February 11, 2025 • 53 mins
The first day of President Trump’s administration, the outright attacks on the transgender community began. A drove of extreme executive orders has ruthlessly targeted transgender individuals’ safety and wellbeing. Chris Geidner, author of Law Dork, sits down to talk with us about these heinous assaults, their already-felt impacts on transgender individuals, and what to expect in the near future.
The Trump administration’s collection of executive orders includes those that place rigid definitions on the term “sex” and force transgender women in prison to be housed in men’s facilities, ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports, declare transgender individuals unfit for military service, and prevent transgender children from accessing gender-affirming care. Multiple lawsuits have already arisen that challenge the initial executive order, which largely erases and others the transgender community.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Re Pros , fight Back a podcast on all
things related to sexual andreproductive health rights and
justice. Hey, re pros . Iseverybody hanging in Amid the
Chaos. I'm your host, JennyWetter , and my pronouns are
she her. So y'all, there is somuch happening and so much
happening so fast, it can behard to keep up with it all.
(00:26):
And I know the chaos is totallythe point, but I'm actually
gonna keep it really short forour introduction today and not
talk too much because it's abit of a longer episode. But
y'all, it's such a goodconversation and an important
conversation. So I, I don'tfeel bad about cutting the
intro short, but I would loveto hear from y'all like we have
(00:51):
been doing the podcast for,what, seven years now. And this
is a really hard time with somany things happening. I would
love to hear what you loveabout the podcast or topics
that we've covered that you'vereally enjoyed. So if you would
like to leave us a review andshare that with us, like that
would be amazing. But you canalso share on social media. You
(01:14):
know, tag us at re pros, fightback on Facebook, Twitter, blue
Sky or re Pros FB on Instagramand let us know like what we
have covered that you haveloved. I wanna make sure that
we're covering topics thaty'all aren't interested in. I
also would love to hear ifthere are things we haven't
talked about that you wouldlove for us to cover. I just, I
(01:36):
wanna make sure that the showis meeting y'all's needs. It's
important to me that we aretouching on all the things you
care about. So, you know, ifyou get a chance, leaving a
review that says what you lovewould always be appreciated. It
helps other people understandwhy you love the podcast. If
you tell your friends why youlove the podcast, you know,
(01:56):
maybe they will listen and canlearn more about these issues.
I just, I wanna make sure withall the things that are
happening, that people aregetting the information that
they need. So, yeah, just letme know what you would like us
to talk about, what that youhave loved us talking about. It
will help me make the showbetter for you. Okay. Uh , like
I said, I think I'm really justlike gonna cut through the
(02:19):
intro , um, and just sayeverything's chaotic. I am all
over the place at the moment,mentally, but I'm hanging in.
It's a lot, but I am hanging inthere. But I , I really do just
wanna get to this week'sinterview. 'cause like I said,
it's a little bit longer, butit is so good since day one of
the new Trump administration,they have really prioritized
(02:42):
attacking trans rights. Therehave been so many eos going
after trans rights that it wasreally important that we
brought somebody on who couldtalk about all of them and what
is happening and the lawsuitsthat are happening. And like I
said, just so many thingshappening attacking trans
people's right to exist, transpeople's right to get
healthcare, trans people'sright to serve in the military.
(03:04):
Like so many things. And Icouldn't think of a better
person to turn to, to coverthis whole big bucket of issues
than Chris Geitner with lawdork y'all, if you were not
already subscribed to his blog,make sure you do. So I have
learned so much from followingall the legal stuff. Like I
said, there's a couple places Iturn to to get all of my legal
(03:26):
information. I am not a lawyer,so turning to these great
resources really makes a hugedifference to me to make sure
that I can keep up on some ofthe nuances and law dork and,
and Chris's , uh, blue Sky orTwitter, like, have been really
important in helping me followon all of these things. So with
that, let's turn to myinterview with Chris . Hi Chris
(03:48):
. Thank you so much for beinghere today.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Before we get started, do you wanna take a
second and introduce yourselfand include your pronouns?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah , uh, I am Chris Geer . I run law dork and
my pronouns are he, him
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And y'all. If you're not already subscribed, you
should definitely subscribe. Iget that is where I go to get a
vast majority of my legalreporting. Um, definitely never
miss a post that comes through.
Okay. So it has been chaos andas yeah , as it seems
appropriate, we need to likeput a little framing on this as
we are recording this onWednesday, February 5th at two.
(04:29):
Just 'cause things changebetween now and when. Y'all are
gonna hear this on Tuesday, I'msure. And I thought before we
talked about some of thespecific eos, this has been a
really big attack on transrights from the Trump
administration, and so maybe itwas worth just like taking a
step back and just kind ofputting like a bigger picture
on this before we got specific.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, and I think, so I was in court on Tuesday,
February 4th when the firsthearing was held in the
challenge to Trump's military ,uh, anti-trans executive order.
And what quickly became clearfrom Judge Reyes who made
(05:18):
repeated points that these werejust questions she was asking,
she hadn't reached conclusions,and yet she did a very good job
, uh, of making clear that thishas been a goal of this
administration since before itexisted since the campaign. And
(05:41):
she, she even quoted some ofthe, the things that he said
during the campaign about transpeople and about ending this
lunacy. She then went throughthe eos , she then went through
some of the effects that havealready been seen in specific
(06:01):
instances, and it is just an,an extremely alarming effort to
sometimes quite literally erasetrans people. As got a lot of
attention last Friday when thedeadline passed for an office
(06:24):
of personnel managementdirective to remove all
mentions related to genderideology. The administration
scare term that essentiallymeans trans people from all
government websites. And yousaw the state department's
travel advisory for GBT pluspeople become the state
(06:48):
department's travel advisoryfor GB people. It's just a , a
really horrible, frightening,scary moment that is not only
being, I can't even say it'sbeing single handedly advanced
by the Trump administrationbecause it was obviously
already being put into effectby lots of state governors,
(07:11):
state ags, not to mention thenonprofit sort of right wing
groups that have, have beenpushing this behind the scenes
for several years.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah, we were talking before how I work also
in the global space. We'vereally seen this like anti
rights movement globally, justreally gaining a lot of steam ,
um, and seeing it coming intothe US in a way that I think
people are still grapplingwith. And yeah , and seeing
that like first e day one eo,like it just felt like it took
(07:44):
Trump , uh, ones anti-transstuff and just like really
kicked it up a notch with thelike complete erasure of even
like granting trans peoplehumanity. Like, it just became
like that, like you said, that, um, gender ideology instead
of recognizing them as people,like it just, it felt much more
hostile this time around. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I mean it , it , it definitely is much more
hostile, it's more specific anda lot of it, those of us who
who work in this space, a lotof it was examples of efforts
that have been taking place instates. Um , very few of the,
some of them have been slightlydifferent. Um, like the
(08:26):
education one, which notablywas the weakest , uh, it it was
a very vibe based eo. The, alot of the other ones were
efforts to alter statelegislation and apply it to the
federal government. And we, wehave seen efforts from states
to define sex. We've seenefforts from states to restrict
(08:51):
gender affirming medical carefor minors. We've seen efforts
from states to restrict whatcan be taught in schools. We've
seen efforts from states to bantrans people from sports.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Okay, so let's turn to the day one eo. And one of
the things that struck me in it, and there's lots of things,
but was like some of that bigpicture framing up front they
had with like defining atconception, which just really
struck me in the likeanti-abortion space.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Well, yeah, for your sphere, that is, that was,
Speaker 1 (09:23):
But there were so many terrible,
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Right? No, that was, I mean, that was something that
I pointed out right away andthat I knew if I pointed out
that it would get a lot of offollow up and the definition of
sex wa did go further than wehave seen and certainly was
something that the conceptionmovement, the, the personhood,
(09:46):
the personhood movement thatthat is, is certainly something
that, that came from theirnotes. And I, I think that it's
already going to, I mean,you've seen people detail the
medical, biological geneticproblems with that, but I , I
(10:07):
think that it was, as you said,sort of this idea that like,
we're gonna go further, we'regonna go harder, we're gonna go
stronger, we're going to seehow far we can go. And
throughout that day oneexecutive order, you saw a
bunch of aspects with that. Yousaw this effort to try to
(10:28):
defund based on genderideology. Uh, you saw this
effort that did lead to thefirst initial lawsuits to
basically immediately cut offgender affirming medical care
for people of all ages infederal custody. You saw the
(10:50):
effort to restrict trans womenfrom being able to , um, be in
women's prison facilities anddetention facilities when it
comes to , uh, immigration. Allof these things were, were just
shoved into this day one order.
And it did quickly lead tofallout did quickly lead to, I
(11:15):
mean, that was the order thatled to the OPM memo that was
ordering everybody in thefederal government to get rid
of anything trans off ofwebsites in the federal
government, which due to thenlike a , a problem of their own
making OPM set this absurddeadline of last Friday for the
(11:37):
entire federal government inwhat happened. And this isn't a
, you gotta hand it to 'em,this isn't an excuse , this
isn't a good thing. But therewere some instances of agencies
believing they had to do thisby 5:00 PM and being
over-inclusive and justshutting down broad swaths of
(12:00):
information because they knewthey weren't gonna be able to
get through it by 5:00 PM. AndI do think based on sources who
I've talked to , uh, and, andone that I even quoted from in
at Lado , that that that wassome of what happened when it
came to like the census when itcame to CDC , is that there was
(12:23):
this, well, if we have tocomply with this by 5:00 PM
Friday, we can't go throughdecades of of data before then,
so we're just gonna have totake it down until we can,
which is horrible and horrificand meant that yeah , like over
the weekend there was no healthdata available to people. Some
(12:46):
of it did come back up onMonday. There was a , a weird
New York Times story that thatsort of gave credit to the, the
media attention. But like, Iwould point to like my
reporting before thesites even went down, that was
from somebody at the CDC whosaid like, stuff is gonna go
(13:08):
down at five because we don'thave time to go through
everything. So I think, I thinksome of it was gonna come back
, but I do think thatthey probably worked quicker
because of all the attention itgot. So, I mean, good, good for
journalism, but I don't wantthe good for journalism to
(13:29):
overstep the criticism of OPMfor having set this completely
arbitrary, completely absurd,completely unworkable deadline
that did lead to this. Thiswasn't like people were
wanting, like, I'm sure some,some were fine with it, but
(13:49):
like I talked to like, it wasliterally an office that
contained mainly , um, peopleof color women, L-G-B-T-Q,
people in the state departmentwho was responsible for
scrubbing a bunch of thewebsites. Like these weren't
all people who wanted to bedoing this, but like the, the
(14:11):
deadline and theirresponsibilities meant that
they had to, and if they hadmore time, like they would've
been able to do it morecarefully.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, and I just talking about those people like
it is, it really is hard. LikeI've talked to some of them and
like, yeah, they are losingtheir faith in government. Like
they are just, the trauma thatsome of them are dealing with
right now is hard to understatewith some people that I have
have , uh, been around like ,this is really, this is, this
(14:41):
was their work. Yeah. They'repa they're passionate about it
and like to have to like takeit all down and scrub it like
is just devastating.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It's horrific. Um, I mean like we don't even know at
this point how much we've lost.
Yeah, I mean that, that's thetruth is that like, I mean, as
some things come back, but likethere , there are just going to
be, I mean, anything the , thegovernment has done, I mean now
(15:10):
some of it, it was probablyillegal because it violated
public records laws to takedown some of this stuff. I mean
much of it, all of it.
And I do know like some of theoffices who were cognizant of
that were trying to archiveeverything as well because they
did understand that like they ,they had additional
(15:32):
responsibilities here, but I'msure some of them either,
either couldn't, didn't havethe knowledge or, or didn't
have the, the time capacity todo it. And for those people we,
we literally might have justlost like decades of
information, which is justhorrifying. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
This is all, and it's like all interacting with
other eos and stuff, likethinking of like the DEI stuff
and Right. Like it's alltogether. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I I also do know that some, some outside
organizations were cognizant ofthis happening and did start
trying to download as much dataas they could. Um, I know that
the, I don't know if they'veput out like a full statement,
but like I know that theWilliams Institute, which does
a lot of work in the L-G-B-T-Qdata, that they tried to, to
(16:21):
get a lot of stuff and, andalready had just in , in
conjunction with their work.
And so I, I do think that therewere some efforts like that
across, across agents, acrossnon-governmental entities. But
we'll see where, where thatends , um, as we move out from,
(16:41):
from last Friday.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah. And sorting out who has what Yeah. And what
they missed.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah. No, we're, we're going to find that like
data sets were lost if theyweren't properly archived. Now
the good thing is, I do thinkthat some of the people who
will have been best at makingsure that they archive them are
the people who have the, thebiggest, most important data
sets , like the census people,the CDC people, the NIH people
(17:09):
like they, they are, are very,very familiar with the, the
need to be constantly archivingtheir stuff. And so I do think
that, that those are, areprobably among the more safe
items. Although their publicfacing portals right now might
(17:30):
be a mess.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Okay. So that was like day one eo, which is like
crazy, like, right .
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah. That was the fallout from day one. And we've
had, I mean, I guess on that, Iwill say like we've had two
lawsuits out of the day, one EOrelating to the, the prisons ,
um, and the treatment of transwomen in prison, which I, I
think it is astounding. And I,I wanna say like it was in an
order last night from JudgeRoyce Lamberth, who, let's be
(17:59):
clear, this is a man who wasborn in the 1940s, was a Reagan
appointee, and last night wasexplaining to the Trump
administration that he couldn'tcome up with any, and he put
any in italics public interestfor the government to
immediately cut off transwomen's medication. I
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Just, in any way, like, how , how could you any
way not be cruel and unusualpunishment?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I mean, you and I can say that, but like, like
let , let's like think aboutthe fact that like after one
hearing this man born in the1940s and a Reagan appointee
who's been senior status since2013 Wow. Like took this case,
(18:48):
had a , an in-person hearingyesterday on behalf , uh, a
case filed on behalf of threetrans women in prison and , and
issued a TRO last night thatthat blocked the Trump
administration from enforcingthose two provisions. The one
relating to where trans womenare to be housed and the one
(19:11):
relating to medical care and,and block the administration
from implementing them . And,and like I , I think that that,
that's important. And that wasthe second TRO there was, was
one filed in a case relating toa , a , a woman that the case
was filed in Massachusetts. Andso I think that we've already
(19:33):
seen two pieces of litigationdirectly out of that and one
that we'll talk about shortly ,uh, that indirectly came out of
that. But yeah, that, that'sall on the, the first eo, the
day one eo
Speaker 1 (19:47):
And unfortunately it definitely did not stop there.
There were lots of others.
Let's turn to the militaryreinstatement of the military
ban. Yeah .
Speaker 2 (19:56):
So the, the military ban, like the, in the first
Trump administration, heattempted a military ban that
got enjoined. Uh, Mattis thenpulled back and started to, to
come up with a, a much morenuanced plan that still
would've been very harmful totrans service members, but was
(20:18):
much more nuanced and was beingimplemented and led to the
original injunction beingtossed out because basically
the original policy was gone.
So they lost on their firstattempt and then the, the, the
Mattis plan eventually got,got, was gone because Biden
(20:42):
came in. So basically Trumpfirst got rid of Biden's order
requiring equal treatment inthe military. He then, and
that, that was on day one , um,in a series of revocations of
prior orders. Then he issuedthe, the explicit military
(21:04):
order. And it was much worsethan the, the, the first time
around it . It containedlanguage that, that was, was
really disturbing and suggestedthat not only were were they
going to be banning transpeople, but that adoption of a
(21:26):
gender, this is a quote fromthe executive order adoption of
a gender identity inconsistentwith an individual's sex
conflicts with a soldier'scommitment to an honorable,
truthful and disciplinedlifestyle, even in one's
personal life. To quoteJudge Reyes yesterday, who was
(21:52):
assigned the first casechallenging this order and held
her first hearing relatedpublic hearing related to that
order yesterday, whatshe told the government's
lawyer, this was just thestatus conference. It was
establishing whether she neededto take any immediate action
before she even held a hearingon a temporary restraining
(22:15):
order motion. And what she saidis, government lawyer, I am
going to want you to be able toanswer what even in one's
personal life means when, whenI hear from you next. That that
was one of several things thatshe said she wanted the
government to explain. But, butit was, it was notable. And the
(22:39):
executive order pretty quicklyled to a lawsuit filed on
behalf of eight servicemembers. Uh, well filed , filed
on behalf of two six currentservice members and two people
seeking to join the military,all trans. And it was filed
here in DC it was assigned toJudge Reyes. And what happened
(23:00):
was they filed a motion for apreliminary injunction, which
would be a little more relaxedtimeline and would lead to, she
had put in place a schedulethat would've had a hearing on
the 18th of February on thatinjunction. So not a really
(23:21):
relaxed deadline timeline, butmore relaxed than come into my
court today. But then literallyas that was, was being decided
by Reyes , that timeline, theplaintiffs got words that a
person in training, trans womanin training had been separated
(23:44):
from the Women's Barracks, wasbeing forced to fill out a
counseling form that wouldessentially say that she agreed
to live as a man to continueservice. Yeah . Uh , or would
be , uh, administrativelyseparated. So they immediately
went back to court. Now, therewas some confusion because she
(24:07):
wasn't a plaintiff. Now whatthe lawyers were doing was they
filed a temporary restrainingorder then wanting that sort of
action not to be taken againsttheir six clients who are
currently in the military. Butit did lead to some
complications. So, so becauseof that, judge Reyes ordered a
(24:28):
hearing on Tuesday, February4th at 4:00 PM and she
basically was like, what isgoing on? What do I need to do
something now before I hold ahearing on this TRO request?
Which she was like, I'lltentatively have that on Friday
morning. And the problems thenquickly became clear because
(24:51):
one, this woman who was inSouth Carolina was not a
plaintiff, and the governmentwas like, we don't wanna talk
about her. She's not aplaintiff. Why are we even
discussing her? You can't issueany order regarding her. And
the plaintiffs were saying,like, they were trying to do
two things. Like one, they weretrying to protect this woman
(25:13):
'cause they now knew about her,but they understood that like
she wasn't in the case. And sowhat they were doing was like,
we're bringing this to you andwe're bringing it to you
because it gives us evidencethat things are happening in
the military now, and we needan order stopping the military
from doing anything against ourclients. Over the course of
(25:36):
like roughly an a a little morethan an hour hearing, Reyes
essentially said like, okay, Iget what you're doing. If you
wanna keep talking about thiswoman in South Carolina, file
an amended a complaint and addher in , which they eventually
did, which they did Tuesdaynight, February 4th. At the
same time she then turned tothe government before we even
(26:00):
get to the substance of whathappened and was like, can you
agree that nothing will happento these six plaintiffs before
I can hold this February 18thpreliminary injunction hearing.
And the government tried todance around it. And this
lawyer for the government, JeanLin , was like, well, there's
(26:23):
no separations. Because herwhole argument was that the EEO
does nothing, that there's nopolicy in place yet. DOD needs
to implement the policy. Theyhaven't done so, so thi this
case isn't even ripe for youto, to hear, to which Reyes was
like, well, look at this womanin South Carolina if things are
(26:45):
already happening, I want youto agree that nothing will
happen. And the government kepttrying to like jump around
that. And this is where we goback to the day one executive
order because they wereessentially saying that any
barracks movement was a resultof the day one executive order
(27:07):
because of the definition ofsex. That it wasn't actually a,
a change happening because ofthe transgender military ban.
It was happening because of thedefinition of sex in the day
one executive order. And , andthat ultimately did sort of, I
(27:29):
don't know if we're allowed toswear on your podcast, it's
fine. I I think that started tooff Ray as a little, she at one
point said, I want you to beable to tell me that nothing is
going to happen to these peopleif they used to get chocolate
ice cream at the mess. Youcan't start giving them vanilla
(27:51):
ice cream because of this. Iwant you to be able to agree
that nothing is going to changefor these six . You're not
going to move their parents .
You're not going to give themdifferent ice cream. She said
the ice cream thing like two orthree times. So one, I think
she likes ice cream, but two,she was not liking the way they
were trying to dance around it.
(28:11):
And ultimately the governmentcouldn't agree to that. They
said, we need to go back to ourclient now that, that I, I do
in a sense understand like aDOJ lawyer couldn't agree to
that on the spot. So they haveto get back to the plaintiffs
today and file a joint statusreport by either four or 5:00
(28:33):
PM today. And if they don'treach an agreement, she said
they will be back in court onFriday for a TRO. That is what
happened. Underlying it, therewas a very serious substantive
discussion that I wrote aboutTuesday night. I think I
published it Wednesday,Wednesday, February 5th at Law
(28:56):
Dork , where Lynn essentiallywas confronted with these
statements that I talked aboutat the, the top of the show
that Trump made during thecampaign, the massive executive
orders, the specifics of thisexecutive order relating to the
military, the implementationthat has already happened, the
(29:16):
websites that have gone downthe, the programs that have
been defunded and essentiallysaid like, if I find that there
is evidence of animus, how isthis not gone? And Lynn told
her that the government shouldstill be able to uphold the
(29:37):
executive order even if it wasmotivated by bias, by animus,
not even bias by animus, whichis sort of like the, the top
tier level of the governmentdoesn't like you. And Reyes
just could not believe thatthey said that and was just
like, I, I think she looked atRomer versus Evans, which was
(29:59):
this 1996 Supreme Court casewhen the state of Colorado
tried to ban cities frompassing non-discrimination
ordinances to protect gaypeople from discrimination. And
, and essentially that theSupreme Court in that opinion
said like, you can do somethingthat is, is so clearly has no
(30:24):
basis for taking the actionthat that it is so
fundamentally poisoned by theanimus that, that we don't even
need to look at. If this issubject to, to strict scrutiny
or intermediate scrutiny or anyof those sort of legal
discussions like it , it's justgone. There, there is no
(30:44):
rational basis for thattreatment. But, but Lynn was
trying to say and pointed tolike the the travel ban case
that that came down as, as anexample of when animus was
permitted. And, and Ray hasimmediately shot back that like
remember that that Trump'sfirst travel ban didn't succeed
(31:06):
when it was a pure Muslim banand that they had to go back to
the drawing board like threetimes before they found
something that was able to getcourt approval. It was, it was
a striking moment showing thatthis is a , a , a longtime DOJ
employee , uh, this wasn'tDonald Trump, and yet she was
(31:28):
arguing in defense of thisorder that even if Judge Reyes
finds that it was motivated byanimus or intended to demean
trans people, judge Reyes usedthe word demean repeatedly. And
the fact that DOJ was notwilling to acee that if that
(31:48):
was found that the ordercouldn't stand, I, I think is
very troubling for the way thatthe administration plans on
being okay with defending thoseorders. But I would say in
response to that, 'cause I knowthat was a depressing series of
comments, , that like Ido think that we should note
(32:10):
that, that while Reyes wasn'tmaking any decision while she
was just asking questions, shewas clearly very concerned by
this. And , and that was whatshe should be saying at that
point in the case, because thisis obviously going to get
appealed, whatever she does.
And I think we saw a similarthing from the judge in
(32:32):
Massachusetts. We saw , uh,although we've not seen any
written opinion in that case,but it was what we saw in the
written opinion , uh, fromJudge Lamberth as well in the
other prison case that peoplewith his italicized, any that
he saw, he couldn't see anypublic interest for, for
cutting off these, thesepeople's medications
(32:53):
immediately. There is apossibility that the way that
the administration hasproceeded with this, the way
that there is this massiveorders, the way that we are
still more than 30 minutesthrough, not through all of the
orders that they've passed,could ultimately truly poison
(33:18):
all of them .
Speaker 1 (33:19):
I hope so, man. I there's just so much like you
said,
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I mean, not at all aspects of all of them . No ,
but it could, there are somethings that they'll be like,
the government has the freedomto do this, these are choices.
If there are findings ofanimus, which is the strongest
thing you can do pretty much inthese cases, like it's going to
be very difficult to see manyof these provisions upheld.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Okay. There are still more. So where do you
wanna go next?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
I mean, we've got the gender affirming care
effort. Yeah. Um, which like,let's be clear like in some
aspects like it is a ban, but I, I don't like using that
because it's not what thestates did , uh, because the
federal government can't dothat. And even this
administration seems to knowthat now they're trying to do
(34:12):
roundabout ways of essentiallyending it, but what they're
doing is cutting off tricare ,uh, which is military
insurance, which was already inthe NDAA , there was a, a
slight pullback. Correct . Butit , it was actually a really
poorly worded amendment thatonly cut off funding for
(34:34):
medication that could result ininfertility, I believe.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Maybe it wasn't infertility, but it it was, it
was a word. It was some, itmight have been infertility, I
forget what the word was.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Sterilization.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Sterilization, yes, you're right, you are right.
But like, so that would meanthat it would actually not have
had any effect on pubertyblockers. It was a really
poorly worded amendment, whichI mean take the wins where we
can, but this EOpurports to, to end all TRICARE
(35:11):
related funding. It alsostarting next year's federal
health employment insurance. Soall federal employees would get
rid of gender affirming carecoverage. It also contained
showing how stupid these are.
It also said like, and, and wewill negotiate for reduced
(35:35):
rates because of that. Like,they don't understand how
little like the genderaffirming medical care cost
across the entire federalemployee health benefit plan is
probably less than like, I meanI, I'm not gonna guess I'm bad
with numbers, I'm bad withdata, but I mean, it , it like
(35:57):
honestly is probably less thanlike a 10th of 1%. Yeah.
Literally, right? Yeah. So it ,it was, when I saw that line in
the eo , I was like, this is,so, like Steven Miller added
that line and everybody waslike, fine, Steve, whatever. It
also purports to ban underspending clause. And this is
(36:19):
the, the dramatic one that hasled to some preemptive
following of the order. It , itpurports to ban say that
anybody who receives federalfunding from the federal
government, any medicalfacilities that get federal
funding have to , uh, stopproviding this care or they
won't be able to receivefederal funds. It also in a , a
(36:42):
very weak provision purports tolike say like Team up with Ag
State ags and work onlitigation efforts, which I
mean is no different than whatthey would be doing anyway.
Like it , it was, we saw asimilar language in the, the
education eo. But yeah, thothose are the three main
(37:05):
provisions in that. And thathas already led to one lawsuit
that was filed on Tuesday,February 4th by pflag Gay and
Lesbian Medical Professionals.
Uh, it's L-G-B-T-Q MedicalProfessionals, but their
original name was GLMA and theydidn't wanna change their
branding. So it's now likeGLMA, it doesn't have a name
(37:28):
colon, the LGBTQ plus MedicalAssociation or something like
that. And then a few, a handfulof, of trans teens and , and
their parents. And that wasfiled in Maryland. Uh, it was
filed by, I believe, if I'mremembering correctly, Lambda
Legal , the A CLU Generon Blockand Hogan Levels, which are two
(37:53):
big firms. The, I should notethe, the three lawsuits we've
talked about previously werelike tag team efforts between
the NCLR, the National Centerfor Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law
, which is another one of thoseused to be gay lesbian
advocates and defenders. It'snow gbtq plus legal advocates
(38:18):
and Defenders. And they filedall three of those cases, the
both the Massachusetts and DCprison case and the , uh,
military case. So , uh, theyare spreading the work right
now on what has been filed. Andthat is my understanding, the
(38:39):
first of at least twochallenges to the, the gender
affirming care band that are,are coming or the , the gender
affirming care EO that arecoming. And then the last EO of
the, the first two weeks wasthe education one. And that
one, I mean, it's an annoyingexecutive order. It is clearly
(39:04):
the one that they had notemplate for that they had to
sort of start from scratch andit shows, it tries to like
reverse Biden administrationTitle IX protections, which
were going to happen anyway. Itpurports to do some spending
(39:25):
clause stuff. It purports to dosome ag stuff, but it , it
didn't appear to even look atother federal laws that provide
protections to state and localentities. It didn't even seem
to crossly with just like basicfederal privacy laws. It was by
(39:52):
far the most poorly crafted eo,which in some ways can make it
dangerous because depending onhow it's implemented, it could
just start going wild. I dothink that it is one that will
probably be a wild before wesee litigation because of that
though, it has a lot of movingtargets. Um, you might see
(40:13):
something related to thealready existing Title IX
cases. If there are efforts tosort of transform those cases,
that could be a , a , a way ofcontinuing them. But I, I'm not
sure one, whether or not theplaintiffs in those cases would
want to do that and two,whether they would procedurally
(40:35):
be able to, but I I think thatthat is clearly trying to jump
on like the don't say gayefforts, but they didn't really
directly know how to do so. Andto the extent that they could
do that, the federal governmentcould do anything. It would
almost certainly due to alreadyexisting laws need to be done
(40:58):
through legislative process,through a full new lobbying
passed.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Okay. So that's everything that we have as of
recording. We do know thatbetween, there's probably one
more coming before y'all arehearing this. So yeah, with
that caveat of obviously wehaven't read it. What is the
one more that we are expecting?
Speaker 2 (41:18):
We are expecting some sort of anti-trans sports
ban and I will, will be honest.
I not that this is a negativeadmission, this is a, an
affirmative statement. Ireally, I don't cover anything
that, that I honestly, it's notjust Trump, but I think I got
(41:39):
in this habit during the firstTrump administration, I don't
cover anything until there's adocument. When somebody tells
me they're filing a lawsuit, Isay, well, let me know when you
file it. When somebody tells methat they are, I mean, I might
like post about it on like blueSky or something, but I'm not
gonna like do a story that likea lawsuit is coming. Like it's
(42:00):
been a sentence in my storiesabout the eos I'm like,
litigation is expected. Yeah .
Yeah. But , uh, like we don'thave the text of the eo. I know
that they, they were leakingthings yesterday to get stories
out there, but I, I wanna seethe language before I have an
opinion on it. I mean, thetruth is that what the opinion
(42:22):
that I can say is that they arein a more difficult position on
this one than some of theothers because there is a ninth
circuit decision that foundthat a state's sports ban was
unconstitutional. So we do havean appellate ruling covering
all of the Western states thatanti-trans sports bans are
(42:46):
unconstitutional. And based onwhat we've seen with other eos,
they're probably not doing alot of work to make sure that
it works its way aroundpeacock. So you could very
quickly, I I imagine whilewe've seen a lot of these
lawsuits being filed inMassachusetts to get the first
(43:07):
circuit or in Maryland to getthe fourth circuit or DC to get
the DC circuit, I would not besurprised if this gets filed in
Seattle or California when,whenever there's litigation
challenging it.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
I think it's also just important to note with
like all of these eos like thisisn't the only big action we're
gonna see this year. We'relike, we're waiting on the scri
decision that's coming out thissummer. Yeah . So like,
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Well, and we're, we're waiting, I mean DOJ under
the Trump administration beforePam Bondi was even confirmed,
had announced that it waschanging positions in some
cases had announced that it waswithdrawing. Prior positions
had announced that it was, inone case they announced that
(43:53):
the prior filed brief was nolonger the position of the
department and they wouldn't bearguing. But it didn't set out
a new position in a case overwhether or not a insurance
provider could violate TitleVII by not providing gender
affirming care under a healthinsurance policy. Whether that
(44:17):
would violate Title vii . Thereis an NC uh , full court
hearing at the 11th circuitover a city in Georgia's
refusal to cover that in theirinsurance. And that was being
heard on banc , sorry, thatwasn't an insurance company. It
was an , uh, an health andemployer's insurance plan. And
(44:41):
there's another case overinsurance companies, ,
there's a lot
Speaker 1 (44:45):
To keep track
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Of. But in, in this OMB Banc 11th circuit case, the
the department did announcethat they were withdrawing
their amicus brief in supportof the trans plaintiff in that
case. They didn't file anythingin the opposite direction. They
would need to get leave at thispoint. 'cause I think the like
(45:06):
filing deadlines are longpassed . But they did, like,
that was a case where the transwoman had won when the three
judge panel heard the case andthe Justice Department filed a
brief supporting her when itwas being heard on Bon . I
don't remember if they hadasked for argument time, but
(45:26):
they probably would've. And nowshe's going to be arguing , uh,
her lawyer is going to bearguing before the full 11th
circuit, which is not afriendly place to be for trans
people by herself. And based onthe executive orders with at
least a wink in a nod inpremature from the Justice
(45:47):
Department that they supportthe, the Georgia City's , uh,
decision to exclude herhealthcare coverage. And so to,
to that end, sorry. I I No,
Speaker 1 (45:58):
You're good . Very
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Few people know about that having happened. It,
they filed that on last Fridayafternoon, I think. Um,
Speaker 1 (46:05):
I'm sorry .
Definitely it got lost in myradar.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
We are waiting for something similar to happen in
Sedi . It is possible that thatdecision was awaiting bondy's
confirmation, but we're waitingto see what, if anything they
do there.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Okay. So this is all a lot among all of the many,
many other things that arehappening. I I'm sure people
are feeling dispirited.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah. And, and there there's ongoing litigation over
various state laws on, on allof the fronts we were just
discussing and others.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
So how can people get involved? Like what can
people do to get involved inthe fight?
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's important to
keep up with it and not becomeoverwhelmed with it. I think
it's important to explain topeople two things that, that
can sound contradictory, but Ibelieve are complimentary. And
it's important to do both. One,which is like actually
discussing the scope andbreadth and depth of the attack
(47:10):
on trans people and the, thecompletely out of their minds
justifications for thesethings. And for, for such a
small number of people. We, wetalked so long about the prison
cases according to the filingby , uh, judge Lambert last
(47:30):
night, his temporaryrestraining order. And this
came from, I forget who'sbriefing the government or the,
the plaintiffs there, there areonly approximately 16 trans
women in the entire federalprison system. So all of this
is happening, these twoprovisions in a presidential
(47:50):
executive order that areleading to this immediately
fallout from prisons that areleading to multiple lawsuits
are all based on 16 people. And, and there is no evidence from
the government presented thusfar that any of them have
caused any problem to safety infacilities, which is the
(48:11):
alleged justification for this.
And so knowing that, tellingpeople that, explaining that
this is totally, it's horribleon its face, it's out of
proportion to even if therewere a problem with it, what
they're doing to deal with it,which it's not a problem at
all. Then on top of that, thatthis is just a small piece that
(48:35):
all of these have fallouteffects on other people, on
other rights, on otherinstances. The best example of
this, and Chase Gio lovestalking about this and, and
Shannon Mider does too, is the,the six circuits decision that
is being appealed to theSupreme Court over the
Tennessee's gender affirmingcare ban, the Retti case. Um ,
(48:56):
the sixth circuit decision is,is downright frightening for
what it says about sexdiscrimination for trans
people, but also if it appliesthat basically if there is any
biological evidence for this,you basically don't even go
into the discussion of whethersomething meets heightened
(49:21):
scrutiny, whether or not it'san important governmental
interest, whether or not the,the effort to classify people
has a, a basis, an importantbasis. You wouldn't even get to
that. You , the governmentwould just be able to say
there's a biologicaldifference. That essentially
means we don't even go intoequal protection analysis. And
(49:44):
Jeff Sutton, the chief judge, Idon't know if he's still the
chief judge , uh, he was thechief judge of the sixth
Circuit, a George W. Bushappointee, not even a , a Trump
appointee said, yeah, that'sfine. That's not sex
discrimination. We're not evengonna count that as sex
discrimination. So we don'teven get to the question of
(50:04):
whether or not this meets theheightened scrutiny test that
sex discrimination gets, andthat would apply outside of, of
transgender rights that wouldapply to all , uh, sex-based
discrimination if it ,especially if the, the Supreme
Court affirms it on that basis.
And so that's just one example,but we're seeing things like
(50:27):
that. And then like the, theobvious example that we got
this past week was whathappened to the websites? These
people hate trans people somuch that they're going to take
down your entire public healthsystem.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
This is all so much and like , and so , so
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Both things like talk about, talk about those
things, both the direct effecton trans people and the fallout
on everyone. Um, and then like,pay attention to the news on
these issues. Don't be, don'tget overwhelmed that you just
say, I give up and look at theorganizations who are filing
these lawsuits and supportthem. Pay attention. Reach out
(51:04):
to, to your trans friends andask them what they need. It is
a scary time. And knowing thatthere are cis people who are
there is , is something thatis, is necessary.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Well Chris , thank you so much for being here. I
really appreciated this greatconversation about such
horrible things.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Okay, y'all, I had a great conversation with Chris .
I hope you all enjoyed it. LikeI said, we had a wonderful
conversation about suchterrible, terrible things. You
know, make sure that you aretaking care of yourself in this
time. I know it's chaotic. Iknow there are so many dark
things happening, but make sureyou are taking care of
(51:47):
yourself. That so that you canstay in the fight. Don't tune
it out, you know, step away ifyou need to, but make sure to
jump back in. Um, we need toall stay in this fight together
to make sure that we can holdthe line as much as possible.
So with that, I will seeeverybody next week. If you
have any questions, comments,or topics you would like us to
(52:09):
cover, always feel free toshoot me an email. You can
reach me at jenny jn , NIe@reprofightback.com , or you
can find us on social media.
We're at re pros. Fight back onFacebook and Twitter or re pros
FB on Instagram. If you loveour podcast and wanna make sure
more people find it, take thetime to rate and review us on
(52:30):
your favorite podcast platform.
Or if you wanna make sure tosupport the podcast, you can
also donate on our website atrepro fightback com . Thanks
all .
Welcome to Re Pros , fight Back a podcast on all
things related to sexual andreproductive health rights and
justice. Hey, re pros . Iseverybody hanging in Amid the
Chaos. I'm your host, JennyWetter , and my pronouns are
she her. So y'all, there is somuch happening and so much
happening so fast, it can behard to keep up with it all.
(00:26):
And I know the chaos is totallythe point, but I'm actually
gonna keep it really short forour introduction today and not
talk too much because it's abit of a longer episode. But
y'all, it's such a goodconversation and an important
conversation. So I, I don'tfeel bad about cutting the
intro short, but I would loveto hear from y'all like we have
(00:51):
been doing the podcast for,what, seven years now. And this
is a really hard time with somany things happening. I would
love to hear what you loveabout the podcast or topics
that we've covered that you'vereally enjoyed. So if you would
like to leave us a review andshare that with us, like that
would be amazing. But you canalso share on social media. You
(01:14):
know, tag us at re pros, fightback on Facebook, Twitter, blue
Sky or re Pros FB on Instagramand let us know like what we
have covered that you haveloved. I wanna make sure that
we're covering topics thaty'all aren't interested in. I
also would love to hear ifthere are things we haven't
talked about that you wouldlove for us to cover. I just, I
(01:36):
wanna make sure that the showis meeting y'all's needs. It's
important to me that we aretouching on all the things you
care about. So, you know, ifyou get a chance, leaving a
review that says what you lovewould always be appreciated. It
helps other people understandwhy you love the podcast. If
you tell your friends why youlove the podcast, you know,
(01:56):
maybe they will listen and canlearn more about these issues.
I just, I wanna make sure withall the things that are
happening, that people aregetting the information that
they need. So, yeah, just letme know what you would like us
to talk about, what that youhave loved us talking about. It
will help me make the showbetter for you. Okay. Uh , like
I said, I think I'm really justlike gonna cut through the
(02:19):
intro , um, and just sayeverything's chaotic. I am all
over the place at the moment,mentally, but I'm hanging in.
It's a lot, but I am hanging inthere. But I , I really do just
wanna get to this week'sinterview. 'cause like I said,
it's a little bit longer, butit is so good since day one of
the new Trump administration,they have really prioritized
(02:42):
attacking trans rights. Therehave been so many eos going
after trans rights that it wasreally important that we
brought somebody on who couldtalk about all of them and what
is happening and the lawsuitsthat are happening. And like I
said, just so many thingshappening attacking trans
people's right to exist, transpeople's right to get
healthcare, trans people'sright to serve in the military.
(03:04):
Like so many things. And Icouldn't think of a better
person to turn to, to coverthis whole big bucket of issues
than Chris Geitner with lawdork y'all, if you were not
already subscribed to his blog,make sure you do. So I have
learned so much from followingall the legal stuff. Like I
said, there's a couple places Iturn to to get all of my legal
(03:26):
information. I am not a lawyer,so turning to these great
resources really makes a hugedifference to me to make sure
that I can keep up on some ofthe nuances and law dork and,
and Chris's , uh, blue Sky orTwitter, like, have been really
important in helping me followon all of these things. So with
that, let's turn to myinterview with Chris . Hi Chris
(03:48):
. Thank you so much for beinghere today.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Before we get started, do you wanna take a
second and introduce yourselfand include your pronouns?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah , uh, I am Chris Geer . I run law dork and
my pronouns are he, him
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And y'all. If you're not already subscribed, you
should definitely subscribe. Iget that is where I go to get a
vast majority of my legalreporting. Um, definitely never
miss a post that comes through.
Okay. So it has been chaos andas yeah , as it seems
appropriate, we need to likeput a little framing on this as
we are recording this onWednesday, February 5th at two.
(04:29):
Just 'cause things changebetween now and when. Y'all are
gonna hear this on Tuesday, I'msure. And I thought before we
talked about some of thespecific eos, this has been a
really big attack on transrights from the Trump
administration, and so maybe itwas worth just like taking a
step back and just kind ofputting like a bigger picture
on this before we got specific.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, and I think, so I was in court on Tuesday,
February 4th when the firsthearing was held in the
challenge to Trump's military ,uh, anti-trans executive order.
And what quickly became clearfrom Judge Reyes who made
(05:18):
repeated points that these werejust questions she was asking,
she hadn't reached conclusions,and yet she did a very good job
, uh, of making clear that thishas been a goal of this
administration since before itexisted since the campaign. And
(05:41):
she, she even quoted some ofthe, the things that he said
during the campaign about transpeople and about ending this
lunacy. She then went throughthe eos , she then went through
some of the effects that havealready been seen in specific
(06:01):
instances, and it is just an,an extremely alarming effort to
sometimes quite literally erasetrans people. As got a lot of
attention last Friday when thedeadline passed for an office
(06:24):
of personnel managementdirective to remove all
mentions related to genderideology. The administration
scare term that essentiallymeans trans people from all
government websites. And yousaw the state department's
travel advisory for GBT pluspeople become the state
(06:48):
department's travel advisoryfor GB people. It's just a , a
really horrible, frightening,scary moment that is not only
being, I can't even say it'sbeing single handedly advanced
by the Trump administrationbecause it was obviously
already being put into effectby lots of state governors,
(07:11):
state ags, not to mention thenonprofit sort of right wing
groups that have, have beenpushing this behind the scenes
for several years.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah, we were talking before how I work also
in the global space. We'vereally seen this like anti
rights movement globally, justreally gaining a lot of steam ,
um, and seeing it coming intothe US in a way that I think
people are still grapplingwith. And yeah , and seeing
that like first e day one eo,like it just felt like it took
(07:44):
Trump , uh, ones anti-transstuff and just like really
kicked it up a notch with thelike complete erasure of even
like granting trans peoplehumanity. Like, it just became
like that, like you said, that, um, gender ideology instead
of recognizing them as people,like it just, it felt much more
hostile this time around. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I mean it , it , it definitely is much more
hostile, it's more specific anda lot of it, those of us who
who work in this space, a lotof it was examples of efforts
that have been taking place instates. Um , very few of the,
some of them have been slightlydifferent. Um, like the
(08:26):
education one, which notablywas the weakest , uh, it it was
a very vibe based eo. The, alot of the other ones were
efforts to alter statelegislation and apply it to the
federal government. And we, wehave seen efforts from states
to define sex. We've seenefforts from states to restrict
(08:51):
gender affirming medical carefor minors. We've seen efforts
from states to restrict whatcan be taught in schools. We've
seen efforts from states to bantrans people from sports.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Okay, so let's turn to the day one eo. And one of
the things that struck me in it, and there's lots of things,
but was like some of that bigpicture framing up front they
had with like defining atconception, which just really
struck me in the likeanti-abortion space.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Well, yeah, for your sphere, that is, that was,
Speaker 1 (09:23):
But there were so many terrible,
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Right? No, that was, I mean, that was something that
I pointed out right away andthat I knew if I pointed out
that it would get a lot of offollow up and the definition of
sex wa did go further than wehave seen and certainly was
something that the conceptionmovement, the, the personhood,
(09:46):
the personhood movement thatthat is, is certainly something
that, that came from theirnotes. And I, I think that it's
already going to, I mean,you've seen people detail the
medical, biological geneticproblems with that, but I , I
(10:07):
think that it was, as you said,sort of this idea that like,
we're gonna go further, we'regonna go harder, we're gonna go
stronger, we're going to seehow far we can go. And
throughout that day oneexecutive order, you saw a
bunch of aspects with that. Yousaw this effort to try to
(10:28):
defund based on genderideology. Uh, you saw this
effort that did lead to thefirst initial lawsuits to
basically immediately cut offgender affirming medical care
for people of all ages infederal custody. You saw the
(10:50):
effort to restrict trans womenfrom being able to , um, be in
women's prison facilities anddetention facilities when it
comes to , uh, immigration. Allof these things were, were just
shoved into this day one order.
And it did quickly lead tofallout did quickly lead to, I
(11:15):
mean, that was the order thatled to the OPM memo that was
ordering everybody in thefederal government to get rid
of anything trans off ofwebsites in the federal
government, which due to thenlike a , a problem of their own
making OPM set this absurddeadline of last Friday for the
(11:37):
entire federal government inwhat happened. And this isn't a
, you gotta hand it to 'em,this isn't an excuse , this
isn't a good thing. But therewere some instances of agencies
believing they had to do thisby 5:00 PM and being
over-inclusive and justshutting down broad swaths of
(12:00):
information because they knewthey weren't gonna be able to
get through it by 5:00 PM. AndI do think based on sources who
I've talked to , uh, and, andone that I even quoted from in
at Lado , that that that wassome of what happened when it
came to like the census when itcame to CDC , is that there was
(12:23):
this, well, if we have tocomply with this by 5:00 PM
Friday, we can't go throughdecades of of data before then,
so we're just gonna have totake it down until we can,
which is horrible and horrificand meant that yeah , like over
the weekend there was no healthdata available to people. Some
(12:46):
of it did come back up onMonday. There was a , a weird
New York Times story that thatsort of gave credit to the, the
media attention. But like, Iwould point to like my
reporting
from somebody at the CDC whosaid like, stuff is gonna go
(13:08):
down at five because we don'thave time to go through
everything. So I think, I thinksome of it was gonna come back
because of all the attention itgot. So, I mean, good, good for
journalism, but I don't wantthe good for journalism to
(13:29):
overstep the criticism of OPMfor having set this completely
arbitrary, completely absurd,completely unworkable deadline
that did lead to this. Thiswasn't like people were
wanting, like, I'm sure some,some were fine with it, but
(13:49):
like I talked to like, it wasliterally an office that
contained mainly , um, peopleof color women, L-G-B-T-Q,
people in the state departmentwho was responsible for
scrubbing a bunch of thewebsites. Like these weren't
all people who wanted to bedoing this, but like the, the
(14:11):
deadline and theirresponsibilities meant that
they had to, and if they hadmore time, like they would've
been able to do it morecarefully.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, and I just talking about those people like
it is, it really is hard. LikeI've talked to some of them and
like, yeah, they are losingtheir faith in government. Like
they are just, the trauma thatsome of them are dealing with
right now is hard to understatewith some people that I have
have , uh, been around like ,this is really, this is, this
(14:41):
was their work. Yeah. They'repa they're passionate about it
and like to have to like takeit all down and scrub it like
is just devastating.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It's horrific. Um, I mean like we don't even know at
this point how much we've lost.
Yeah, I mean that, that's thetruth is that like, I mean, as
some things come back, but likethere , there are just going to
be, I mean, anything the , thegovernment has done, I mean now
(15:10):
some of it, it was probablyillegal because it violated
public records laws to takedown some of this stuff. I mean
much of it, all of it
And I do know like some of theoffices who were cognizant of
that were trying to archiveeverything as well because they
did understand that like they ,they had additional
(15:32):
responsibilities here, but I'msure some of them either,
either couldn't, didn't havethe knowledge or, or didn't
have the, the time capacity todo it. And for those people we,
we literally might have justlost like decades of
information, which is justhorrifying. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
This is all, and it's like all interacting with
other eos and stuff, likethinking of like the DEI stuff
and Right. Like it's alltogether. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I I also do know that some, some outside
organizations were cognizant ofthis happening and did start
trying to download as much dataas they could. Um, I know that
the, I don't know if they'veput out like a full statement,
but like I know that theWilliams Institute, which does
a lot of work in the L-G-B-T-Qdata, that they tried to, to
(16:21):
get a lot of stuff and, andalready had just in , in
conjunction with their work.
And so I, I do think that therewere some efforts like that
across, across agents, acrossnon-governmental entities. But
we'll see where, where thatends , um, as we move out from,
(16:41):
from last Friday.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah. And sorting out who has what Yeah. And what
they missed.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah. No, we're, we're going to find that like
data sets were lost if theyweren't properly archived. Now
the good thing is, I do thinkthat some of the people who
will have been best at makingsure that they archive them are
the people who have the, thebiggest, most important data
sets , like the census people,the CDC people, the NIH people
(17:09):
like they, they are, are very,very familiar with the, the
need to be constantly archivingtheir stuff. And so I do think
that, that those are, areprobably among the more safe
items. Although their publicfacing portals right now might
(17:30):
be a mess.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Okay. So that was like day one eo, which is like
crazy, like, right .
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah. That was the fallout from day one. And we've
had, I mean, I guess on that, Iwill say like we've had two
lawsuits out of the day, one EOrelating to the, the prisons ,
um, and the treatment of transwomen in prison, which I, I
think it is astounding. And I,I wanna say like it was in an
order last night from JudgeRoyce Lamberth, who, let's be
(17:59):
clear, this is a man who wasborn in the 1940s, was a Reagan
appointee, and last night wasexplaining to the Trump
administration that he couldn'tcome up with any, and he put
any in italics public interestfor the government to
immediately cut off transwomen's medication. I
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Just, in any way, like, how , how could you any
way not be cruel and unusualpunishment?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I mean, you and I can say that, but like, like
let , let's like think aboutthe fact that like after one
hearing this man born in the1940s and a Reagan appointee
who's been senior status since2013 Wow. Like took this case,
(18:48):
had a , an in-person hearingyesterday on behalf , uh, a
case filed on behalf of threetrans women in prison and , and
issued a TRO last night thatthat blocked the Trump
administration from enforcingthose two provisions. The one
relating to where trans womenare to be housed and the one
(19:11):
relating to medical care and,and block the administration
from implementing them . And,and like I , I think that that,
that's important. And that wasthe second TRO there was, was
one filed in a case relating toa , a , a woman that the case
was filed in Massachusetts. Andso I think that we've already
(19:33):
seen two pieces of litigationdirectly out of that and one
that we'll talk about shortly ,uh, that indirectly came out of
that. But yeah, that, that'sall on the, the first eo, the
day one eo
Speaker 1 (19:47):
And unfortunately it definitely did not stop there.
There were lots of others.
Let's turn to the militaryreinstatement of the military
ban. Yeah .
Speaker 2 (19:56):
So the, the military ban, like the, in the first
Trump administration, heattempted a military ban that
got enjoined. Uh, Mattis thenpulled back and started to, to
come up with a, a much morenuanced plan that still
would've been very harmful totrans service members, but was
(20:18):
much more nuanced and was beingimplemented and led to the
original injunction beingtossed out because basically
the original policy was gone.
So they lost on their firstattempt and then the, the, the
Mattis plan eventually got,got, was gone because Biden
(20:42):
came in. So basically Trumpfirst got rid of Biden's order
requiring equal treatment inthe military. He then, and
that, that was on day one , um,in a series of revocations of
prior orders. Then he issuedthe, the explicit military
(21:04):
order. And it was much worsethan the, the, the first time
around it . It containedlanguage that, that was, was
really disturbing and suggestedthat not only were were they
going to be banning transpeople, but that adoption of a
(21:26):
gender, this is a quote fromthe executive order adoption of
a gender identity inconsistentwith an individual's sex
conflicts with a soldier'scommitment to an honorable,
truthful and disciplinedlifestyle, even in one's
personal life. To quote
(21:52):
assigned the first casechallenging this order and held
her first hearing relatedpublic hearing related to that
order yesterday,
lawyer, this was just thestatus conference. It was
establishing whether she neededto take any immediate action
before she even held a hearingon a temporary restraining
(22:15):
order motion. And what she saidis, government lawyer, I am
going to want you to be able toanswer what even in one's
personal life means when, whenI hear from you next. That that
was one of several things thatshe said she wanted the
government to explain. But, butit was, it was notable. And the
(22:39):
executive order pretty quicklyled to a lawsuit filed on
behalf of eight servicemembers. Uh, well filed , filed
on behalf of two six currentservice members and two people
seeking to join the military,all trans. And it was filed
here in DC it was assigned toJudge Reyes. And what happened
(23:00):
was they filed a motion for apreliminary injunction, which
would be a little more relaxedtimeline and would lead to, she
had put in place a schedulethat would've had a hearing on
the 18th of February on thatinjunction. So not a really
(23:21):
relaxed deadline timeline, butmore relaxed than come into my
court today. But then literallyas that was, was being decided
by Reyes , that timeline, theplaintiffs got words that a
person in training, trans womanin training had been separated
(23:44):
from the Women's Barracks, wasbeing forced to fill out a
counseling form that wouldessentially say that she agreed
to live as a man to continueservice. Yeah . Uh , or would
be , uh, administrativelyseparated. So they immediately
went back to court. Now, therewas some confusion because she
(24:07):
wasn't a plaintiff. Now whatthe lawyers were doing was they
filed a temporary restrainingorder then wanting that sort of
action not to be taken againsttheir six clients who are
currently in the military. Butit did lead to some
complications. So, so becauseof that, judge Reyes ordered a
(24:28):
hearing on Tuesday, February4th at 4:00 PM and she
basically was like, what isgoing on? What do I need to do
something now before I hold ahearing on this TRO request?
Which she was like, I'lltentatively have that on Friday
morning. And the problems thenquickly became clear because
(24:51):
one, this woman who was inSouth Carolina was not a
plaintiff, and the governmentwas like, we don't wanna talk
about her. She's not aplaintiff. Why are we even
discussing her? You can't issueany order regarding her. And
the plaintiffs were saying,like, they were trying to do
two things. Like one, they weretrying to protect this woman
(25:13):
'cause they now knew about her,but they understood that like
she wasn't in the case. And sowhat they were doing was like,
we're bringing this to you andwe're bringing it to you
because it gives us evidencethat things are happening in
the military now, and we needan order stopping the military
from doing anything against ourclients. Over the course of
(25:36):
like roughly an a a little morethan an hour hearing, Reyes
essentially said like, okay, Iget what you're doing. If you
wanna keep talking about thiswoman in South Carolina, file
an amended a complaint and addher in , which they eventually
did, which they did Tuesdaynight, February 4th. At the
same time she then turned tothe government before we even
(26:00):
get to the substance of whathappened and was like, can you
agree that nothing will happento these six plaintiffs before
I can hold this February 18thpreliminary injunction hearing.
And the government tried todance around it. And this
lawyer for the government, JeanLin , was like, well, there's
(26:23):
no separations. Because herwhole argument was that the EEO
does nothing, that there's nopolicy in place yet. DOD needs
to implement the policy. Theyhaven't done so, so thi this
case isn't even ripe for youto, to hear, to which Reyes was
like, well, look at this womanin South Carolina if things are
(26:45):
already happening, I want youto agree that nothing will
happen. And the government kepttrying to like jump around
that. And this is where we goback to the day one executive
order because they wereessentially saying that any
barracks movement was a resultof the day one executive order
(27:07):
because of the definition ofsex. That it wasn't actually a,
a change happening because ofthe transgender military ban.
It was happening because of thedefinition of sex in the day
one executive order. And , andthat ultimately did sort of, I
(27:29):
don't know if we're allowed toswear on your podcast, it's
fine. I I think that started tooff Ray as a little, she at one
point said, I want you to beable to tell me that nothing is
going to happen to these peopleif they used to get chocolate
ice cream at the mess. Youcan't start giving them vanilla
(27:51):
ice cream because of this. Iwant you to be able to agree
that nothing is going to changefor these six . You're not
going to move their parents .
You're not going to give themdifferent ice cream. She said
the ice cream thing like two orthree times. So one, I think
she likes ice cream, but two,she was not liking the way they
were trying to dance around it.
(28:11):
And ultimately the governmentcouldn't agree to that. They
said, we need to go back to ourclient now that, that I, I do
in a sense understand like aDOJ lawyer couldn't agree to
that on the spot. So they haveto get back to the plaintiffs
today and file a joint statusreport by either four or 5:00
(28:33):
PM today. And if they don'treach an agreement, she said
they will be back in court onFriday for a TRO. That is what
happened. Underlying it, therewas a very serious substantive
discussion that I wrote aboutTuesday night. I think I
published it Wednesday,Wednesday, February 5th at Law
(28:56):
Dork , where Lynn essentiallywas confronted with these
statements that I talked aboutat the, the top of the show
that Trump made during thecampaign, the massive executive
orders, the specifics of thisexecutive order relating to the
military, the implementationthat has already happened, the
(29:16):
websites that have gone downthe, the programs that have
been defunded and essentiallysaid like, if I find that there
is evidence of animus, how isthis not gone? And Lynn told
her that the government shouldstill be able to uphold the
(29:37):
executive order even if it wasmotivated by bias, by animus,
not even bias by animus, whichis sort of like the, the top
tier level of the governmentdoesn't like you. And Reyes
just could not believe thatthey said that and was just
like, I, I think she looked atRomer versus Evans, which was
(29:59):
this 1996 Supreme Court casewhen the state of Colorado
tried to ban cities frompassing non-discrimination
ordinances to protect gaypeople from discrimination. And
, and essentially that theSupreme Court in that opinion
said like, you can do somethingthat is, is so clearly has no
(30:24):
basis for taking the actionthat that it is so
fundamentally poisoned by theanimus that, that we don't even
need to look at. If this issubject to, to strict scrutiny
or intermediate scrutiny or anyof those sort of legal
discussions like it , it's justgone. There, there is no
(30:44):
rational basis for thattreatment. But, but Lynn was
trying to say and pointed tolike the the travel ban case
that that came down as, as anexample of when animus was
permitted. And, and Ray hasimmediately shot back that like
remember that that Trump'sfirst travel ban didn't succeed
(31:06):
when it was a pure Muslim banand that they had to go back to
the drawing board like threetimes before they found
something that was able to getcourt approval. It was, it was
a striking moment showing thatthis is a , a , a longtime DOJ
employee , uh, this wasn'tDonald Trump, and yet she was
(31:28):
arguing in defense of thisorder that even if Judge Reyes
finds that it was motivated byanimus or intended to demean
trans people, judge Reyes usedthe word demean repeatedly. And
the fact that DOJ was notwilling to acee that if that
(31:48):
was found that the ordercouldn't stand, I, I think is
very troubling for the way thatthe administration plans on
being okay with defending thoseorders. But I would say in
response to that, 'cause I knowthat was a depressing series of
comments,
(32:10):
that, that while Reyes wasn'tmaking any decision while she
was just asking questions, shewas clearly very concerned by
this. And , and that was whatshe should be saying at that
point in the case, because thisis obviously going to get
appealed, whatever she does.
And I think we saw a similarthing from the judge in
(32:32):
Massachusetts. We saw , uh,although we've not seen any
written opinion in that case,but it was what we saw in the
written opinion , uh, fromJudge Lamberth as well in the
other prison case that peoplewith his italicized, any that
he saw, he couldn't see anypublic interest for, for
cutting off these, thesepeople's medications
(32:53):
immediately. There is apossibility that the way that
the administration hasproceeded with this, the way
that there is this massiveorders, the way that we are
still more than 30 minutesthrough, not through all of the
orders that they've passed,could ultimately truly poison
(33:18):
all of them .
Speaker 1 (33:19):
I hope so, man. I there's just so much like you
said,
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I mean, not at all aspects of all of them . No ,
but it could, there are somethings that they'll be like,
the government has the freedomto do this, these are choices.
If there are findings ofanimus, which is the strongest
thing you can do pretty much inthese cases, like it's going to
be very difficult to see manyof these provisions upheld.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Okay. There are still more. So where do you
wanna go next?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
I mean, we've got the gender affirming care
effort. Yeah. Um, which like,let's be clear like in some
aspects like it is a ban, but I, I don't like using that
because it's not what thestates did , uh, because the
federal government can't dothat. And even this
administration seems to knowthat now they're trying to do
(34:12):
roundabout ways of essentiallyending it, but what they're
doing is cutting off tricare ,uh, which is military
insurance, which was already inthe NDAA , there was a, a
slight pullback. Correct . Butit , it was actually a really
poorly worded amendment thatonly cut off funding for
(34:34):
medication that could result ininfertility, I believe.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Maybe it wasn't infertility, but it it was, it
was a word. It was some, itmight have been infertility, I
forget what the word was.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Sterilization.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Sterilization, yes, you're right, you are right.
But like, so that would meanthat it would actually not have
had any effect on pubertyblockers. It was a really
poorly worded amendment, whichI mean take the wins where we
can, but this
(35:11):
related funding. It alsostarting next year's federal
health employment insurance. Soall federal employees would get
rid of gender affirming carecoverage. It also contained
showing how stupid these are.
It also said like, and, and wewill negotiate for reduced
(35:35):
rates because of that. Like,they don't understand how
little
across the entire federalemployee health benefit plan is
probably less than like, I meanI, I'm not gonna guess I'm bad
with numbers, I'm bad withdata, but I mean, it , it like
(35:57):
honestly is probably less thanlike a 10th of 1%. Yeah.
Literally, right? Yeah. So it ,it was, when I saw that line in
the eo , I was like, this is,so, like Steven Miller added
that line and everybody waslike, fine, Steve, whatever. It
also purports to ban underspending clause. And this is
(36:19):
the, the dramatic one that hasled to some preemptive
following of the order. It , itpurports to ban say that
anybody who receives federalfunding from the federal
government, any medicalfacilities that get federal
funding have to , uh, stopproviding this care or they
won't be able to receivefederal funds. It also in a , a
(36:42):
very weak provision purports tolike say like Team up with Ag
State ags and work onlitigation efforts, which I
mean is no different than whatthey would be doing anyway.
Like it , it was, we saw asimilar language in the, the
education eo. But yeah, thothose are the three main
(37:05):
provisions in that. And thathas already led to one lawsuit
that was filed on Tuesday,February 4th by pflag Gay and
Lesbian Medical Professionals.
Uh, it's L-G-B-T-Q MedicalProfessionals, but their
original name was GLMA and theydidn't wanna change their
branding. So it's now likeGLMA, it doesn't have a name
(37:28):
colon, the LGBTQ plus MedicalAssociation or something like
that. And then a few, a handfulof, of trans teens and , and
their parents. And that wasfiled in Maryland. Uh, it was
filed by, I believe, if I'mremembering correctly, Lambda
Legal , the A CLU Generon Blockand Hogan Levels, which are two
(37:53):
big firms. The, I should notethe, the three lawsuits we've
talked about previously werelike tag team efforts between
the NCLR, the National Centerfor Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law
, which is another one of thoseused to be gay lesbian
advocates and defenders. It'snow gbtq plus legal advocates
(38:18):
and Defenders. And they filedall three of those cases, the
both the Massachusetts and DCprison case and the , uh,
military case. So , uh, theyare spreading the work right
now on what has been filed. Andthat is my understanding, the
(38:39):
first of at least twochallenges to the, the gender
affirming care band that are,are coming or the , the gender
affirming care EO that arecoming. And then the last EO of
the, the first two weeks wasthe education one. And that
one, I mean, it's an annoyingexecutive order. It is clearly
(39:04):
the one that they had notemplate for that they had to
sort of start from scratch andit shows, it tries to like
reverse Biden administrationTitle IX protections, which
were going to happen anyway. Itpurports to do some spending
(39:25):
clause stuff. It purports to dosome ag stuff, but it , it
didn't appear to even look atother federal laws that provide
protections to state and localentities. It didn't even seem
to crossly with just like basicfederal privacy laws. It was by
(39:52):
far the most poorly crafted eo,which in some ways can make it
dangerous because depending onhow it's implemented, it could
just start going wild. I dothink that it is one that will
probably be a wild before wesee litigation because of that
though, it has a lot of movingtargets. Um, you might see
(40:13):
something related to thealready existing Title IX
cases. If there are efforts tosort of transform those cases,
that could be a , a , a way ofcontinuing them. But I, I'm not
sure one, whether or not theplaintiffs in those cases would
want to do that and two,whether they would procedurally
(40:35):
be able to, but I I think thatthat is clearly trying to jump
on like the don't say gayefforts, but they didn't really
directly know how to do so. Andto the extent that they could
do that, the federal governmentcould do anything. It would
almost certainly due to alreadyexisting laws need to be done
(40:58):
through legislative process,through a full new lobbying
passed.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Okay. So that's everything that we have as of
recording. We do know thatbetween, there's probably one
more coming before y'all arehearing this. So yeah, with
that caveat of obviously wehaven't read it. What is the
one more that we are expecting?
Speaker 2 (41:18):
We are expecting some sort of anti-trans sports
ban and I will, will be honest.
I not that this is a negativeadmission, this is a, an
affirmative statement. Ireally, I don't cover anything
that, that I honestly, it's notjust Trump, but I think I got
(41:39):
in this habit during the firstTrump administration, I don't
cover anything until there's adocument. When somebody tells
me they're filing a lawsuit, Isay, well, let me know when you
file it. When somebody tells methat they are, I mean, I might
like post about it on like blueSky or something, but I'm not
gonna like do a story that likea lawsuit is coming. Like it's
(42:00):
been a sentence in my storiesabout the eos I'm like,
litigation is expected. Yeah .
Yeah. But , uh, like we don'thave the text of the eo. I know
that they, they were leakingthings yesterday to get stories
out there, but I, I wanna seethe language before I have an
opinion on it. I mean, thetruth is that what the opinion
(42:22):
that I can say is that they arein a more difficult position on
this one than some of theothers because there is a ninth
circuit decision that foundthat a state's sports ban was
unconstitutional. So we do havean appellate ruling covering
all of the Western states thatanti-trans sports bans are
(42:46):
unconstitutional. And based onwhat we've seen with other eos,
they're probably not doing alot of work to make sure that
it works its way aroundpeacock. So you could very
quickly, I I imagine whilewe've seen a lot of these
lawsuits being filed inMassachusetts to get the first
(43:07):
circuit or in Maryland to getthe fourth circuit or DC to get
the DC circuit, I would not besurprised if this gets filed in
Seattle or California when,whenever there's litigation
challenging it.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
I think it's also just important to note with
like all of these eos like thisisn't the only big action we're
gonna see this year. We'relike, we're waiting on the scri
decision that's coming out thissummer. Yeah . So like,
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Well, and we're, we're waiting, I mean DOJ under
the Trump administration beforePam Bondi was even confirmed,
had announced that it waschanging positions in some
cases had announced that it waswithdrawing. Prior positions
had announced that it was, inone case they announced that
(43:53):
the prior filed brief was nolonger the position of the
department and they wouldn't bearguing. But it didn't set out
a new position in a case overwhether or not a insurance
provider could violate TitleVII by not providing gender
affirming care under a healthinsurance policy. Whether that
(44:17):
would violate Title vii . Thereis an NC uh , full court
hearing at the 11th circuitover a city in Georgia's
refusal to cover that in theirinsurance. And that was being
heard on banc , sorry, thatwasn't an insurance company. It
was an , uh, an health andemployer's insurance plan. And
(44:41):
there's another case overinsurance companies,
there's a lot
Speaker 1 (44:45):
To keep track
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Of. But in, in this OMB Banc 11th circuit case, the
the department did announcethat they were withdrawing
their amicus brief in supportof the trans plaintiff in that
case. They didn't file anythingin the opposite direction. They
would need to get leave at thispoint. 'cause I think the like
(45:06):
filing deadlines are longpassed . But they did, like,
that was a case where the transwoman had won when the three
judge panel heard the case andthe Justice Department filed a
brief supporting her when itwas being heard on Bon . I
don't remember if they hadasked for argument time, but
(45:26):
they probably would've. And nowshe's going to be arguing , uh,
her lawyer is going to bearguing before the full 11th
circuit, which is not afriendly place to be for trans
people by herself. And based onthe executive orders with at
least a wink in a nod inpremature from the Justice
(45:47):
Department that they supportthe, the Georgia City's , uh,
decision to exclude herhealthcare coverage. And so to,
to that end, sorry. I I No,
Speaker 1 (45:58):
You're good . Very
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Few people know about that having happened. It,
they filed that on last Fridayafternoon, I think. Um,
Speaker 1 (46:05):
I'm sorry .
Definitely it got lost in myradar.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
We are waiting for something similar to happen in
Sedi . It is possible that thatdecision was awaiting bondy's
confirmation, but we're waitingto see what, if anything they
do there.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Okay. So this is all a lot among all of the many,
many other things that arehappening. I I'm sure people
are feeling dispirited.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah. And, and there there's ongoing litigation over
various state laws on, on allof the fronts we were just
discussing and others.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
So how can people get involved? Like what can
people do to get involved inthe fight?
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's important to
keep up with it and not becomeoverwhelmed with it. I think
it's important to explain topeople two things that, that
can sound contradictory, but Ibelieve are complimentary. And
it's important to do both. One,which is like actually
discussing the scope andbreadth and depth of the attack
(47:10):
on trans people and the, thecompletely out of their minds
justifications for thesethings. And for, for such a
small number of people. We, wetalked so long about the prison
cases according to the filingby , uh, judge Lambert last
(47:30):
night, his temporaryrestraining order. And this
came from, I forget who'sbriefing the government or the,
the plaintiffs there, there areonly approximately 16 trans
women in the entire federalprison system. So all of this
is happening, these twoprovisions in a presidential
(47:50):
executive order that areleading to this immediately
fallout from prisons that areleading to multiple lawsuits
are all based on 16 people. And, and there is no evidence from
the government presented thusfar that any of them have
caused any problem to safety infacilities, which is the
(48:11):
alleged justification for this.
And so knowing that, tellingpeople that, explaining that
this is totally, it's horribleon its face, it's out of
proportion to even if therewere a problem with it, what
they're doing to deal with it,which it's not a problem at
all. Then on top of that, thatthis is just a small piece that
(48:35):
all of these have fallouteffects on other people, on
other rights, on otherinstances. The best example of
this, and Chase Gio lovestalking about this and, and
Shannon Mider does too, is the,the six circuits decision that
is being appealed to theSupreme Court over the
Tennessee's gender affirmingcare ban, the Retti case. Um ,
(48:56):
the sixth circuit decision is,is downright frightening for
what it says about sexdiscrimination for trans
people, but also if it appliesthat basically if there is any
biological evidence for this,you basically don't even go
into the discussion of whethersomething meets heightened
(49:21):
scrutiny, whether or not it'san important governmental
interest, whether or not the,the effort to classify people
has a, a basis, an importantbasis. You wouldn't even get to
that. You , the governmentwould just be able to say
there's a biologicaldifference. That essentially
means we don't even go intoequal protection analysis. And
(49:44):
Jeff Sutton, the chief judge, Idon't know if he's still the
chief judge , uh, he was thechief judge of the sixth
Circuit, a George W. Bushappointee, not even a , a Trump
appointee said, yeah, that'sfine. That's not sex
discrimination. We're not evengonna count that as sex
discrimination. So we don'teven get to the question of
(50:04):
whether or not this meets theheightened scrutiny test that
sex discrimination gets, andthat would apply outside of, of
transgender rights that wouldapply to all , uh, sex-based
discrimination if it ,especially if the, the Supreme
Court affirms it on that basis.
And so that's just one example,but we're seeing things like
(50:27):
that. And then like the, theobvious example that we got
this past week was whathappened to the websites? These
people hate trans people somuch that they're going to take
down your entire public healthsystem.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
This is all so much and like , and so , so
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Both things like talk about, talk about those
things, both the direct effecton trans people and the fallout
on everyone. Um, and then like,pay attention to the news on
these issues. Don't be, don'tget overwhelmed that you just
say, I give up and look at theorganizations who are filing
these lawsuits and supportthem. Pay attention. Reach out
(51:04):
to, to your trans friends andask them what they need. It is
a scary time. And knowing thatthere are cis people who are
there is , is something thatis, is necessary.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Well Chris , thank you so much for being here. I
really appreciated this greatconversation about such
horrible things.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Okay, y'all, I had a great conversation with Chris .
I hope you all enjoyed it. LikeI said, we had a wonderful
conversation about suchterrible, terrible things. You
know, make sure that you aretaking care of yourself in this
time. I know it's chaotic. Iknow there are so many dark
things happening, but make sureyou are taking care of
(51:47):
yourself. That so that you canstay in the fight. Don't tune
it out, you know, step away ifyou need to, but make sure to
jump back in. Um, we need toall stay in this fight together
to make sure that we can holdthe line as much as possible.
So with that, I will seeeverybody next week. If you
have any questions, comments,or topics you would like us to
(52:09):
cover, always feel free toshoot me an email. You can
reach me at jenny jn , NIe@reprofightback.com , or you
can find us on social media.
We're at re pros. Fight back onFacebook and Twitter or re pros
FB on Instagram. If you loveour podcast and wanna make sure
more people find it, take thetime to rate and review us on
(52:30):
your favorite podcast platform.
Or if you wanna make sure tosupport the podcast, you can
also donate on our website atrepro fightback com . Thanks
all .
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