Washington, D.C. — Today, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it will no longer interpret the Civil Rights Act’s ban on sex discrimination as prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status. The move reverses a policy put in place in 2014 by the Obama administration that brought the DOJ’s position in line with civil rights jurisprudence. In response, Laura E. Durso, vice president of the LGBT Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress, issued the following statement:
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that this Department of Justice cares nothing for transgender people or for years of established legal precedent. Instead of standing with transgender people and recognizing the vast discrimination and violence enacted on the community, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions continues to enable the kinds of harms that the agency is meant to guard against.
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