The New York Times first reported over the weekend that Trump's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is preparing to virtually erase transgender Americans by refusing to recognize that they exist.
To exclude transgender or non-binary people from the civil rights they're entitled to under multiple federal civil rights laws, the Trump regime wants to strictly define gender based on a set of unscientific parameters that would quite literally require the government to scrutinize and track everyone's genitals and even their genetics.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law. [...]
Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.
The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.
It's not the primary reason, but one of the reasons why the so-called "bathroom bills" of recent past were scrapped or defeated in court is because enforcing it would necessarily require close scrutiny of everyone's genitals. Transgender people do not wear name tags and the only way to enforce a bill that criminalizes transgender bathroom use would be to lift up their proverbial skirts. Even that wouldn't be fool-proof in addition to being an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.
Anti-transgender legislation has been struck down in federal courts multiple times because it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which says all Americans are entitled to equal treatment under the law. A federal government-wide policy that refuses to recognize the existence of at least 2 million transgender Americans would obviously be a significant assault on the Fourteenth Amendment.
If the Trump regime goes through with this plan to stop recognizing transgender existence, it would mean transgender people could be denied access to health care, education, housing, and anything else covered by federal civil rights and nondiscrimination laws.
There are many ways civil rights and legal advocates can fight back if the Trump regime goes through with this, but everyone reading this can do their part by voting for Democrats in November. Elect a Congress that won't allow the federal government to get away with this without a fight. Elect state governments that will pass their own civil rights laws. Don't leave anything to chance and don't take anything for granted.