Violence has flared in the Occupied West Bank. At least five Palestinians, including two children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a refugee camp, and one Palestinian man was shot dead in an attack by Israeli settlers near Bethlehem.
Category: Bigotry
Western Media BURIES Sickening Israeli Abuse of Palestinian
Messed up doesn’t even begin to sum this up.
Israel Invades West Bank – Declares Will Be Treated Like Gaza
When Israel threatens to turn the West Bank into the new Gaza, believe them.
Anti-trans laws may complicate access to the ballot for trans voters
Aug 30, 2024, Barbara Rodriguez, Grace Panetta
Originally published by The 19th
This article published in partnership with Them.
Member support made it possible for us to write this series. Donate to our nonprofit newsroom today to support independent journalism that represents you.
In Kansas, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have drafted a letter reminding election workers that a gender marker on a person’s identification does not need to match or correspond to a voter’s gender expression. Staff for the organization have also held clinics elsewhere to prepare trans Americans for the identification requirements they will have to navigate.
In eight battleground states, the nonprofit VoteRiders is on the ground helping voters get the identification they need to cast ballots in the November election — and one that reflects who they are.
Equality Florida, the state’s leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group, is holding “know your rights” trainings in the wake of new regulations barring many transgender voters from obtaining photo identification that reflects their gender.
As Republican politicians push anti-transgender rhetoric ahead of a historic election, transgender and nonbinary Americans are facing new laws and rules that effectively prohibit them and others from obtaining documentation like birth certificates and driver’s licenses that align with their gender identities.
Advocates are fighting back. They’ve been mobilizing communities and organizing resources to help transgender Americans, an effort aimed at safeguarding their civic rights. Some trans voters have expressed confusion and fear of discrimination at the ballot box that could discourage them from participating in public life.
“There is a chilling effect,” said Lauren Kunis, CEO and executive director of VoteRiders, which helps voters obtain identification. “There is an unsafe and intimidating environment around existing as trans in society, and definitely in being able to go to the polls safely and cast a ballot.”
The ripple effect could extend beyond trans people, these advocates warn. Regulations around gender impact cisgender people, particularly women and women of color. America’s decentralized elections system relies on a temporary workforce tasked with enforcing varying policies around identification rules. In states that require voters to “reasonably resemble” the picture on their ID, like North Carolina and Wisconsin, the results could ensnare anyone at the ballot box who doesn’t fit the binary concept of masculinity and femininity traits.
“A lot is falling on poll workers to correctly enforce the law,” Kunis added. “And I would argue that is less of a solid protection in states where anti-trans rhetoric is skyrocketing.”
The measures often focus on sex classification that narrowly defines an individual’s sex as either male or female at birth. They’re among a broad scope of anti-trans legislation that have popped up in Republican-led statehouses in recent years and served as breeding ground for the binary vision of the country embraced by former President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. JD Vance, his running mate on the Republican ticket. At least nine states in the past two years have explicitly regulated gender in this way, according to a tally by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), which tracks LGBTQ+ policy.
And it’s not just laws. Last year, Nebraska’s governor issued a related executive order. In January, a Florida agency announced it would no longer update a trans person’s driver’s license with their correct gender identity. In August, at least one Texas agency, under directive from the state attorney general’s office, implemented a similar policy.
Anti-transgender rhetoric was front and center at the Republican National Convention in July, and Trump has taken to verbally targeting transgender people in his campaign. He described Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz recently as “very heavy into the transgender world.”
The verbal attacks are against a group that is highly invested in electoral politics. An analysis released in August of respondents to the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey, widely seen as the most comprehensive study of binary and nonbinary transgender Americans, found that voting-eligible trans people had cast ballots in the last presidential election at a higher rate than the U.S. population. The study included more than 92,000 respondents, including more than 84,000 adults who were 18 and older.
“Trans votes count,” said Ankit Rastogi, director of research for the National Center for Transgender Equality, which conducted the survey and will soon be known as Advocates for Trans Equality Education Fund. “I think the big takeaway is that our community is really trying to come out and make a difference through the democratic process.”
The new laws and rules around sex classification vary widely. Those that intentionally target government identification that people use in everyday life, like driver’s licenses, are particularly challenging. Forcing a person to show identification that does not align with their gender identity could out them to people in their community, as Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, an attorney for the ACLU of Tennessee, explained.
“Trans people, just like everyone else, want to be able to travel, start new jobs, open bank accounts, enroll in school, vote — all of those things require some form of ID. And so when a state goes out of its way to enforce its message about its belief about sex and gender on a license, and transgender people then have to publicize that when they show other people, it creates a dangerous environment,” he said.
Last year, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, signed a bill into law that defines sex as “determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.” The state’s Department of Safety and Homeland Security then created a rule banning transgender people from changing gender markers on their driver’s licenses. The ACLU sued the agency for discrimination, claiming the rule was adopted illegally because it didn’t follow proper administrative procedure.
Like with other laws targeting transgender people, including bans on transgender student-athletes from participating in women’s sports, politicians supporting these policies frame them as protecting cisgender women.
“It’s a tactic that’s designed to splinter support for trans rights and suggest sort of who is harmed by protecting trans people — to frame that as cisgender women being the people harmed by protections for trans people,” said Rose Saxe, who is deputy project director for the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project.
Nearly 21 million voting-eligible U.S. citizens do not have a current driver’s license, according to the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland, whose research was partially supported by VoteRiders. Black and Hispanic people are among those most likely not to have a current license, so the requirement harms them too, regardless of their gender identity.
In the 2024 election, 38 states will require voters to show some form of identification at the polls, including 17 states that have new or stricter ID laws passed since 2020.
The full impact of these laws amid new and evolving voter identification laws is not yet clear, in part because of how recent they are — and that, experts say, could mask their harm. The Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, estimated ahead of the 2022 midterm election that more than 200,000 voting-eligible transgender Americans may find it difficult to vote at the time because of voter ID laws.
But these don’t just affect transgender people. In many red states, Republican-led attacks on transgender people are going hand-in-hand with new identification requirements and other laws that pose barriers to the ballot that reach beyond gender lines.
“The states with the anti-trans laws are also the ones that are more likely to be passing anti-voter laws, full stop,” Kunis said.
In Florida, which has emerged as a national epicenter of policies targeting LGBTQ+ people in recent years, the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles issued a new regulation barring residents from updating their gender identity on their drivers’ license.
To Quinn Diaz, a public policy associate at advocacy group Equality Florida, the failure of most anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in this year’s legislative session showed that the tide in Florida is turning. But the new gender marker regulation signals yet another way that state agencies in Florida have overstepped their bounds and been “weaponized” to target transgender Floridians, they argued.
“We saw it as a move to inflict maximum chaos and misunderstanding,” Diaz said. “And really to scare trans folks from even participating and getting the license if they needed to update it.”
Even before the introduction of such regulations, transgender people around the country have had to jump through logistical and administrative hoops to get an affirming identification.
For transgender people, lacking identification that reflects their gender identity and appearance can make them vulnerable to discrimination in everyday situations at a bar or liquor store, for example, and in interactions with law enforcement and at the polls.
“With these laws in Florida, you’re forced to choose between living authentically and just not really participating in public life,” Diaz said.
Diaz, who is transgender, moved to Florida from Massachusetts, where they had an “X” gender marker on their driver’s license. Because they didn’t have all the necessary documentation and weren’t established yet with a local provider when they transferred their license to Florida, they forfeited that marker and defaulted to a license with their sex assigned at birth.
Diaz said they didn’t have any problems voting in person in the 2022 midterms, but they plan to vote by mail this November.
“I can imagine that a lot of trans folks in Florida who might not have access … to an accurate and affirming ID might not want to engage in that process at all, especially in such a heightened political environment,” Diaz said.
Such rhetoric could also be most dangerous in states where far-right groups are trying to recruit poll watchers. Since 2020, many Republican-controlled states have passed laws expanding the authority of those temporary election observers who work elections under certain rules and may feel compelled to stop someone from voting under the guise of stopping widespread election fraud, which has been repeatedly debunked.
“Gender nonconforming people are already under such public scrutiny nationwide,” Diaz said. “That’s when you’re gonna see the convergence of those two elements. It really seems like it would only result in more discrimination, more discomfort for trans people, more interrogation and potentially just being turned away.”
Hazel Krebs, a 42-year-old transgender woman living in Kansas, one of the states with a new anti-trans law, felt the weight of that increased scrutiny as she cast her ballot in March. Krebs wondered whether her identification — one that for weeks no longer reflected her gender identity — might impact her ability to vote.
She chatted with the election workers in the mostly empty precinct, then showed her ID. She did her homework, learned that gender is not required information to vote and showed up ready to explain it.
But no one questioned her. Krebs voted and was out of the polling site within minutes. Still, she worries that, under the same circumstances, another trans person might have stayed home.
“They won’t stop me, but I can see how it would stop others,” she said. “It is almost certainly stopping some people from showing up at the polls.”
The ACLU, which is tracking some of these laws and rules, has tried to prepare election workers on how to process trans voters who come into their polling sites. VoteRiders is conducting year-round voter education. While the driver’s license is the most ubiquitous form of identification in the United States’ car-centric society, Kunis wants to dispel the “common misconception” that it’s the only form of ID people can use to vote.
Trans voters can obtain a U.S. passport or passport card that reflects their gender identity without needing to provide underlying documentation. However, that option may not be accessible to people who struggle to pay the related fees or may not have the time or knowledge required to fill out the forms and request the passport.
It’s also a temporary solution if a future presidential administration rescinds the ability for people to self-attest their gender on their passports. Some advocacy groups and lawmakers in Florida also argue the state’s new regulations conflict with the federal Real ID Act, but that question is unlikely to be resolved before November.
In addition to using passports as identification, Diaz said that Florida voters have the option to vote by mail, vote early in person and bring a friend or family member to the polls.
“Our ability to participate in this democracy in Florida, it’s been on the line for a while,” Diaz said. Transgender people, they said, are being “forced to choose between participating in our greatest civic right or just sitting out because the state doesn’t see us for who we are.”
It’s still unclear how many trans people will be denied affirming identification — and how many will choose not to vote — as a result of these new regulations. Several of the new laws are written with no clear penalties.
“Something that’s very frustrating for us at VoteRiders is you will never be able to capture the number of people who do not feel safe voting, and who therefore stay home. And you also won’t be able to capture the people who are trans and show up to try and vote and are turned away.” Kunis said. “And we know that is happening, but it is difficult to quantify.”
Cameron-Vaughn said he also worries about a scenario where a trans person is stopped at a polling place because of mismatching information on their identification and must fill out a provisional ballot — a voting option that often requires a person to return at a later date with more documentation to ensure their vote is counted.
“There are definitely the physical dangers, the dangers for harassment, discrimination — but also ultimately, voter suppression,” he said.
Josie Caballero, director of voting and elections for the group that conducted the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey, said it’s important to remember that barriers to voting existed for trans people before the latest slate of laws and rules targeting sex classification, particularly around voter ID rules. Trans people turned out to vote despite those policy roadblocks.
“It really shows the resiliency of the trans community to ensure that our voices are heard and we have visibility at the ballot box,” she said.
Krebs, who plans to vote in November, is worried about how the dynamics of a crowded polling site might impact her ability to vote. But she is determined to access the ballot, and to stay in Kansas despite the heightened scrutiny.
“There’s nothing these laws will do to stop me from living my best life,” she said. “It just puts my energy and passion towards making this place better for me and other trans people.”
Peace & Justice History for 8/30
| August 30, 1963 A “hotline” telephone link was installed between the Kremlin in Moscow and the White House in Washington, D.C. The intention was to allow direct communication in the event of a crisis between the U.S. president and the leader of the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). It had been agreed to following the Cuban Missile Crisis. |
| August 30, 1964 The Democratic Party National Convention refused to seat any delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The Credentials Committee chose to seat the all-white delegation from Mississippi’s regular Democratic Party despite overwhelming evidence of the state party’s efforts to disenfranchise Mississippi’s Negro citizens. A proposed compromise of two non-voting guest delegates from MFDP was rejected by its leaders. The dispute, the political intrigue, and the long-term effects |
| August 30, 1967 The Senate confirmed the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first Supreme Court Justice of African-American descent. Marshall had been counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and had been the lead attorney in the Brown v. Board of Education case. He was appointed to the Court by President Lyndon Johnson after having served as Solicitor General of the U.S. for two years, and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for four.  Thurgood MarshallWho was Thurgood Marshall? |
| August 30, 1971 Ten empty school busses were dynamited in Pontiac, Michigan, eight days before a school integration plan was to begin. Following Federal Judge Damon Keith’s finding that Pontiac’s school board had “intentionally” perpetuated segregation, a plan was developed by the board that included bussing of 8700 children.  The bombers were later identified as leaders and members of the Ku Klux Klan, arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned. |
| August 30, 1980 Striking Polish workers, their numbers approaching 150,000, won a sweeping victory in a battle with the Polish Communist government for the right to independent trade unions and the right to strike. Their lead negotiator was Lech Walesa, head of the union, Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity).  Lech Walesa announces the deal to cheering crowds of shipyard workers. |
| August 30, 1999 Residents of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia in a U.N.-sponsored election. More about the East Timor election |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august30
Transgender Adults Being Cut From Care After Florida Court Ruling by Erin Reed
by Erin Reed
After a court ruling from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed an anti-trans law in Florida targeting youth and adults go back into effect, many providers were forced to end care. Read on Substack
*With thanks to Janet.*
Several transgender youth and adults are being told their care will be terminated following a ruling from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals by a majority-Trump appointed panel. The court ruled that a 2023 law, which restricts transgender care at any age, can go back into effect after being permanently blocked in June 2024.
The ruling, released late Monday, stated that transgender people are not a “quasi-suspect class,” meaning they do not receive the same level of equal protection under the Constitution as other categories such as race, ethnicity, religion, or sex. This decision implies that laws discriminating against transgender people are likely to be considered valid and constitutional by the 11th Circuit Court.
One such law, SB254, was passed in 2023. The law banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth but went further than similar legislation passed in several Republican-led states that year by also restricting care for transgender adults. The bill mandated that care for transgender adults could only be provided by physicians and required that patients receive forms outlining the “risks” of gender transition. Many proposed versions of these forms are filled with disinformation about transgender care.
The physician requirement has proven especially burdensome for transgender adults, as the majority of their care is provided by nurse practitioners. This is because the number of transgender adults far exceeds the capacity of physicians who offer gender-affirming care. Planned Parenthood, the largest hormone therapy provider in the United States, explains, “Most gender-affirming hormone care is provided at PPSP by advanced practice providers (physician assistants, certified nurse midwives, and nurse practitioners) in our health centers or over telemedicine.”
Now, with the law fully in effect, transgender adults who previously had access to care are being notified that their care will no longer be provided.
One anonymous patient shared an email from their provider, QueerMed, which stated, “Unfortunately, Florida has reinstated the ban on care for minors and the restrictions for adults… We can no longer see any patient of any age who is located in Florida.”
See that email here:
Spektrum, a major provider in Florida, was also forced to terminate care and cancel new patient appointments. However, during the period when the law was blocked, the organization reportedly took steps to ensure patients were well-supplied with medication in case the law went back into effect:
“During this little freedom period as I call it … we made good use of that time to make sure all of our patients were well supplied with medication. Although I had hoped that it wouldn’t have been necessary, at least now we can say, I’m glad we did all the things that we did,” said Joseph Knoll, a nurse practitioner at the clinic, as reported by the Associated Press.
Healthcare bans are currently a contentious issue in courts across the United States, with some courts blocking bans on transgender healthcare coverage or provision. A major point of contention is whether discrimination against transgender people qualifies as sex discrimination, which would subject these laws to higher scrutiny regarding their constitutionality.
The Supreme Court is poised to rule on such questions later this year in a case stemming from Tennessee’s trans care ban. If the Supreme Court were to rule that transgender people are not entitled to equal protection under the law, many forms of discrimination against transgender youth and adults could be deemed fully legal.
For trans people in Florida, many cannot afford to wait for such a decision, and many have already fled the state. For those unable to leave, disruptions to their care will likely have significant impacts on their mental and physical health.
“We are deeply disappointed by this decision and the panel’s disregard for the district court’s careful findings and adherence to the Eleventh Circuit’s recent precedent. Allowing these discriminatory restrictions to go back into effect will deny transgender adults and adolescents lifesaving care, and prevent Florida parents from making medical decisions that are right for their children. As the district court found based on voluminous evidence, the record shows that these extraordinary restrictions were based on disapproval of transgender people and serve no purpose other than to harm transgender Floridians. The plaintiffs in this case are considering their options and will take every step possible to protect their right to equal treatment under Florida’s laws, which these restrictions egregiously violate. We will continue fighting for transgender Floridians and their families, and for everyone’s right to make healthcare decisions without government interference,” said the organizations representing the plaintiffs in the case.
Peace & Justice History for 8/29
| August 29, 1758 The first Indian reservation, Brotherton, was established in New Jersey. A tract of three thousand acres of land was purchased at Edge Pillock, in Burlington County. The treaty of 1758 required the Delaware Tribes, in exchange for the land, to renounce all further claim to lands anywhere else in New Jersey, except for the right to fish in all the rivers and bays north of the Raritan River, and to hunt on unenclosed land. History Of The Brotherton Reservation |
| August 29, 1949 The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in a test at Semipalatinsk in eastern Kazakhstan. It was known as Joe 1 after Josef Stalin, then General Secretary of the Communist Party.  ” Joe 1, the first Soviet atomic bombAndrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, key developer of the Soviet bomb, later worked for peace |
| August 29, 1957 Following consultations among the NATO allies and other nations, the Western (non-Communist) countries presented to the United Nations a working paper entitled, “Proposals for Partial Measures of Disarmament,” intended as “a practical, workable plan to start on world disarmament.” The plan proposed stopping all nuclear testing, halting production of nuclear weapons materials, starting a reduction in nuclear weapons stockpiles, reducing the danger of surprise attack through warning systems, and beginning reductions in armed forces and armaments. |
August 29, 1957 African Americans in Milledgeville, Georgia, wait in line to vote following the Civil Rights Act of 1957.The U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, the first such law since reconstruction. The bill established a Civil Rights Commission which was given the authority to investigate discriminatory conditions. A Civil Rights Division was created in the Department of Justice, allowing federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote, among other things.In an ultimately futile attempt to block passage, then-Democrat, former Dixiecrat, and later Republican Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina set the all-time filibuster record: 24 hours, 19 minutes of non-stop speaking on the floor of the Senate. A filibuster is the deliberate use of prolonged debate and procedural delaying tactics to block action supported by a majority of members. It can only be stopped with a 60% majority voting to end debate.  Senator Strom Thurmond with his 24-hour filibustering speech |
August 29, 1961 Robert Moses, leader of SNCCThe Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was pursuing its voter registration drive in Amite County, Mississippi. Of 5000 eligible Negro voters in the county, just one was registered to vote. SNCC leader Robert Moses was attacked and beaten this day outside the registrar’s office while trying to sign up two voters. Nine stitches were required but the three white assailants were acquitted. Hear Moses recall the time |
| August 29, 1970 Between 15 and 30 thousand predominantly Chicanos (Americans of Mexican descent) gathered in East LA’s Laguna Park as the culmination of the Chicano National Moratorium. It was organized by Rosalio Munoz and others to protest the disproportionate number of deaths of Chicano soldiers in Vietnam (more than double their numbers in the population).  There had been more than 20 other such demonstrations in Latino communities across the southwest in recent months. Three died when the anti-war march turned violent. The Los Angeles Police Department attacked and one gunshot, fired into the Silver Dollar Bar, killed Ruben Salazar, a Los Angeles Times columnist and a commentator on KMEX-TV (he had been accused by the LAPD of inciting the Chicano community). The Chicano Moratorium Ruben Salazar LA Times |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august29
Important news from Janet!
Peace & Justice History 8/28
| August 28, 1833 The Abolition of Slavery Act was passed by the British Parliament. As early as 1787, members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), particularly Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, organized to end the slave trade.Since Quakers were barred from serving in the House of Commons, the cause was led by a member of the Evangelical Party, William Wilberforce, ending the international trade in slaves in 1807. By 1827 slaving was considered piracy and punishable by death. The complete ban on slavery itself through the British Empire didn’t happen until this day; Wilberforce was informed of the Act’s passage on his death-bed.  William Wilberforce |
| August 28, 1963 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of half a million gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C. They gathered there for jobs and freedom.  The speech: https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety  organizing to build the marchFilm of the March and the speech: https://vimeo.com/2158959 1983: Three hundred thousand marched in Washington on the 20th anniversary of MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech for the second “March on Washington for Jobs, Peace and Freedom.” August 28, 1976 60,000 joined the Community of Peace People demonstrations in Belfast and Dublin, Ireland. Peace People was founded by two women, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan to decry the painful violence between Catholics and Protestants, between unionists and republicans, and to move the peace process forward in Northern Ireland.  Betty Williams Mairead CorriganThey jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976. More about Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan From the Declaration of the Peace People: “ . . . We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society. We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, our lives at home, at work and at play, to be lives of joy and peace. We recognize that to build such a life demands of all of us, dedication, hard work and courage . . . We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbors, near and far, day in and day out, to building that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning.” The Peace People’s website: https://www.peacepeople.com/ |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august28
Could courthouses provide the blueprint for safe transgender bathrooms?
Originally published by The 19th
Member support made it possible for us to write this series. Donate to our nonprofit newsroom today to support independent journalism that represents you.
Gunner Scott had a simple solution to making sure he had a trans-friendly bathroom when he served as a juror in Boston: Every day at lunch he left the building.
The year was 2009 and the Suffolk County Superior Court where Scott served as a juror for five days didn’t have a gender-neutral restroom. So, on his break, Scott walked up the street to his office.
“I heard one too many stories,” said Scott, who is a longtime transgender advocate.
The stories were about trans people being assaulted and harassed in bathrooms. Scott was not confident he could pass as male in a men’s room in 2009. More than that, his activism had made him a known public figure in the city. He feared someone would recognize him and target him for being trans and using a men’s restroom.
But over the years, as states have started to block trans people from using bathrooms and participating in other areas of public life, courtrooms have moved in the opposite direction by trying to make facilities available to people of all genders, experts say.
That movement is not only key to providing a roadmap for inclusivity for the nation. It also ensures that juries reflect the general population and that everyone gets the opportunity — or burden, in some cases — of serving on them.
Courtrooms may illustrate practical solutions to access as the nation grapples with increasing trans visibility and more traditional ideas about the safety and comfort of a larger public.
The issue of transgender accessibility in courts is a chapter in a longstanding fight for civil rights for LGBTQ+ Americans, prime targets of far-right legislation and discourse these days. The Equality Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, was first introduced to Congress 50 years ago but has never been passed into law. While its first draft only protected gay Americans, subsequent iterations have aimed to shield trans Americans from bias.
The Equality Act specifically mentions jury selection. The bill bans lawyers from striking queer jurors because they are LGBTQ+. Last year, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire introduced a standalone bill to the same effect. Reps. Becca Balint of Vermont and Lizzie Fletcher of Texas are sponsoring the measure in the House, where it is unlikely to pass, at least while Republicans are the majority.
Balint told The 19th that courtroom accessibility is key to ensuring that jury pools reflect the makeup of the country.
“We need every American who is eligible to serve on a jury to be in the jury pool,” Balint said. “Conversations change concerning LGBTQ people when LGBTQ people are in the room, and when you exclude people from the judicial process, it makes the system inherently less free and less fair.”
Jury service and the belief that jurors should reflect the nation’s diversity is a closely held American belief today. Historically, though, juries were defined by their exclusivity. For centuries, women were banned or discouraged from jury duty because they were believed to be too fragile to handle criminal trials or deemed “the center of home and family life,” as stated in a 1961 Supreme Court ruling. Fourteen years later, the court ruled in Taylor v. Louisiana that systematically excluding them violated a defendant’s rights to a representative jury. But it wasn’t until 1994 that a decision around the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment specifically prohibited using gender to strike potential jurors.
Black Americans were barred from service due to slavery and after its abolition, discrimination. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited race-based jury selection, many states failed to enforce anti-discrimination protections, leading to lopsided convictions against people of color, a legacy that continues.
LGBTQ+ advocates have long argued that LGBTQ+ Americans, who face increased rates of hate violence and discrimination, also need federal protections to safeguard their presence in juries.
In legally recognizing trans people, states have faced increasing pressure to make government facilities accessible to them. In 2015, then-Boston Mayor Marty Walsh made headlines when he signed an executive order requiring gender-neutral bathrooms at City Hall.
Many courthouses have also installed gender-neutral options or found workarounds that allow trans and nonbinary people to safely use the court, say experts. The difference is that the change has largely gone unnoticed.
Ezra Young, a constitutional scholar and professor in New York, said he has seen even the most conservative courts put in extra effort to allow trans people bathroom access.
“I think one of the benefits of a judiciary is certain things about the very administration of the buildings aren’t really politicized,” Young said. “It’s under presumption that courts need to be generally accessible to people.”
Quite simply, the judicial system has no choice.
“Courts have a constitutional responsibility to make sure that courts are generally accessible to the public and specifically to people who need to use the court,” Young added.
Bathrooms have long been contested public spaces for marginalized groups, and courtrooms have not been immune. That means transgender access is not the first challenge facing court facility managers.
“Some of them didn’t even have women’s bathrooms until quite recently. Usually when reconstruction for bathrooms is done, they try to make sure things are accessible,” Young said.
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, encountered that problem in 1981 when she was sworn in.
“[The bathroom] was a long way down the hallway, so it wouldn’t have been convenient,” she told NPR in 2013. “And we had to find something in the way of a restroom that was near the courtroom that I would be able to use when we were back there or in the room where we discussed cases.”
Government buildings have undergone similar upgrades to make bathrooms accessible for people with disabilities since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Courthouses also reconfigured racially divided bathrooms and courtrooms in the wake of desegregation during the civil rights movement.
Now, all-gender access is the next goal for many municipalities. Nearly half of states (22 plus Washington D.C.) allow residents to opt for “X” gender markers on their state ID cards, and the federal government has been issuing “X” gender markers on passports for two years now. Just three states bar trans people from updating their IDs post-transition.
In Los Angeles County, officials have worked to ensure that every courthouse has a gender-neutral bathroom, according to a spokesperson for the superior court of the county.
“The Court supports inclusivity and seeks to expand access to justice by identifying and addressing barriers — substantive, procedural, physical and in appearance —that may inhibit full participation in the judicial process,” the court said in a statement.
In Cook County, which encompasses Chicago and has one of the world’s largest judicial systems, officials are engaged in research and design plans to add gender-neutral bathrooms to all of its courts. Such facilities already exist at the main courthouses for criminal court, domestic violence, juvenile cases and in the city branch courts.
Even today, Scott worries about violence and harassment in public restrooms. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 60 percent of trans people avoided using a public bathroom for fear of discrimination.
While trans people have gained acceptance in many areas of public life, data shows that discrimination remains high or has increased from a decade ago. A more recent survey in 2022 found that 47 percent of trans Americans considered fleeing their states because anti-trans laws, including bathroom bans, had made their communities less safe.
But Young, who is also transgender, hopes that courts today will provide visitors with a different experience than the one Scott had 15 years ago. For the most part, Young has had positive experiences as a trans person in courts. His transgender clients have, too.
That doesn’t mean that every court is perfect, he adds. Many still won’t have a gender-neutral bathroom, and often visitors will need to ask a judge for access. But Young thinks that most courts will aim to provide safety for trans people.
“They want to make sure that people can be in court,” Young said. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they might agree with the litigant just because of who they are, but they really do care about making sure that litigants and the broader public understand that they’re part of the overarching community.”
