We Are Under Attack

There are a whole slew of laws being proposed to take away our human rights and limit our freedoms.

Transgender bathroom bill reaches Texas Senate
The Hill
By Reid Wilson
March 8, 2017

A controversial measure to restrict transgender people’s access to public bathrooms will head to the full Texas Senate after passing a key test vote early Wednesday morning.

The measure, Senate Bill 6, is modeled on North Carolina’s House Bill 2. It passed on a 7-1 vote in the Senate State Affairs Committee after more than 250 people testified for over 13 hours.

The bill’s chief sponsors, state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R) and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), say it is necessary to maintain a single, statewide standard, rather than a patchwork of local laws.

Then in Indiana we face another challenge,

Federal court dismisses lawsuit challenging state law in transgender name change case
WTTV
March 14, 2017

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – A lawsuit surrounding an Indiana immigration law and its effects on a transgender man who wants to change his legal name has been dismissed.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana granted a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.

The suit was filed in September 2016 against then-vice presidential candidate and former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and other officials, including former Attorney General Greg Zoeller, Marion County Clerk Myla Eldridge and retired Indiana Supreme Court Division of State Court Administration Executive Director Lilia Judson.

A transgender man identified in court documents as “John Doe” said Indiana law prevented him from changing his legal name. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and Transgender Law Center filed the lawsuit on behalf of the 31-year-old resident.

Trump’s take back on our rights is causing turmoil in the trans communities around the country.

 A NEW PHASE OF CHAOS ON TRANSGENDER RIGHTS
The New Yorker
By Jeannie Suk Gersen
March 13, 2017

With a one-sentence order last week, the Supreme Court dashed hopes of a big transgender-rights decision this term. The Court was supposed to review the case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender teen-age boy who sued the Gloucester County School Board for the right to use the boys’ bathroom and won, in the Fourth Circuit. But the basis of the Fourth Circuit’s decision was the Obama Administration’s view that Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits schools that receive federal funding from discriminating “on the basis of sex,” requires schools to treat transgender students in a way consistent with their gender identity. Last month, the Trump Administration retracted that position. Both Grimm and the school board urged the Supreme Court to review the case as planned, arguing that the government’s shift made it no less urgent for the Court to declare Title IX’s meaning. But the Supreme Court decided to vacate the lower court’s decision and send the case back for reconsideration. Grimm’s victory in the lower court was tethered to the Obama guidance, and disappeared along with it.

That leaves the Fourth Circuit to directly confront what Title IX means for schools and transgender students. Given that a 1975 federal regulation implementing Title IX permits “separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex,” can schools keep transgender students out of facilities that correspond to their gender identity? The losing party in that decision will surely ask the Supreme Court for review, but, in the meantime, the transgender-rights fight resumes in lower courts and states, in a landscape greatly altered by the government’s change of position. When a divisive social issue plays out in courts, legislatures, and communities, the process is normally messy, and filled with pain and struggle for the people involved—in this instance, schoolchildren. But the combination of the sharply conflicting Obama and Trump guidances, the Supreme Court’s refusal to review a case it had already agreed to hear, and the elimination of an important lower-court transgender win has escalated the confusion to an unusual degree.

The Supreme Court decision to turn the Gavin Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board could have a profound influence in North Carolina,

Trump’s new transgender policy could radically change HB2 fight
Charlotte Observe
By Michael Gordon and Jim Morill
February 22, 2017

The Trump administration’s planned rollback of federal protection for transgender students could cripple the court fight against House Bill 2 and make a political compromise to rescind the controversial North Carolina law even harder to achieve, legal and political experts say.

Both the Departments of Justice and Education under President Barack Obama argued that the right of transgender students to use the bathroom that matched their gender identity was protected under federal anti-discrimination laws.
[…]
That change not only undercuts the federal government’s 2016 lawsuit against HB2, it eliminates a key argument in the legal fight by HB2 critics.

“The (federal) lawsuit brought against North Carolina almost certainly will be dismissed,” says Greg Wallace, a Campbell University law professor who has followed the HB2 fight from the start.

All the court cases that we have won over the last eight years are now all in jeopardy.

The ease that Trump was able to overturn years of human rights advances shows how important to have laws to protecting us. Executive Orders and regulation like they have in New York state can be easily changed with a stroke of a pen.

The people are behind us but the Republicans stick fast to their ideology.
In the conservative leaning website “The Hill” they even say that the people are in favor of our rights,

Poll: Most oppose bathroom transgender laws
By Nikita Vladimirov
March 10, 2017

A majority of Americans do not support laws that require transgender people to use bathrooms based on their sex assigned at birth, a new poll finds.

According to a Public Religion Research Institute survey released Friday, 53 percent of responders said they opposed laws that would limit transgender bathroom rights.

Thirty-nine percent of responders said that they would support such laws, and 8 percent remained undecided.

The results are split down party lines 59% of the Republicans favor denying our rights while 65% of the Democrats are against the so called “bathroom bills” but more importantly 57% of independent voters are also against taking away our rights.