The Drove of Executive Orders Attacking Trans Health and Rights

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.

Links from this episode

Law Dork
Chris Geidner on X
United States v. Skrmetti and the Future of Trans Rights
Just Let Trans Girls Play Sports

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Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. [music intro]

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Jennie: Hey rePROs! Is everybody hanging in amid the chaos? I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So y'all, there is so much happening and so much happening so fast, it can be hard to keep up with it all. And I know the chaos is totally the point, but I'm actually gonna keep it really short for our introduction today and not talk too much because it's a bit of a longer episode. But y'all, it's such a good conversation and an important conversation. So, I don't feel bad about cutting the intro short, but I would love to hear from y'all, like, we have been doing the podcast for, what, seven years now? And this is a really hard time with so many things happening. I would love to hear what you love about the podcast or topics that we've covered that you've really enjoyed. So, if you would like to leave us a review and share that with us, that would be amazing. But you can also share on social media. You know, tag us at @rePROsFightBack on Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky or @reprosfb on Instagram and let us know what we have covered that you have loved. I wanna make sure that we're covering topics that y'all aren't interested in. I also would love to hear if there are things we haven't talked about that you would love for us to cover. I just, I wanna make sure that the show is meeting y'all's needs. It's important to me that we are touching on all the things you care about. So, you know, if you get a chance, leaving a review that says what you love would always be appreciated. It helps other people understand why you love the podcast. If you tell your friends why you love the podcast, you know, maybe they will listen and can learn more about these issues. I just, I wanna make sure with all the things that are happening, that people are getting the information that they need. So, yeah, just let me know what you would like us to talk about, what that you have loved us talking about. It will help me make the show better for you. Okay. Like I said, I think I'm really just, like, gonna cut through the intro and just say everything'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 in there. But I really do just wanna get to this week's interview 'cause like I said, it's a little bit longer, but it is so good.

Jennie: Since day one of the new Trump administration, they have really prioritized attacking trans rights. There have been so many EOs going after trans rights that it was really important that we brought somebody on who could talk about all of them and what is happening and the lawsuits that are happening. And like I said, just so many things happening attacking trans people's right to exist, trans people's right to get healthcare, trans people's right to serve in the military. Like, so many things. And I couldn't think of a better person to turn to, to cover this whole big bucket of issues than Chris Geidner with Law Dork. Y'all, if you were not already subscribed to his blog, make sure you do. I have learned so much from following all the legal stuff. Like I said, there's a couple places I turn to get all of my legal information. I am not a lawyer, so turning to these great resources really makes a huge difference to me to make sure that I can keep up on some of the nuances and law dork and, and Chris's Bluesky or Twitter, like, have been really important in helping me follow on all of these things. So with that, let's turn to my interview with Chris.

Jennie: Hi Chris. Thank you so much for being here today.

Chris: Thank you for having me.

Jennie: Before we get started, do you wanna take a second and introduce yourself and include your pronouns?

Chris: Yeah, I am Chris Geidner. I run Law Dork and my pronouns are he/him.

Jennie: And y'all. If you're not already subscribed, you should definitely subscribe. That is where I go to get a vast majority of my legal reporting. Definitely never miss a post that comes through. Okay. So it has been chaos and as-

Chris: Yeah.

Jennie: As it seems appropriate, we need to put a little framing on this as we are recording this on Wednesday, February 5th at 2pm. Just 'cause things change between now and when y'all are gonna hear this on Tuesday, I'm sure. And I thought before we talked about some of the specific EOs, this has been a really big attack on trans rights from the Trump administration, and so maybe it was worth just taking a step back and just kind of putting like a bigger picture on this before we got specific.

Chris: Yeah, and I think, so I was in court on Tuesday, February 4th when the first hearing was held in the challenge to Trump's military anti-trans executive order. And what quickly became clear from Judge Reyes who made repeated points that these were just questions she was asking, she hadn't reached conclusions, and yet she did a very good job of making clear that this has been a goal of this administration since before it existed, since the campaign. And she even quoted some of the things that he said during the campaign about trans people and about ending this lunacy. She then went through the EOs, she then went through some of the effects that have already been seen in specific instances, and it is just an extremely alarming effort to sometimes quite literally erase trans people, as got a lot of attention last Friday when the deadline passed for an office of personnel management directive to remove all mentions related to gender ideology—the administration scare term that essentially means trans people—from all government websites. And you saw the state department's travel advisory for GBT plus people become the state department's travel advisory for GB people. It's just a really horrible, frightening, scary moment that is not only being, I can't even say it's being single handedly advanced by the Trump administration because it was obviously already being put into effect by lots of state governors, state AGs, not to mention the nonprofit sort of right wing groups that have been pushing this behind the scenes for several years.

Jennie: Yeah, we were talking before [about] how I work also in the global space. We've really seen this anti-rights movement globally, just really gaining a lot of steam and seeing it coming into the US in a way that I think people are still grappling with. And yeah, and seeing that like first, day one EO, like, it just felt like it took Trump one's anti-trans stuff and just really kicked it up a notch with the, like, complete erasure of even, like, granting trans people humanity. Like, it just became, like, that, like you said, that “gender ideology" instead of recognizing them as people, like it just, it felt much more hostile this time around.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, it definitely is much more hostile, it's more specific and a lot of it, those of us who work in this space, a lot of it was examples of efforts that have been taking place in states. Very few of the- some of them have been slightly different, like the education one, which notably was the weakest—it was a very vibe based EO. A lot of the other ones were efforts to alter state legislation and apply it to the federal government. And we have seen efforts from states to define sex. We've seen efforts from states to restrict gender affirming medical care for minors. We've seen efforts from states to restrict what can be taught in schools. We've seen efforts from states to ban trans people from sports.

Jennie: 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 big picture framing up front they had with, like, defining at conception, which just really struck me in the, like, anti-abortion space.

Chris: Well, yeah, for your sphere, that is, that was-

Jennie: But there were so many terrible [things].

Chris: Right? No, that was, I mean, that was something that I pointed out right away and that I knew if I pointed out that it would get a lot of of follow up and the definition of sex did go further than we have seen and certainly was something that the conception movement, the personhood, the personhood movement—that is certainly something that, that came from their notes. And I think that it's already going to, I mean, you've seen people detail the medical, biological, genetic problems with that, but I think that it was, as you said, sort of this idea that like, we're gonna go further, we're gonna go harder, we're gonna go stronger, we're going to see how far we can go. And throughout that day one executive order, you saw a bunch of aspects with that. You saw this effort to try to defund based on gender ideology. You saw this effort that did lead to the first initial lawsuits to basically immediately cut off gender affirming medical care for people of all ages in federal custody. You saw the effort to restrict trans women from being able to be in women's prison facilities and detention facilities when it comes to immigration. All of these things were just shoved into this day one order. And it did quickly lead to fallout, did quickly lead to- I mean, that was the order that led to the OPM memo that was ordering everybody in the federal government to get rid of anything trans off of websites in the federal government, which due to then, like, a problem of their own making, OPM set this absurd deadline of last Friday for the entire federal government in what happened. And this isn't a, you gotta hand it to 'em, this isn't an excuse, this isn't a good thing. But there were some instances of agencies believing they had to do this by 5:00 PM and being over-inclusive and just shutting down broad swaths of information because they knew they weren't gonna be able to get through it by 5:00 PM. And I do think based on sources who I've talked to and, and one that I even quoted from in at Law Dork, that that that was some of what happened when it came to like the census when it came to CDC, is that there was this, 'well, if we have to comply with this by 5:00 PM Friday, we can't go through decades of of data before then, so we're just gonna have to take it down until we can,' which is horrible and horrific and meant that-

Jennie: Yeah.

Chris: Like, over the weekend there was no health data available to people. Some of it did come back up on Monday. There was a weird New York Times story that sort of gave credit to the media attention. But like, I would point to, like, my reporting before the sites even went down, that was from somebody at the CDC who said, like, stuff is gonna go down at five because we don't have time to go through everything. So I think, I think some of it was gonna come back, but I do think that they probably worked quicker because of all the attention it got. So, I mean, good, good for journalism, but I don't want the good for journalism to overstep the criticism of OPM for having set this completely arbitrary, completely absurd, completely unworkable deadline that did lead to this. This wasn't, like, people were wanting, like, I'm sure some, some were fine with it, but like I talked to like, it was literally an office that contained mainly people of color, women, LGBTQ people in the state department who was responsible for scrubbing a bunch of the websites. Like, these weren't all people who wanted to be doing this, but, like, the deadline and their responsibilities meant that they had to, and if they had more time, like they would've been able to do it more carefully.

Jennie: Yeah, and I just, talking about those people, like, it really is hard. Like, I've talked to some of them and like-

Chris: Yeah.

Jennie: They are losing their faith in the government. Like they are just, the trauma that some of them are dealing with right now is hard to understate with some people that I have been around like, this is really, this is, this was their work.

Chris: Yeah.

Jennie: They're passionate about it and, like, to have to, like, take it all down and scrub it, like, is just devastating.

Chris: It's horrific. I mean like we don't even know at this point how much we've lost.

Jennie: Yeah.

Chris: I mean that, that's the truth is that like, I mean, as some things come back, but like there are just going to be, I mean, anything the government has done. I mean now some of it, it was probably illegal because it violated public records laws to take down some of this stuff. I mean much of it, all of it. And I do know like some of the offices who were cognizant of that were trying to archive everything as well because they did understand that like they, they had additional responsibilities here, but I'm sure some of them either, either couldn't, didn't have the knowledge or, or didn't have the time capacity to do it. And for those people, we literally might have just lost, like, decades of information, which is just horrifying.

Jennie: Yeah. This is all- and it's like all interacting with other EOs and stuff, like thinking of like the DEI stuff and, right, like it's all together.

Chris: Yeah, I also do know that some, some outside organizations were cognizant of this happening and did start trying to download as much data as they could. I know that the, I don't know if they've put out like a full statement, but like I know that the Williams Institute, which does a lot of work in the LGBTQ data, that they tried to, to get a lot of stuff and already had just in conjunction with their work. And so, I do think that there were some efforts like that across, across agents, across non-governmental entities. But we'll see where, where that ends as we move out from last Friday.

Jennie: Yeah. And sorting out who has what Yeah. And what they missed.

Chris: Yeah. No, we're going to find that data sets were lost if they weren't properly archived. Now the good thing is, I do think that some of the people who will have been best at making sure that they archive them are the people who have the biggest, most important data sets, like the census people, the CDC people, the NIH people like they are very, very familiar with the need to be constantly archiving their stuff. And so I do think that those are probably among the more safe items. Although their public facing portals right now might be a mess.

Jennie: Okay. So that was like day one EO, which is like crazy, like, right?

Chris: Yeah. That was the fallout from day one. And we've had, I mean, I guess on that, I will say like we've had two lawsuits out of the day, one EO relating to the, the prisons and the treatment of trans women in prison, which I, I think it is astounding. And I wanna say like it was in an order last night from Judge Royce Lamberth, who, let's be clear, this is a man who was born in the 1940s, was a Reagan appointee, and last night was explaining to the Trump administration that he couldn't come up with any—and he put "any" in italics—public interest for the government to immediately cut off trans women's medication.

Jennie: Just, in any way, like, how could [that in] any way not be cruel and unusual punishment?

Chris: I mean, you and I can say that, but, like, let's think about the fact that like after one hearing, this man born in the 1940s and a Reagan appointee who's been senior status since 2013.

Jennie: Wow.

Chris: Like, took this case, had an in-person hearing yesterday on behalf a case filed on behalf of three trans women in prison and issued a TRO last night that that blocked the Trump administration from enforcing those two provisions—the one relating to where trans women are to be housed and the one relating to medical care—and block the administration from implementing them. And I think that that's important. And that was the second TRO—there was one filed in a case relating to a woman that the case was filed in Massachusetts. And so I think that we've already seen two pieces of litigation directly out of that and one that we'll talk about shortly that indirectly came out of that. But yeah, that's all on the first EO, the day one EO.

Jennie: And unfortunately, it definitely did not stop there. There were lots of others. Let's turn to the military reinstatement of the military ban.

Chris: Yeah. So, the military ban in the first Trump administration, he attempted a military ban that got enjoined. Mattis then pulled back and started to, to come up with a much more nuanced plan that still would've been very harmful to trans service members, but was much more nuanced and was being implemented and led to the original injunction being tossed out because basically the original policy was gone. So, they lost on their first attempt and then the Mattis plan eventually got, got, was gone because Biden came in. So, basically Trump first got rid of Biden's order requiring equal treatment in the military. He then- and that, that was on day one in a series of revocations of prior orders. Then, he issued the explicit military order. And it was much worse than the first time around. It contained language that, that was really disturbing and suggested that not only were they going to be banning trans people, but that "adoption of a gender," this is a quote from the executive order, "adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life." To quote Judge Reyes yesterday, who was assigned the first case challenging this order and held her first hearing related public hearing related to that order yesterday, what she told the government's lawyer—this was just the status conference, it was establishing whether she needed to take any immediate action before she even held a hearing on a temporary restraining order motion—and what she said is, "government lawyer, I am going to want you to be able to answer what 'even in one's personal life,' means when, when I hear from you next." That was one of several things that she said she wanted the government to explain. But, but it was, it was notable. And the executive order pretty quickly led to a lawsuit filed on behalf of eight service members. Well, filed on behalf of two six current service members and two people seeking to join the military, all trans. And it was filed here in DC, it was assigned to Judge Reyes. And what happened was they filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, which would be a little more relaxed timeline and would lead to, she had put in place a schedule that would've had a hearing on the 18th of February on that injunction. So, not a really relaxed deadline, timeline, but more relaxed than come into my court today. But then literally as that was, was being decided by Reyes, that timeline, the plaintiffs got words that a person in training, trans woman in training had been separated from the women's barracks, was being forced to fill out a counseling form that would essentially say that she agreed to live as a man to continue service or would be administratively separated. So, they immediately went back to court. Now, there was some confusion because she wasn't a plaintiff. Now what the lawyers were doing was they filed a temporary restraining order then, wanting that sort of action not to be taken against their six clients who are currently in the military. But it did lead to some complications. So, because of that, Judge Reyes ordered a hearing on Tuesday, February 4th at 4:00 PM and she basically was like, what is going on? What- do I need to do something now before I hold a hearing on this TRO request? Which she was like, I'll tentatively have that on Friday morning. And the problems then quickly became clear because one, this woman who was in South Carolina was not a plaintiff, and the government was like, we don't wanna talk about her. She's not a plaintiff. Why are we even discussing her? You can't issue any order regarding her. And the plaintiffs were saying, like, they were trying to do two things. Like, one, they were trying to protect this woman 'cause they now knew about her, but they understood that, like, she wasn't in the case. And so, what they were doing was like, we're bringing this to you and we're bringing it to you because it gives us evidence that things are happening in the military now, and we need an order stopping the military from doing anything against our clients. Over the course of roughly a little more than an hour hearing, Reyes essentially said like, okay, I get what you're doing. If you wanna keep talking about this woman in South Carolina, file an amended complaint and add her in, which they eventually did, which they did Tuesday night, February 4th. At the same time, she then turned to the government, before we even get to the substance of what happened and was like, can you agree that nothing will happen to these six plaintiffs before I can hold this February 18th preliminary injunction hearing. And the government tried to dance around it. And this lawyer for the government, Jean Lin, was like, well, there's no separations. Because her whole argument was that the EO does nothing, that there's no policy in place yet. Dod needs to implement the policy. They haven't done so, so this case isn't even ripe for you to hear, to which Reyes was like, well, look at this woman in South Carolina—if things are already happening, I want you to agree that nothing will happen. And the government kept trying to jump around that. And this is where we go back to the day one executive order because they were essentially saying that any barracks movement was a result of the day one executive order because of the definition of sex. That it wasn't actually a change happening because of the transgender military ban. It was happening because of the definition of sex in the day one executive order. And that ultimately did sort of, I don't know if we're allowed to swear on your podcast.

Jennie: It's fine.

Chris: I think that started to piss off Reyes a little, she at one point said, I want you to be able to tell me that nothing is going to happen to these people if they used to get chocolate ice cream at the mess. You can't start giving them vanilla ice cream because of this. I want you to be able to agree that nothing is going to change for these six. You're not going to move their barracks. You're not going to give them different ice cream. She said the ice cream thing, like, two or three times. So one, I think she likes ice cream, but two, she was not liking the way they were trying to dance around it. And ultimately, the government couldn't agree to that. They said, we need to go back to our client now. That- I do in a sense understand like a DoJ lawyer couldn't agree to that on the spot. So, they have to get back to the plaintiffs today and file a joint status report by either 4:00 or 5:00 PM today. And if they don't reach an agreement, she said they will be back in court on Friday for a TRO. That is what happened. Underlying it, there was a very serious substantive discussion that I wrote about Tuesday night. I think I published it Wednesday, Wednesday, February 5th at Law Dork, where Lin essentially was confronted with these statements that I talked about at the top of the show that Trump made during the campaign—the massive executive orders, the specifics of this executive order relating to the military, the implementation that has already happened, the websites that have gone down, the programs that have been defunded and essentially said like, if I find that there is evidence of animus, how is this not gone? And Lin told her that the government should still be able to uphold the executive order even if it was motivated by bias, by animus, not even bias by animus, which is sort of like the, the top tier level of the government doesn't like you. And Reyes just could not believe that they said that and was just like, I think she looked at Romer v. Evans, which was this 1996 Supreme Court case when the state of Colorado tried to ban cities from passing non-discrimination ordinances to protect gay people from discrimination. And, and essentially that the Supreme Court in that opinion said like, you can do something that is so clearly has no basis for taking the action that that it is so fundamentally poisoned by the animus that, that we don't even need to look at if this is subject to strict scrutiny or intermediate scrutiny or any of those sort of legal discussions, like, it's just gone. There is no rational basis for that treatment. But Lin was trying to say and pointed to the travel ban case that that came down as, as an example of when animus was permitted. And Reyes immediately shot back that, like, remember that Trump's first travel ban didn't succeed when it was a pure Muslim ban and that they had to go back to the drawing board, like, three times before they found something that was able to get court approval. It was a striking moment showing that this is a longtime DoJ employee this wasn't Donald Trump, and yet she was arguing in defense of this order that even if Judge Reyes finds that it was motivated by animus or intended to demean trans people—Judge Reyes used the word demean repeatedly—and the fact that DoJ was not willing to accede that if that was found that the order couldn't stand, I think is very troubling for the way that the administration plans on being okay with defending those orders. But I would say in response to that, 'cause I know that was a depressing series of comments, that like I do think that we should note that, while Reyes wasn't making any decision while she was just asking questions, she was clearly very concerned by this. And that was what she should be saying at that point in the case, because this is obviously going to get appealed, whatever she does. And I think we saw a similar thing from the judge in Massachusetts. We saw although we've not seen any written opinion in that case, but it was what we saw in the written opinion from Judge Lamberth as well in the other prison case that people with his italicized, "any," that he saw, he couldn't see any public interest for cutting off these, these people's medications immediately. There is a possibility that the way that the administration has proceeded with this, the way that there are these massive orders, the way that we are still more than 30 minutes through, not through all of the orders that they've passed, could ultimately truly poison all of them.

Jennie: I hope so, man. I there's just so much like you said,

Chris: I mean, not at all aspects of all of them.

Jennie: No.

Chris: But it could, there are some things that they'll be like, the government has the freedom to do this, these are choices. If there are findings of animus, which is the strongest thing you can do pretty much in these cases, it's going to be very difficult to see many of these provisions upheld.

Jennie: Okay. There are still more. So, where do you wanna go next?

Chris: I mean, we've got the gender affirming care effort-

Jennie: Yeah.

Chris: -which like, let's be clear like in some aspects, like, it is a ban, but I don't like using that because it's not what the states did because the federal government can't do that. And even this administration seems to know that. Now they're trying to do roundabout ways of essentially ending it, but what they're doing is cutting off TRICARE, which is military insurance, which was already in the NDAA, there was a slight pullback.

Jennie: Correct.

Chris: But it was actually a really poorly worded amendment that only cut off funding for medication that could result in infertility, I believe.

Jennie: Oh yeah.

Chris: Maybe it wasn't infertility, but it was, it was a word. It was some, it might have been infertility, I forget what the word was.

Jennie: Sterilization?

Chris: Sterilization, yes, you're right, you are right. But like, so that would mean that it would actually not have had any effect on puberty blockers. It was a really poorly worded amendment, which I mean take the wins where we can, but this EO purports to, to end all TRICARE-related funding. It also starting next year's federal health employment insurance—so all federal employees—would get rid of gender affirming care coverage. It also contained showing how stupid these are. It also said like, and, and we will negotiate for reduced rates because of that. Like, they don't understand how little, like, the gender affirming medical care cost across the entire federal employee health benefit plan is probably less than like, I mean, I'm not gonna guess, I'm bad with numbers, I'm bad with data, but I mean, it, like, honestly is probably less than like a 10th of 1%. Yeah. Literally.

Jennie: Right, yeah.

Chris: So, it was, when I saw that line in the EO, I was like, this is, so, like, Steven Miller added that line and everybody was like, fine, Steve, whatever. It also purports to ban under spending clause—and this is the dramatic one that has led to some preemptive following of the order. It purports to ban, say, that anybody who receives federal funding from the federal government, any medical facilities that get federal funding have to stop providing this care or they won't be able to receive federal funds. It also, in a very weak provision, purports to, say, team up with State AGs and work on litigation efforts, which I mean is no different than what they would be doing anyway. Like, we saw a similar language in the education EO. But yeah, those are the three main provisions in that. And that has already led to one lawsuit that was filed on Tuesday, February 4th by PFLAG Gay and Lesbian Medical Professionals. It's LGBTQ Medical Professionals, but their original name was GLMA and they didn't wanna change their branding. So, it's now like GLMA, it doesn't have a name colon, the LGBTQ+ Medical Association or something like that. And then a few, a handful of, of trans teens and their parents. And that was filed in Maryland. It was filed by, I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, Lambda Legal, the ACLU, Jenner & Block and Hogan Lovells, which are two big firms. I should note the three lawsuits we've talked about previously were like tag team efforts between the NCLR, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAAD Law, which is another one of those used to be gay lesbian advocates and defenders. It's now GLBTQ+ Legal Advocates and Defenders. And they filed all three of those cases, both the Massachusetts and DC prison case and the military case. So, they are spreading the work right now on what has been filed. And that is my understanding, the first of at least two challenges to the gender affirming care ban that are coming or the gender-affirming care EO that are coming. And then the last EO of the first two weeks was the education one. And that one, I mean, it's an annoying executive order. It is clearly the one that they had no template for that they had to sort of start from scratch and it shows. It tries to, like, reverse Biden administration Title IX protections, which were going to happen anyway. It purports to do some spending clause stuff. It purports to do some AG stuff, but it didn't appear to even look at other federal laws that provide protections to state and local entities. It didn't even seem to cross-apply with just basic federal privacy laws. It was by far the most poorly crafted EO, which in some ways can make it dangerous because depending on how it's implemented, it could just start going wild. I do think that it is one that will probably be a while before we see litigation because of that though, it has a lot of moving targets. You might see something related to the already existing Title IX cases. If there are efforts to sort of transform those cases, that could be a way of continuing them. But I'm not sure one, whether or not the plaintiffs in those cases would want to do that and two, whether they would procedurally be able to, but I think that that is clearly trying to jump on, like, the don't say gay efforts, but they didn't really directly know how to do so. And to the extent that they could do that, the federal government could do anything, it would almost certainly due to already existing laws need to be done through legislative process, through a full new lobbying passed.

Jennie: Okay. So that's everything that we have as of recording. We do know that between, there's probably one more coming before y'all are hearing this. So yeah, with that caveat of obviously we haven't read it. What is the one more that we are expecting?

Chris: We are expecting some sort of anti-trans sports ban and I will be honest. I not that this is a negative admission, this is an affirmative statement. I really, I don't cover anything that—I, honestly, it's not just Trump, but I think I got in this habit during the first Trump administration—I don't cover anything until there's a document. When somebody tells me they're filing a lawsuit, I say, well, let me know when you file it. When somebody tells me that they are, I mean, I might, like, post about it on, like, Bluesky or something, but I'm not gonna do a story that a lawsuit is coming. Like, it's been a sentence in my stories about the EOs I'm like, litigation is expected.

Jennie: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: But, like, we don't have the text of the EO. I know that they were leaking things yesterday to get stories out there, but I wanna see the language before I have an opinion on it. I mean, the truth is that what- the opinion that I can say is that they are in a more difficult position on this one than some of the others because there is a ninth circuit decision, Hecox [v. Little], that found that a state's sports ban was unconstitutional. So, we do have an appellate ruling covering all of the Western states that anti-trans sports bans are unconstitutional. And based on what we've seen with other EOs, they're probably not doing a lot of work to make sure that it works its way around Hecox. So, you could very quickly, I imagine while we've seen a lot of these lawsuits being filed in Massachusetts to get the first circuit or in Maryland to get the fourth circuit or DC to get the DC circuit, I would not be surprised if this gets filed in Seattle or California whenever there's litigation challenging it.

Jennie: I think it's also just important to note with all of these EOs, like, this isn't the only big action we're gonna see this year. We're, like, we're waiting on the Skrmetti decision that's coming out this summer.

Chris: Yeah. Well, and we're, we're waiting, I mean DoJ under the Trump administration before Pam Bondi was even confirmed, had announced that it was changing positions in some cases, had announced that it was withdrawing prior positions, had announced that it was, in one case they announced that the prior filed brief was no longer the position of the department and they wouldn't be arguing but it didn't set out a new position, in a case over whether or not a insurance provider could violate Title VII by not providing gender affirming care under a health insurance policy, whether that would violate Title VII. There is an en banc full court hearing at the 11th circuit over a city in Georgia's refusal to cover that in their insurance. And that was being heard en banc—sorry, that wasn't an insurance company. It was a health, an employer's insurance plan, and there's another case over insurance companies—

Jennie: There's a lot to keep track of.

Chris: But in this en banc 11th circuit case, the department did announce that they were withdrawing their amicus brief in support of the trans plaintiff in that case. They didn't file anything in the opposite direction. They would need to get leave at this point 'cause I think the, like, filing deadlines are long passed. But they did, like, that was a case where the trans woman had won when the three-judge panel heard the case and the Justice Department filed a brief supporting her when it was being heard en banc. I don't remember if they had asked for argument time, but they probably would've. And now she's going to be arguing her lawyer is going to be arguing before the full 11th circuit, which is not a friendly place to be for trans people by herself. And based on the executive orders with at least a wink in a nod in premature from the Justice Department that they support the Georgia city's decision to exclude her healthcare coverage. And so, to that end, sorry I-

Jennie: No, you're good.

Chris: Very few people know about that having happened. They filed that last Friday afternoon, I think.

Jennie: I'm sorry, definitely it got lost in my radar.

Chris: We are waiting for something similar to happen in Skrmetti. It is possible that that decision was awaiting Bondi's confirmation, but we're waiting to see what, if anything they do there.

Jennie: Okay. So this is all a lot among all of the many, many other things that are happening. I'm sure people are feeling dispirited.

Chris: Yeah. And, there's ongoing litigation over various state laws on, on all of the fronts we were just discussing and others.

Jennie: So, how can people get involved? Like what can people do to get involved in the fight?

Chris: Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's important to keep up with it and not become overwhelmed with it. I think it's important to explain to people two things that, that can sound contradictory, but I believe are complimentary. And it's important to do both. One, which is like actually discussing the scope and breadth and depth of the attack on trans people and the completely out of their minds justifications for these things and for such a small number of people. We talked so long about the prison cases, according to the filing by Judge Lambert last night, his temporary restraining order. And this came from, I forget who's briefing the government or the plaintiffs there, there are only approximately 16 trans women in the entire federal prison system. So, all of this is happening, these two provisions in a presidential executive order that are leading to this immediately fallout from prisons that are leading to multiple lawsuits are all based on 16 people. And there is no evidence from the government presented thus far that any of them have caused any problem to safety in facilities, which is the alleged justification for this. And so knowing that, telling people that, explaining that this is totally, it's horrible on its face, it's out of proportion to even if there were 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, that this is just a small piece that all of these have fallout effects on other people, on other rights, on other instances. The best example of this, and Chase Strangio loves talking about this and Shannon Minter does too, is the sixth circuit's decision that is being appealed to the Supreme Court over Tennessee's gender affirming care ban, the Skrmetti case. The sixth circuit decision is downright frightening for what it says about sex discrimination for trans people, but also if it applies that basically if there is any biological evidence for this, you basically don't even go into the discussion of whether something meets heightened scrutiny, whether or not it's an important governmental interest, whether or not the effort to classify people has a basis, an important basis. You wouldn't even get to that. The government would just be able to say there's a biological difference. That essentially means we don't even go into equal protection analysis. And Jeff Sutton, the chief judge—I don't know if he's still the chief judge, he was the chief judge of the sixth Circuit—a George W. Bush appointee, not even a Trump appointee said, 'yeah, that's fine. That's not sex discrimination. We're not even gonna count that as sex discrimination.' So, we don't even get to the question of whether or not this meets the heightened scrutiny test that sex discrimination gets, and that would apply outside of, of transgender rights that would apply to all sex-based discrimination if it, especially if the Supreme Court affirms it on that basis. And so, that's just one example, but we're seeing things like that. And then, like, the obvious example that we got this past week was: what happened to the websites? These people hate trans people so much that they're going to take down your entire public health system.

Jennie: This is all so much and like-

Chris: And so, both things- talk about those things, both the direct effect on trans people and the fallout on everyone. And then like, pay attention to the news on these issues. Don't be, don't get overwhelmed that you just say, I give up and look at the organizations who are filing these lawsuits and support them. Pay attention. Reach out to your trans friends and ask them what they need. It is a scary time. And knowing that there are cis people who are there is something that is necessary.

Jennie: Well Chris, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciated this great conversation about such horrible things.

Chris: Thank you.

Jennie: Okay, y'all, I had a great conversation with Chris. I hope you all enjoyed it. Like I said, we had a wonderful conversation about such terrible, terrible things. You know, make sure that you are taking care of yourself in this time. I know it's chaotic. I know there are so many dark things happening, but make sure you are taking care of yourself, so that you can stay in the fight. Don't tune it out, you know, step away if you need to, but make sure to jump back in. We need to all stay in this fight together to make sure that we can hold the line as much as possible. So with that, I will see everybody next week.

Jennie: [music outro] If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at @RePROsFightBack on Facebook and Twitter or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and wanna make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you wanna make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks all!