Explore Business Standard
Transgenders
A second federal judge on Friday paused President Donald Trump's executive order halting federal support for gender-affirming care for transgender youth under 19. US District Court Judge Lauren King granted a temporary restraining order after the Democratic attorneys general of Washington state, Oregon and Minnesota sued the Trump administration last week. Three doctors joined as plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed in the Western District of Washington. The decision came one day after a federal judge in Baltimore temporarily blocked the executive order in response to a separate lawsuit filed on behalf of families with transgender or nonbinary children. Judge Brendan Hurson's temporary restraining order will last 14 days but could be extended, and essentially puts Trump's directive on hold while the case proceeds. Hurston and King were both appointed by former President Joe Biden. Trump signed an executive order last month halting federal funding for institutions that provide th
The day after President Donald Trump returned to office, Lisa Suhay took her 21-year-old daughter, Mellow, to a passport office in Norfolk, Virginia, where they live. Getting a passport for Mellow, who is transgender, was urgent. In an executive order Trump signed the night before, the president used a narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of gender. The order says a person is male or female and it rejects the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender. The framing is in line with many conservatives' views but at odds with major medical groups and policies under former President Joe Biden. Her family wants Mellow to be able to leave the country if things became unbearable for transgender people in the US as the federal government increasingly moves not to recognise them. If the worst was to come to worst and things were to threaten my life, she said, I would have some way out. Trump's Jan. 20 order, which questions th
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday designed to prevent people who were biologically assigned male at birth from participating in women's or girls' sporting events. The order, which Trump is expected to sign at an afternoon ceremony, marks another aggressive shift by the president's second administration in the way the federal government deals with transgender people and their rights. The president put out a sweeping order on his first day in office last month that called for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passports and in policies such as federal prison assignments. Trump found during the campaign that his pledge to keep men out of women's sports resonated beyond the usual party lines. More than half the voters surveyed by AP VoteCast said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. He leaned into the rhetoric before the election, ...
The Biden administration's Title IX rules expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students have been struck down nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky found they overstepped the president's authority. In a decision issued Thursday, US District Judge Danny C. Reeves scrapped the entire 1,500-page regulation after deciding it was fatally tainted by legal shortcomings. The rule had already been halted in 26 states after a wave of legal challenges by Republican states. President-elect Donald Trump previously promised to end the rules on day one and made anti-transgender themes a centrepiece of his campaign. The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called it a rejection of the Biden administration's relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology. Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX ...
President Joe Biden on Monday signed into law a defence bill that authorises significant pay raises for junior enlisted service members, aims to counter China's growing power and boosts overall military spending to USD 895 billion despite his objections to language stripping coverage of transgender medical treatments for children in military families. Biden said his administration strongly opposes the provision because it targets a group based on gender identity and "interferes with parents' roles to determine the best care for their children. He said it also undermines the all-volunteer military's ability to recruit and retain talent. No service member should have to decide between their family's health care access and their call to serve our nation, the president said in a statement. The Senate forwarded the bill to Biden after passing it last week by a vote of 85-14. In the House, a majority of Democrats voted against the bill after House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted on adding t
The Karnataka High Court has directed the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) to provide 0.5 per cent interim quota to the transgenders in admissions and fees waiver till the varsity formulates a policy on reservation for such applicants. The bench headed by Justice Ravi V Hosmani also asked NLSIU to approach the Centre and the state government for appropriate grants to cover the financial aid. The court took note of the one per cent reservation provided for transgenders in employment by state government to prescribe 0.5 per cent quota for the community. The court direction was based on a petition filed by Mugil Anbu Vasantha.
Disability rights activists and transgender advocates have raised alarms over the non-inclusion of provisions outlined in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPDA), 2016 and the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act (TPA), 2019 in the National Medical Commission's revised Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) Curriculum. In a letter addressed to Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Dr Virendra Kumar, the leaders of disability and transgender communities expressed their dismay. The letter penned by Central Advisory Board on Disability Chairperson Dr Satendra Singh and Association for Transgender Health in India CEO Air Commodore (Retd.) Dr Sanjay Sharma highlighted how the new curriculum, released on August 31, 2024, fails to address critical issues impacting these marginalized groups. "The curriculum has been deemed outdated and archaic, contradicting the Supreme Court judgements and previous guidelines," stated the letter. The controversy led to
Leading financial services company Wells Fargo on Thursday said it has broadened its talent attraction strategy by launching the Transgender Persons Hiring Program in India, a move that will increase diverse representation across levels. Building on the programme's initial pilot with its 2022 cohort of 13 individuals hired in its technology function, the company aims to train and attract additional talent across multiple lines of business in 2024. The programme aims to provide employability skills training and professional development for transgender talent, Wells Fargo said in a statement. "Investing in diverse communities to upskill and unlock potential and, at the same time, set up the right environment for success is a critical area of focus for Wells Fargo," said Uday Odedra, executive vice president and Region head of Wells Fargo India & Philippines. In partnership with community organisation PeriFerry, the company currently sponsors 30 transgender individuals focused on ...
Ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir polls, members of the transgender community held a rally here on Saturday, demanding reservation for them in the legislative assembly. The rally, which started from Vikram Chowk and culminated at Hari Singh Park in the heart of the city, saw participants carrying placards and raising slogans in support of their demand. "We have 90 seats in the assembly but not one is reserved for us. We want at least one seat each to be reserved in the two divisions of Jammu and Kashmir for us so that our issues can be resolved," Raveena Mahant, who was leading the rally, told reporters. She said the rally was organised to voice the transgender community's demand for reservation and representation in the electoral process which has long been denied by the political parties in the region. "Without such reservation, the community remains under-represented and is unable to influence decisions which directly impact the lives of transgender persons," she added. Mahant sai
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump lamented the growing acceptance of transgender Americans Friday in an appearance at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit that has spearheaded efforts to get mentions of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism out of K-12 classrooms. Trump said transgender women should not be allowed to play in women's sports and said access to gender-affirming health care should be restricted. But he largely stuck to his favourite topics during an hourlong fireside chat in Washington, where he lashed out at President Joe Biden, deplored illegal immigration and reminisced about his parents' marriage, his path to being the reality television star of The Apprentice and the debate that ended Biden's reelection campaign. Our country is being poisoned. And your schools and your children are suffering greatly because they're going into the classrooms and taking disease, and they don't even speak English," Trump said of immigrants crossing
The Centre has told the Supreme Court that a 'certificate of identity' issued by the district magistrate under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 will be treated as valid documentation for applying for a PAN card. A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Ahsanuddin Amanullah said the Union of India has in principle accepted this request and the Union government may consider incorporating it in the rules as well in order to bring clarity. "During the pendency of this petition, we sought a reply from Union of India, who has been very supportive in this matter and by and large has accepted all the demands which have been raised in the present petition including the one, that the certificate to be issued under Section 6/7 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 will be acceptable, if it is given by the district magistrate," the bench noted. Sections 6 and 7 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 deal with the issue of ...
The Calcutta High Court has directed the West Bengal government to ensure one per cent reservation for transgender persons in all public employment in the state. Noting that the state government adopted a policy of equal treatment in employment to transgenders, the court said the reservation has, however, not yet been made for them. Justice Rajasekhar Mantha directed the chief secretary of the West Bengal government to ensure one per cent reservation for transgenders in all public employment. The high court order was passed on a petition by a transgender person, who succeeded in the Teachers' Eligibility Test (TET) 2014 and also in the TET 2022, but was not called for counseling or interview. In the order passed on Friday, Justice Mantha noted that the Supreme Court had declared in a 2014 case that hijras' and eunuchs, apart from binary genders, be treated as "third gender" for the purpose of safeguarding their rights under Part III of the Constitution. The apex court had also uph
Twitter says it has removed thousands of tweets showing a poster promoting a "trans day of vengeance" protest in support of transgender rights in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of Trust and Safety, said in a tweet Wednesday that the company automatically removed more than 5,000 tweets and retweets of a poster promoting the event. "We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. 'Vengeance' does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok," Irwin wrote in the tweet. In removing the tweets, Twitter said it used automated processes to do it quickly at a large scale, without considering what context the tweets were shard in. Because of this, both tweets that were critical of and those that supported the protests were removed. This appeared to anger many conservative Twitter users who said the rules were unfairly applied to them because they were posting the image of the protest flyer to speak out