The Trump administration is considering legally defining gender as based on biological sex at birth, The New York Times reported Sunday, in a move that could effectively reverse transgender rights put into place under Barack Obama.
A draft memo, written by the Department of Health and Human Services last spring and obtained by the Times, argues that the government needs to have a uniform definition of gender. “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the memo says. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognise themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth.
“This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration and helped write transgender guidance that is being undone.
It’s not the first time the White House has sought to roll back gains for transgender people that occurred during the previous administration. Last year, the Trump administration moved to ban transgender people from serving in the military and challenged transgender civil rights protections under existing health care law. According to the Times, multiple agencies have since withdrawn Obama-era policies that recognised gender identity.
Earlier this year a new study found that trans people are likely genetically different from people who aren’t trans.