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Blatant Government Discrimination

by Jocelyn Claire Young, Social Justice Advocate, Educator and Writer

Dec 02, 2019
Opinion

This Administration began an all-out assault on the Transgender community within hours of it’s inauguration by removing any reference to the LGBT community from the White House website. It has continued with the rollback of various protections for transgender students in the Department of Education. Next it was the banning transgender persons from the military.

Now on the official website of the Center for Disease Control any reference to transgender and non-binary identities have been removed. This is on the one year anniversary of the United States Department of Health and their Office of Civil Rights eliminating any and all language that apply to Transgender identities.

Recently this Administration changed a policy within the Bureau of Prisons, Department of Justice, that protected transgender inmates for rape and abuse. Housing and Urban Development has removed language and information from its website regarding housing discrimination protection for LGBT persons and those who are HIV positive. The Office of Personnel Management removed from its website a page on Gender Identity Guidance. The Department of Health and Human Services has established a policy that would permit medical professionals from treating LGBT persons, women seeking abortion or family planning assistance in the name of moral conscience. The latter attempt by Health and Human Services has recently been blocked by the courts.

This Administration has commented in the past that they support “all Americans”.   Many of us in the Transgender community are American and we are being openly discriminated against by this Administration in the name of religious freedom.

This Administration continuously violates the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is also violating Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment. Aside from violating the doctrine of Church and State under the First Amendment by including many members of right wing religious sect of the GOP in the policy making of this Administration. This Administration is also violating the little known Ninth Amendment, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”[2]

The Administration needs to understand their Constitutional obligations to every citizen of this country. Those Constitutional responsibilities do not include creating a “discrete and insular minority”[3] which can be openly harassed at the whim of the government or the religious right. Blatant governmental discrimination cannot and must not be tolerated.

[2] U.S.C.A. IX Amendment (1791)

[3] United States v Carolene Products, Co., 304 US 144, 152 Footnote 4 Former Justice Harlan Stone

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