‘It’s going to have an erasure effect’: Spokane’s trans community responds to Trump executive order on gender

One of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders signed on his first day back in office strictly recognizes only two sexes – male and female – and rolls back transgender protections within the federal government.

While broad and vague language leaves questions about how some of the policies will be implemented, the order directs government agencies to designate “intimate spaces” – which would include restrooms – by sex and not identity; that government documents, including passports, “should accurately reflect the holder’s sex”; and that government communications and funding should not promote what the order calls “gender ideology.”

The order also says the Bureau of Prisons should not detain males assigned at birth in women’s prisons or detention centers, and to not provide gender-affirming health care for inmates.

Louis Stay, director of Trans Spokane, said the order ignores established scientific understanding and the experience of transgender, intersex and nonbinary people.

“It creates a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear, a lot of confusion,” Stay said. “It leaves us in this place of not really knowing what’s going to come next.”

Sarah Harmon, supervising attorney for the Lincoln LGBTQ+ Rights Clinic at Gonzaga Law School, said the executive order’s vague language is likely intentional to make it more flexible and robust.

“It’s going to have an erasure effect,” Harmon said.

Anyone who is gender-nonconforming and works for the government or interacts with the federal system will not have an accurate option that fits their identity. Some may choose to go back into the closet to stay safe or to protect their job.

“You’re also going to see federal employees that might hold transphobic views feeling very emboldened to tell gender diverse colleagues or applicants or civilians that their identity, their gender, is invalid,” Harmon said.

Another complication people are facing is the possibility that the gender listed on their driver’s license or other ID might not be able to match their federal passport, Harmon said.

Transgender people depend on correct documentation to live without facing judgment, Stay said.

U.S. citizens had been allowed to mark “X” as their gender on passports since 2022. That option was removed from the application on the State Department’s website Tuesday.

The Spectrum Center, an organization in Spokane that assists with gender-affirming services, including legal name changes and updating identification, has been trying to navigate the recent changes.

“This week has been rough,” said KJ January, director of advocacy and engagement.

The center has seen an influx of queer people moving to the area from other states since Trump was elected, January said. The center’s no-cost Gender Affirming Products Program, called GAPP, had all 50 of its slots filled within 48 hours of opening last week.

“The messages we are receiving are complete fear, sadness and frustration,” January said. “It’s hard not having answers.”

“My take is it’s just immoral, angry and delusional,” Maeve Griffith, a trans woman who is a retired Spokane Fire Department captain, said of the order.

Beyoncé Black St. James, who was named Miss Trans USA in November, decried several of Trump’s orders, including the suspension of asylum, which she said will block refugees fleeing anti-LGBTQ+ violence.

Efforts to undo Title IX protections put trans students at higher risk of bullying and discrimination, and undermines their ability to succeed academically and socially, St. James said.

“These executive orders are not only morally reprehensible but also legally dubious,” she said. “They undermine the principles of equality, justice and compassion that our nation was founded upon.”

Harmon said federal employees in some states have extra protections because the order cannot override state anti-discrimination laws. So, federal employees in Washington would have more protections than those working in Idaho.

A section in the executive order about withholding funding could extend well beyond the government to any organization that receives federal funds, Harmon said. This might include public school districts or even private universities like Gonzaga.

Will the administration withhold funding from organizations that have gender-inclusive restrooms or allow staff to put pronouns in their email signature? Are health care, housing or food benefits at risk?

As with Trump’s other orders, Harmon said there will be inevitable legal challenges brought by states and organizations.

The order will likely face challenges from Title VII, which prohibits employment discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education. Additional challenges could come from other laws and court precedent from prior litigation.

The Supreme Court in 2020 ruled in a 6-3 decision for Bostock v. Clayton County that discriminating against someone for being transgender is sex discrimination under Title VII.

Meanwhile, the order said the Trump administration will draft proposed legislation to codify definitions in the order. If Congress changes the laws, it could remove those legal challenges, Harmon said.

Supporters of Trump’s action have argued that the administration of President Joe Biden went too far in promoting transgender rights.

“What this administration now has done is put an end to this madness,” said Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, in an interview last week on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “They are taking back the safety of women and girls. They are protecting the biological developments of normal pubertal children, and they are also reinstating official documentation.”

Idaho Republican Sens. Jim Risch and Mike Crapo have introduced bills restricting transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports, arguing that it would protect women and girls under Title IX. The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act introduced this month would ensure Title IX provisions recognize gender “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

Risch and Crapo were also sponsors of bill in the Senate last year that says every “individual is either male or female” and that a person’s sex is “clinically verified at or before birth.” It also states that intersex people must be either male or female and that gender is the same as sex.

“There is increasing confusion about the definition of sex as a biological truth, the implications of sex, and its relationship to concepts and terms including sex assigned at birth, gender, gender identity, gender role, gender expression, and experienced gender,” reads the bill, which was filed in November and has not been voted on. “Confusion and ambiguities surrounding the definitions of sex, male, female, and related terms can hinder individual efforts to enjoy equal treatment under the law.”

Harmon said the most harmful part of Trump’s executive order will likely be in prisons, an area over which the executive branch has broad authority.

Transgender inmates are at a high risk of sexual assault, regardless of what facility they are held in, Harmon said.

“This is already a vulnerable population in prisons, and now you’re going to be making them even more vulnerable.”

The order, officially titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” has been widely criticized by medical experts for misunderstanding human biology. The order’s definition of sex as immutable and determined at conception overlooks the complex processes of sexual development over time.

The order also makes no mention of intersex people, who are born with both male and female sexual characteristics.

The medical and psychological fields recognize the importance of supporting gender diverse individuals for their health and well-being, said Dr. Pam Kohlmeier, an emergency physician who pointed to policies by the American Psychological Foundation, the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Board of Family Medicine.

“I’m afraid for the health and safety of our transgender kids and their families,” Kohlmeier said.

She spoke out in support of gender inclusivity in schools after her adult child, who was trans and nonbinary, died by suicide.

“Gender dysphoria is real,” Kohlmeier said. “Lives are saved when people have access to health care that affirms their identity.”

In a separate action last week, Trump also undid protections for transgender people openly serving in the military by revoking a Biden executive order from 2021, which itself had reversed another order from Trump’s first term.

While the action does not directly ban transgender people from serving, it could open the path for a future order, according to reporting by Stars and Stripes.

Resources are available to help gender diverse people in Spokane and the Inland Northwest.

Trans Spokane is a community-organized group that offers support and connection through online and in-person meetings.

The Lincoln LGBTQ+ Rights Clinic, part of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at Gonzaga Law School, has monthly pop-up clinics to assist with ID and legal name changes, and other documents like estate planning and health care directives. The clinic also represents LGBTQ people who have been harmed because of their identity.

Kohlmeier teaches a monthly suicide prevention class through Spokane Regional Health District’s Medical Reserve Corps at churches, businesses and public libraries. Like CPR, Kohlmeier said, everyone should take the class. It teaches people to recognize warning signs and how to intervene when someone is at risk.

Stay, the director of Trans Spokane, had two messages to share.

“For the trans community,” he said, “I would want to say that they’re not alone, that there are resources like our group out there, that we’re here to support and to connect people and it doesn’t have to be a time that we have to go through individually, that there is a community out there for people to be a part of.”

And to the broader Spokane community: “I would want them to be aware of the executive order, aware of the impacts this has on the trans community and the threats to our safety that this brings.”

James Hanlon can be reached at (509) 459-5467 or by email at jamesh@spokesman.com.