Katana VentraIP

LGBT rights in the United States

In the United States, public opinion and jurisprudence on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights have developed significantly since the late 1980s, with most national advancements coming from the country's Supreme Court.[1][2]

LGBT rights in the
United States

  • Sexual orientation: Yes
  • Gender identity: Yes (since 2021)
  • Intersex status: No

Same-sex marriage legal nationwide since 2015 (Obergefell v. Hodges)

In 1962, beginning with Illinois, states began to decriminalize same-sex sexual activity,[3] and in 2003, through Lawrence v. Texas, all remaining laws against same-sex sexual activity were invalidated. In 2004, beginning with Massachusetts, states began to offer same-sex marriage, and in 2015, through Obergefell v. Hodges, all states were required to offer it. In many states and municipalities, LGBT Americans are explicitly protected from discrimination in employment, housing, and access to public accommodations. Many LGBT rights in the United States have been established by the United States Supreme Court, which invalidated state laws banning protected class recognition based upon homosexuality, struck down sodomy laws nationwide, struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, and prohibited employment discrimination against gay and transgender employees. LGBT-related anti-discrimination laws regarding housing and private and public services varies by state. Twenty-three states plus Washington, D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, and twenty-two states plus Washington, D.C., outlaw discrimination based on gender identity or expression.[4] Family law also varies by state. Adoption of children by same-sex married couples is legal nationwide since Obergefell v. Hodges (Mississippi had its ban struck down by a federal court in March 2016).[5][6]


Hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity are punishable by federal law under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, but many states lack laws that cover sexual orientation and/or gender identity.[7] Laws that prohibit hate speech, including those that relate to sexual orientation or gender identity, are unconstitutional, due to the First Amendment's broad protections for free speech.[8]


During the 2020s, gender identity issues became prominent topics in American politics, particularly regarding athletics and transgender-related healthcare for minors.[9][10][11] In 2023, 510 anti-LGBT bills were introduced in state legislatures. A large number of these are “forced outing” bills requiring teachers to alert the parents of a student when they begin going by a different name or pronouns, along with curriculum censorship banning discussion on gender identity and sexual orientation.[12]


Public opinion is largely supportive of same-sex marriage while mixed on transgender issues. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans support same-sex marriage, while 28% oppose it.[13]

The

Fair Housing Act

Title VI of the

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Section 504 of the

Rehabilitation Act of 1973

Section 109 of Title I of the

Housing and Community Development Act of 1974

Title II of the

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

Architectural Barriers Act of 1968

Age Discrimination Act of 1975

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972

Prison[edit]

Solitary confinement[edit]

More than 8,400 detained migrants—over a five-year period spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations—were placed in solitary confinement, which remains an ongoing practice as of May 2019. In half of the cases, detainees were being punished, but in the other half, the confinement was due to the person's mental illness, physical disability, or sexual orientation. Journalists identified six suicides among this population.[93]

Students' bathroom access: On February 10, 2017, the Department of Justice dropped a defense of transgender students' access to bathrooms. Obama-era guidance had allowed students to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. The right had been challenged by a Texas District Court, and the Department of Justice had previously asked the court to lift its stay, but the Department of Justice (under the new Attorney General ) withdrew its request.[523] On February 22, 2017, Trump reversed a directive from the Obama administration that allowed transgender students who attend public schools to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.[524] Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, questioned before the House Education and Labor Committee on April 10, 2019, about the previous rollback, acknowledged that she had been aware of the effects of the stress of discrimination on transgender youth; these effects include depression, anxiety, lower attendance and grades, and attempted suicide.[525] In May 2019, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a Pennsylvania school regarding its bathroom policy, suggesting that schools may continue to set their own policies to accommodate transgender students.[526]

Jeff Sessions

Student athletics: On May 15, 2020, the Department of Education's wrote a 45-page letter threatening to withhold federal funding from specific school districts in Connecticut and from the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) if they continued to allow transgender girls to compete on girls' teams. The Department of Education claimed that including transgender athletes on girls' teams is a violation of Title IX.[527] In September 2020, about $6 million, spread over two years and delivered by a Federal Magnet Schools Assistance Program Grant, was at stake for Connecticut.[528]

Office for Civil Rights

Military ban: Trump succeeded in implementing restrictions on transgender military personnel, an idea he first announced via Twitter. On July 26, 2017, Trump tweeted that transgender individuals would not be accepted or allowed to serve "in any capacity" in the U.S. military, citing medical costs and disruption related to transgender service members.[530] This announcement took Pentagon officials by surprise.[531] There are about 6,000 transgender military personnel on active duty, according to a 2014 study,[532] and the Trump administration provided no evidence that they pose a problem. Many key military leaders advocated for continuing to support transgender servicemembers. They include "the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force; the commandant of the Marine Corps; and the incoming commandant of the Coast Guard,"[533] as well as retired leaders like Vice Admiral Donald C. Arthur, Major General Gale Pollock, and Rear Admiral Alan M. Steinman (who served as the Surgeon General or equivalent of the Navy, Army, and Coast Guard respectively and who coauthored a Palm Center report in April 2018).[534] On August 25, 2017, Trump directed the Pentagon to stop admitting any new transgender individuals into the military and to stop providing medical treatments for sex reassignment, intended to take effect on March 23, 2018.[535] On August 29, 2017, Secretary of Defense James Mattis put a freeze on expelling transgender service members who are currently in the military, pending a study by experts within the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.[536] Federal courts temporarily delayed the implementation of the Trump administration's proposed ban by issuing four injunctions. On November 23, 2018, the day after Thanksgiving, the Trump administration formally requested the U.S. Supreme Court to issue an emergency ruling on whether transgender personnel may continue to serve,[537] and on January 22, 2019, without hearing arguments or explaining its own decision, the Court allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with the ban.[538][539] On March 12, 2019, the Department of Defense released a memorandum with specifics of the ban, essentially allowing existing personnel to continue to serve if they had already come out as transgender prior to the memorandum, but disqualifying anyone who was newly discovered to have a transgender body, identity, or history.

[529]

Employment: On October 4, 2017, the Attorney General published a memo considering "discrimination against transgender individuals" in employment and concluding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "does not prohibit discrimination based on gender identity per se. This is a conclusion of law, not policy." On August 16, 2019, the Justice Department filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that "Title VII does not prohibit discrimination against transgender persons based on their transgender status," "gender identity," or "disconnect" between biological sex and gender identity. The brief related to a pending case, Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC.[541]

[540]

Prisoners' rights: In May 2018, the Trump administration ordered the Bureau of Prisons to house transgender prisoners according to their "biological sex." Treating prisoners as members of the gender with which they identify "would be appropriate only in rare cases." This reverses guidance created by the Obama administration in 2012, and it conflicts with the .[542] In 2018, the Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico operated a unit for transgender women; the women were housed together regardless of the reason for their detention. The building served as a federal prison, county jail, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, and housing for asylum-seekers.[543] Reporters were granted access for the first time in June 2019; there were 27 inmates at that time.[544]

Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003

Defining gender as sex: On October 21, 2018, The New York Times revealed a memo that planned to establish a definition of gender based on sex assignment at birth across federal agencies, notably the departments of Education, Justice, and Labor, which, along with Health and Human Services, are responsible for enforcing Title IX nondiscrimination statutes. The Justice Department would have to approve any new definition that Health and Human Services might suggest. The memo argued in favor of a definition of gender "on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable" and the government's prerogative to genetically test individuals to determine their sex.[545] Over the following days, thousands of protesters gathered in Washington, D.C.;[546][547] San Diego;[548] Portland, Maine;[549] Minneapolis;[550] Los Angeles;[551] Milwaukee;[552] Boston;[553] and other cities across the country, and on November 2, nearly 100 lawmakers signed a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar asking him not to implement this change.[554] On July 8, 2019, the State Department created the Commission on Unalienable Rights to initiate philosophical discussions of human rights that are grounded in the Catholic concept of "natural law" rather than modern identities based on gender and sexuality. Most of the twelve members of the commission have a history of anti-LGBT comments.[555]

Department of Health and Human Services

Healthcare: Since 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has explicitly interpreted the word "sex" in the nondiscrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act (Section 1557) to recognize and include transgender people, entitling them to the same services to which everyone else is entitled, although a federal court injunction on December 31, 2016, prevented HHS from enforcing its nondiscrimination rule. Under the Trump administration, HHS lawyers began working on permanently reversing the rule, and on May 24, 2019, the proposed reversal was formally announced.[557][558] On October 15, 2019, federal judge Reed O'Connor vacated the nondiscrimination rule, saying that it violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. His ruling meant that federally-funded healthcare insurers and providers may deny treatment or coverage based on sex, gender identity or termination of pregnancy, even if the services are medically necessary.[559] On November 1, 2019, HHS announced that, effective immediately, recipients of taxpayer-funded grants from HHS are permitted to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, as it will no longer enforce the 2016 rule known as 81 F.R. 89393.[560][561] This change affects "HIV and STI prevention programs, opioid programs, youth homelessness services, health professional training, substance use recovery programs, and many other life-saving services," according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.[562] In April 2020, HHS acknowledged that the pending rule to replace Section 1557 (which was then under review by the Justice Department) followed the federal court order that "vacated the gender identity provisions" of Section 1557.[563] The replacement rule was revealed on June 12, 2020.[564][565]

[556]

Homelessness: On May 22, 2019, HUD proposed a new rule to weaken the 2012 Equal Access Rule, an existing federal nondiscrimination protection that requires equal access to housing regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. (The previous day, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson had told Congress that he had no plans to change this protection.) Under the proposed change, shelters receiving federal funding would be given leeway in "determining sex for admission to any facility" based on factors including the transgender person's "official government documents," the shelter operators' "religious beliefs," and any invented "practical concerns" or concerns about "privacy" or "safety." This could allow shelters to place transgender women in men's housing or to deny transgender people admission altogether. Within the proposed rule, HUD said that the treatment of transgender people would be considered valid as long as the shelter applied its own rules consistently and that this would not conflict with HUD's existing nondiscrimination policy. HUD has been moving in the direction of weakening this rule since 2017 when it withdrew proposals to require emergency shelters to post information about LGBT rights and updated its website to remove guidance for serving transgender people.[566] In July 2020, HUD proposed a rule to allow shelters to turn away any women they judged to look physically masculine, examining "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."[567][568][569]

[63]

Obergefell v. Hodges

Passing the , the comprehensive federal nondiscrimination legislation for LGBT Americans in housing, employment, public accommodations, credit, jury service, education, and federal funding

Equality Act

Including LGBT people under sex discrimination laws

Combating

youth homelessness

Policies to improve school climates for LGBT students

LGBT elders

Access to

Transgender health care

Ending including the crisis of anti-transgender violence

violence against LGBT people

Mental health

"Insuring fair treatment for , including by proactively reviewing and upgrading discharge records for veterans who were discharged because of their sexual orientation."

LGBT veterans

Human rights in the United States

List of LGBT members of the United States Congress

LGBT people in the United States

LGBT retirement issues in the United States

Proposed bans of LGBT-themed books in the United States

April 18, 2005. Retrieved December 30, 2005.

Bullough, Vern, "When Did the Gay Rights Movement Begin?"

Harrington Park Press, 2002.

Bullough, Vern L. (ed.) Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context.

1996, Crown, 300 pp. Retrieved December 30, 2005.

Gallagher, John & Chris Bull, Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s

glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, & Queer Culture, Claude J. Summers, ed. 2004. Retrieved December 30, 2005.

Matzner, Andrew, "Stonewall Riots"

November 5, 2005. Retrieved December 30, 2005.

Percy, William A. & William Edward Glover, "Before Stonewall by Glover & Percy"

from UCSD Library

LGBTQ History in Government Documents

– includes section on LGBT rights

WhiteHouse.gov: Civil Rights

FACT SHEET: The Biden-⁠Harris Administration Champions LGBTQ+ Equality and Marks Pride Month June 2022

– video report by Democracy Now!

A Look at the State of the Gay Rights Movement

Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity

Human Rights Campaign

HRC LGBT Resources Guide

– A user-compiled, edited, and evaluatable All-Gender Restroom locator (with disability access feature)

Refuge Restrooms

– Gallup Poll: "Americans Split Over New LGBT Protections, Restroom Policies"

Gallup News May 18. 2017 online