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Why Congress's Trans Task Force Can't Stop Bigoted Anti-Trans Laws

This week, the DOJ warned North Carolina against its discriminatory anti-trans bathroom bill, HB2. We spoke to the chair of the new Transgender Equality Task Force to learn what role, if any, they can play in stopping shitty legislation from moving...
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Last year, transgender people experienced an unprecedented amount of violence. Though the public consciousness is more aware of transgender lives and celebrities, 23 trans women were reportedly killed in 2015, simply because they were trans women. This year, the crisis of violence against the transgender population culminated in state action that wrote discrimination into law: North Carolina's House Bill 2 (HB2), which says transgender people must use the bathroom that corresponds to their "biological sex" and prevents local governments from passing their own protections for LGBT individuals. The bill is largely said to be a bigoted reaction to head off a bill passed in the city of Charlotte, which would officially allow people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.

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In good news, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) warned the state of North Carolina on Wednesday—in two letters—that HB2 is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prevents employer discrimination on the basis of sex, and Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at federally funded schools. The anti-trans law, the DOJ said in a letter to Governor Pat McCrory, "is facially discriminatory against transgender employees, whose gender does not match their 'biological sex'… differently from similarly situated non-transgender employees."

Experts say that the DOJ's decision was influenced by a federal appeals court ruling in April that affirmed "sex" indeed encompasses gender identity and that forcing an individual to use a bathroom that matches the sex on their birth certificate is unconstitutional. But what role, if any, did the Transgender Equality Task Force, which was explicitly formed last year within the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus to address discrimination and violence against trans people, play? (In other words, if combatting a law like HB2 isn't what the task force is for, then what is?) When Broadly attended the inaugural meeting, the members of the task force themselves were skeptical that they would be able to accomplish any concrete policy: "I don't know that this Congress, as it is currently composed, is going to take action," said Congressman Luis Guiterrez. "That doesn't mean we don't try, that we don't educate people, and that we don't do our advocacy work."

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Read more: 'A Long Way to Go': Landmark Report Says We Are Failing Transgender People

Since first convening last November, the task force has met several times, according to California congressman Mike Honda and chair of the task force. When I asked him if the task force had a hand in convincing the federal government that it was urgent to intervene in the North Carolina bathroom bill, he said, "I hope they did," optimistically, though he mostly credits the courts and the Department of Justice.

Honda believes the education work that he and other members of Congress are doing is vital to change and combat prejudice on both civil and legislative levels. At a meeting in Santa Clara County, he "spoke about transgender young people" alongside local transgender advocates, including a chapter of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Honda's granddaughter is trans, and youth advocacy is close to his heart. "The result," of that meeting, he says, was that one of the county high schools "voted, through the student body, to make all the bathrooms gender neutral." The decision was supported by the Board of Education, which Honda says was achieved because several members of the district's school board were in attendance.

"The board was well prepared to handle the decision the school had made" because of the task force meeting, Honda said. "I think that we're slowly making progress in helping people make the psychological transition to accepting transgender people and youngsters. They need safety, too."

"The task force function is to point out any missteps by agencies in the protection of LGBT people," he adds.