Finds
Leading Off: A poll highlights “extreme pressure.” A quilt pleads for safety. The rabid right revels in harassment. The top story lines as the week begins.
by Billie Jean Sweeney
Nearly half of trans Americans are considering moving or have already relocated to safer, more affirming places, with the vast majority citing the hostile post-election political climate as the reason, according to an eye-opening new survey from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
These are not fleeting desires or modest life adjustments either: The survey found nearly one in four trans Americans have already relocated. And a full 45 percent said they were considering a move out of the country entirely.
The Institute said it gathered responses from 302 transgender, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse people. Over a third of the respondents were people of color, and more than four in ten made under $50,000 a year. Even short-term travel and vacation plans are affected, the survey found: Seventy percent of respondents say they are steering away from states with hostile policies.
The report noted the economic bind facing many trans Americans who are considering a permanent or long-term move. “Many frequently selected barriers to moving had to do with the costs of moving and other economic issues” such as finding new employment and housing.
And yet the report pointed to the depth of feeling among respondents: “Whether or not most transgender people who want to move will be able to do so, the expression of a desire to move is a measure of the extreme pressure that transgender people are feeling about their and their families’ safety and health.”
“Such pressure,” its executive summary concludes, “has mental health, physical health, and economic impacts on those who move and those who remain.”
A 9,000-square-foot art installation comprising 258 quilted panels stretched across the National Mall in Washington this weekend in a moving expression of trans pride and determination. The installation, sponsored by the ACLU and unveiled during World Pride, asked a basic question: What does freedom mean to you?
“We want the freedom to live here,” said a panel from Kansas. “Trans people often flee rural areas for greater opportunity and safety. Freedom to be, to us, means the freedom to stay — to stay and still be able to keep ourselves and our family safe.”
About 30 anti-trans activists heckled a high school athlete at a track meet in southern California last week. Defying district policy that forbids “harassment, intimidation, and bullying” at school events, the adult hecklers included a local school board president who had doxxed the athlete and outed her earlier in the year, the news outlet Capital & Main reported.
“I’m still a child, you’re an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person,” the athlete, 16-year-old AB Hernandez, said in an interview with Capital & Main.
Outing and harassing young trans athletes has become a frequent tactic of the radical, anti-trans right. The brazen actions of the local school official in California have been amplified by the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, a haven for anti-trans bigotry, The Free Radical noted.
From coast to coast, this has been the shameful path of the anti-trans right: A little-known Maine legislator seeking right-wing media fame outed a trans high school athlete earlier this year. A San Jose State University volleyball player was outed by the rabidly anti-trans website Reduxx, and this “news” eventually swept through Fox and right-wing sites like the Truth & Liberty Coalition. A lawyer affiliated with Truth & Liberty, in turn, has filed a lawsuit in that case, as he has in two others that seek trans exclusion from sports.
A victory in court, and right-wing judicial activism: A Montana court struck down a 2023 state law that sought to bar gender-affirming care for people under 18. A challenge to the law had been brought by the ACLU and Lambda Legal.
“I will never understand why my representatives worked so hard to strip me of my rights and the rights of other transgender kids,” Lambda quoted Phoebe Cross, a 17-year-old transgender boy and a plaintiff in the case, as saying. “Just living as a trans teenager is difficult enough, the last thing me and my peers need is to have our rights taken away.”
In Texas, a U.S. judge known for extremist rulings declared late last week that federal protections from workplace discrimination do not apply to LGBTQ+ people. The decision from Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, in a case brought by the Heritage Foundation and the state of Texas, appears to contradict a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found that firing someone for being gay or transgender is inherently discriminatory.
The Texas ruling left the state of the law in disarray, and lawyers for employers are wondering what to do, the AP reported. Kacsmaryk has staked out highly political, sharply right-wing positions before: In April, he sought to suspend FDA approval of mifepristone, a widely used abortion medication.