How We Fought Back in 2017
by Mara Keisling
NCTE marched into 2017 unsure of what the new presidential administration would unleash. We expected it to be bad, so we created a plan and a strategy to keep pushing forward for trans people and to push back against whatever President Trump threw at us.
We knew we had too much momentum coming into the year to let our enemies stop us. And we can say with certainty after a year of fight after fight, that trans people have not come as far as we have to only come this far. We will keep fighting forward for trans people.
As 2018 starts, we promise that we will continue to stand up to the Trump administration, and we will find every possible opening for forward progress while we are stopping and mitigating their dangerous attacks. Just like last year, when President Trump attacks us, trans people will get stronger and he will get politically weaker.
Here are just some of the things we accomplished together this past year.
We stopped biased and unqualified judges and other nominees.
In 2017, the federal courts regularly acted as checks on the Trump administration’s attacks on civil and constitutional rights, siding with trans people in several important cases.
In addition to holding President Trump’s transgender military ban unconstitutional, numerous courts have rejected the administration’s position that federal civil rights laws don’t protect trans people in employment, education, and health care.
But while he’s been losing in the courts, Trump is now trying to fill them with over 100 new lifetime-appointed judges. With the help of parents and families around the country, we stopped the nomination of Jeff Mateer — who called transgender kids proof of “Satan’s plan” — and two other dangerously unqualified nominees. In 2018 we need to stop other transphobic, Mateer-like nominees such as Matthew Kacsmaryk, Kyle Duncan, and Stephen Schwartz.
In May, we also successfully worked to defeat Mark Green, Trump’s anti-trans nominee to be Army Secretary.
We fought the military ban
When President Trump tweeted on July 25 that “the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military,” NCTE leapt into action, making sure news media and members of Congress got the facts about the thousands of transgender people currently serving. We turned a policy crisis into a public education opportunity and we are winning.
We led trans organizations around the country in filing friend-of-the-court briefs in legal challenges to the ban. And we worked with partners to introduce bipartisan legislation to stop the ban, and brought veterans and current service members to Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers. While the lawsuits continue and keep going our way, NCTE will keep pushing Congress to stop the ban once and for all.
We fought hard for our health care
NCTE joined countless advocates around the country in the fight to protect the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in Congress.
With your help, we defeated three separate attempts to repeal most or all of the ACA’s critical protections. Unfortunately, the repeal of the ACA’s individual responsibility mandate as part of the GOP tax bill will raise premiums for some consumers and cause others to lose coverage. Nevertheless, the ACA’s core coverage expansions and consumer protections — including nondiscrimination provision — remain the law of the land.
But we know the Trump administration isn’t stopping there, and neither have we. The Department of Health and Human Services has drafted a plan to roll back the historic 2016 rule implementing the ACA nondiscrimination protections. NCTE helped rally thousands of organizations and individuals to tell HHS not to give a free pass to discrimination.
Among those calling on HHS to stand against discrimination are the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Nursing, National Association of Social Workers, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and numerous other faith, aging, and civil rights groups.
You can learn more about your health care rights and what the Trump administration is up to at our Health Care Action Center.
We continue to hold the Trump administration accountable
NCTE worked relentlessly throughout the year to shine a spotlight on the Trump administration’s actions and stop or reverse them wherever possible.
We stopped plans to roll back employment protections for federal contractors, and to force students to out themselves on financial aid forms. We brought transgender students and parents to share their fears and outrage with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos after she and Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew lifesaving guidance supporting them
When HHS tried to hide over 10,000 public comments it received on giving dangerous “right to discriminate” exemptions, NCTE called them out and the agency backtracked, publicly releasing the comments. And NCTE has stood shoulder to shoulder with Muslim and immigrant communities, communities of color, and women against countless Administration attacks.
We are still advancing in the states
Despite a hostile administration in the nation’s capital, NCTE continued our work with state partners to advance equality at the state level, and to defeat almost 60 anti-trans bills in state legislatures, including SB6 in Texas.
NCTE worked to help pass an updated birth certificate gender change policy in Delaware; implement standardized court forms for the gender change process in Virginia; adopt a Medicaid nondiscrimination policy in Montana and improve the Medicaid policy for coverage of trans related healthcare in Colorado; modernize driver’s license gender change policies in Washington, DC and Oregon to allow self-reporting and a gender neutral option; pass legislation strengthening school nondiscrimination policies in New Jersey; and pass modernized driver’s license and birth certificate gender change policies in Montana; and worked on many other efforts we hope will bear fruit in 2018.
We powered advocacy with groundbreaking data
In 2017, NCTE joined with our partners to publish 46 new reports based on the historic 2015 US Transgender Survey, putting critical data about trans lives into the hands of advocates, policymakers and researchers across the country.
NCTE’s reports broke down the specific experiences of USTS respondents in 41 states and the District of Columbia, as well as the specific experiences of transgender people of color, trans military service members and veterans, and bisexual trans people.
President Trump’s attacks on trans people are not over, but we will continue our full-throated advocacy to stop what we can, mitigate the damage, weaken them politically, and all the while find and seize opportunities for real and significant forward gains.
We have not come this far to only come this far.
Mara Keisling is the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.
