During its first 100 days in office, the Trump Administration has issued over 100 Executive Orders (EOs).  At least seven of these orders have specifically singled out the transgender community in this country, seeking to undermine their humanity, deny their civil and human rights, and use the federal government’s resources to coerce all people into gender-based conformity.

The Chicago Council of Lawyers believes that rights to life, liberty, and happiness are inalienable, owed to all human beings regardless of their gender. The following orders targeting healthcare, education, and employment of trans and nonbinary people are both absurd and of doubtful legality.

• EO 14168, issued on January 20, essentially denies the existence of trans people by stating that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female, [which] are not changeable.” 
• EO 14170, also issued on January 20, states that federal hiring should not be based on impermissible factors such as the “invented concept of gender identity.”
• EO 14183, issued on January 27, asserts without evidence that trans people lack the integrity and honor required to participate in the Armed Forces.
• EO 14187, issued on January 28, would withhold federal funds from people under the age of 19 who need to access a full range of healthcare options. 
• EO 14190, issued on January 29, and EO 14201, issued on February 5, attack educational institutions by prohibiting K-12 schools from mentioning that some people do not identify with their sex assigned at birth, and revoking funding for educational institutions that allow trans women to participate in sports.
• EO 14202, issued on February 12, purports to “protect” Christians from being required to affirm “radical transgender ideology.”

All of these “orders” and other measures are both unconstitutional and baseless. They all essentially proceed from the statements in the first of these orders that:

“Women are biologically female, and men are biologically male…It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

Those statements are not supported by scientific, medical, psychological, or sociological research. In fact, the vast majority of experts in these fields disagree with those statements.

Totalitarian regimes across history and the globe have found easy targets in people who don’t conform and are already a vulnerable minority, making them out to be perverse to order and national unity. The Trump Administration’s agenda is no different. The legality of these orders is being challenged in lawsuits pending around the country. The impact of the orders could be broad – from people being unable to travel with a passport where their gender marker matches their appearance, to school teachers being prosecuted for respecting their students, to healthcare being denied to young people.

Importantly, other measures taken by the Trump administration do not specifically mention trans people, but will have a disproportionately harmful impact on trans lives. Policies that increase policing, crumble social welfare, deplete affordable housing, enforce border control, promote profit-driven healthcare, and seek to control sexual deviancy through the criminal legal system, are extremely troubling for the trans community. The movement to improve the lives of trans people is inextricably linked with broader struggles for racial and economic justice.

Trans and nonbinary people in the United States should be able to access the same protections and privileges as anyone else. Those include having functional identity documents, having recourse for employment discrimination, being able to obtain a full range of healthcare and medical treatments, being able to express personal beliefs and be respected in schools, and more. Failing to properly recognize those rights, or to discriminate against individuals on the basis of gender identity or expression, violates the fundamental constitutional and civil rights of trans individuals. It also violates the fundamental moral principle to treat others as you wish to be treated.

The Civil Liberties Committee of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, together with the Boards of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and the Chicago Appleseed, call upon the courts in which these Executive Orders are currently being challenged to recognize and uphold the basic constitutional and civil rights of trans individuals to equal treatment from the government promptly and without exception. More broadly, we call on institutions, organizations and members of the general public to reject these efforts to marginalize and dehumanize people.