(Washington, DC, July 24, 2020) – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today unveiled a proposed new rule that would empower federally funded emergency single-sex homeless shelters to turn away people seeking emergency housing based on the subjective determination of shelter staff about whether the person before them appears sufficiently masculine or feminine to be housed in that facility. The rule was published in the Federal Register today.
Lambda Legal Senior Attorney and Co-Director of Lambda Legal’s Transgender Rights Project, Sasha Buchert, issued the following statement:
“The rank cruelty of this proposed rule is a new low for this administration which continues its relentless attack on the LGBTQ community and especially on transgender people. On top of its legally wrong-headed efforts to strip health care protections for LGBTQ people out of the Affordable Care Act, to invite hospitals, insurers and medical care personal to deny health care services to LGBTQ people, to remove LGBTQ anti-discrimination requirements for federal contractors and to deny transgender individuals the ability to serve openly in the U.S. armed services, the Trump administration now wants to block access to emergency shelters for transgender people.
“It is hard to imagine a more mean-spirited effort. Transgender people already suffer shockingly high rates of discrimination, poverty, and violence. The epidemic of hate violence is especially marked for transgender women of color. But this administration seems not to care, and in fact is all but inviting further violence by proposing to block access to critical emergency shelters for this most vulnerable population. The Trump-Pence administration has now added HUD to the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Defense – a devastating list of federal agencies commanded to facilitate rejection of LGBTQ individuals and families. The ideologically driven cruelty is relentless.”
The 60-day comment period begins with the rule’s publication today.
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