Kamala Harris’s Record on Trans Rights Isn’t “Mixed”.

Kamala Harris’s public record on trans rights began the moment she stepped into elected office in 2003 as San Francisco’s District Attorney. One of her first acts as DA was to establish an LGBTQ taskforce, establishing a hate crimes unit to fund the investigations and prosecution of anti-LGBTQ violence. Her office also set up a victim assistance program, creating a two-part approach of prosecution for the offenders and relief for the victims.

In 2006, transgender teen Gwen Araujo was tragically murdered by a man in Newark, who cited the reveal of her gender identity as his motive for murder. Though the man was successfully convicted of second degree murder, DA Kamala Harris was appalled by the defense for using such an argument. She convened a conference for law enforcement officers and prosecutors across the nation to discuss options to counter the “gay panic” and“transgender panic” defenses used in courtrooms to gain acquittals or reduced punishments for violent crimes. This seminar was the first of its kind in national history.

The groundwork District Attorney Kamala Harris laid out to abolish the trans panic defense came to fruition in 2014, when as Attorney General, she co-sponsored a bill in the California House with Assemblymember Susan Bonilla to abolish it statewide, making California the first state to ban it. To…