Story at a glance
- The Trump administration is reversing an Obama administration rule requiring homeless shelters to house people according to their gender identity.
- Vox reported that the rule’s text includes language on how to identify transgender women by physical characteristics.
- Advocates warn that such enforcement of the rule could lead to misidentification and discrimination.
The text of a proposed Trump administration rule allowing homeless shelters to place transgender people by the gender assigned to them at birth includes instructions on how to identify transgender women, according to a report by Vox.
In the text of the proposed rule obtained by Vox, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) instructs shelters to consider, “factors such as height, the presence (but not the absence) of facial hair, the presence of an Adam’s apple, and other physical characteristics which, when considered together, are indicative of a person’s biological sex.”
The rule is a reversal of an Obama administration protection that required homeless shelters to house people according to their gender identity. While homeless shelters are still required to house transgender people, it is up to them how they choose to identify and place an individual, HUD announced on July 1, in an effort to “better accommodate religious beliefs of shelter providers.”
The rule, Vox said, allows shelter staff to “determine an individual’s sex based on a good faith belief that an individual seeking access to the temporary, emergency shelters is not of the sex, as defined in the single-sex facility’s policy, which the facility accommodates.”
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“This important update will empower shelter providers to set policies that align with their missions, like safeguarding victims of domestic violence or human trafficking,” said HUD Secretary Ben Carson in a statement. “Mission-focused shelter operators play a vital and compassionate role in communities across America. The Federal Government should empower them, not mandate a single approach that overrides local law and concerns. HUD also wants to encourage their participation in HUD programs. That’s exactly what we are doing with this rule change.”
Carson has allegedly made transphobic comments to staffers in the past, who said he called transgender women “big hairy men,” but has denied these accusations.
Not only does the rule change allow shelters to misgender transgender people, but it also exposes them to the same dangers that HUD said it aims to safeguard others from. More than half of all transgender people reported experiencing some form of intimate partner violence, or domestic violence, according to the 2015 U.S. transgender survey.
Transgender people are also high-risk targets for human trafficking, as nearly 30 percent of transgender adults have experienced homelessness and 20 percent work in the underground economy. In the commercial sex industry, transgender people are three times more likely to be attacked than cisgender people.
“Transgender and gender non-conforming individuals face significant discrimination and are too often victims of violence. HUD has a mandate to protect all of us from discrimination in housing and shelter but instead is seeking to enshrine discrimination into federal regulations,” said Shamus Roller, Executive Director of the National Housing Law Project, in a statement. “This is unconscionable at any time, and especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic. With this proposed rule, HUD continues its aggressive campaign to undermine civil rights, targeting marginalized communities and undermining housing protections and civil rights for everyone in the United States.”
Advocates also say that such language puts women, whether cisgender or transgender, with more masculine features at risk of misidentification and even discrimination based on their physical appearance. Shelters are allowed to ask individuals for “proof” of their biological sex, opening them up to embarrassment and harassment.
“Evidence requested must not be unduly intrusive of privacy, such as private physical anatomical evidence,” the rule says, according to Vox. “Evidence requested could include government identification, but lack of government identification alone cannot be the sole basis for denying admittance on the basis of sex.”
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