News

TLDEF welcomes nationally-recognized transgender civil rights attorney, Gabriel Arkles, as Senior Counsel. Arkles joins TLDEF as a career activist, advocate, and law professor. Previously, Arkles was a Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU, Staff Attorney at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and in academia at the New York University School of Law and Northeastern School of Law.

Transgender people experience higher rates of discrimination and harassment in employment and in public accommodations which can be addressed and overcome through workplace diversity trainings for employees. Trump's Executive Order (EO) 13950 restricts diversity and inclusion trainings by threatening to cut federal grant funding to employers who provide such trainings. However, imposing viewpoint- or values-based restrictions as a condition to receive federal funding violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause. TLDEF submitted comments opposing EO 13950 for those reasons.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in California v. Texas, a case which could threaten the Affordable Care Act and the nondiscrimination protections in Section 1557. If the ACA is ruled unconstitutional, transgender people who use public insurance could lose their only reliable source of health care.

We look forward to working with the incoming Biden-Harris Administration to repair the harm inflicted upon transgender people and so many others. But we face a long road ahead towards achieving the equity and justice that transgender people and our families nationwide have been denied. We remain at the ready to defend against attacks on transgender people and look forward to working with the new administration to advance a better future for our community.