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- Trump’s DOJ Subpoenas Trans Care Records From 20 Hospitals

- After Trans People, Trump Now Erasing Bisexual People From Stonewall National Monument

- Trump’s FTC Lays the Groundwork to Charge GAC Providers with “Fraud”

- California Rejects Trump's Demands To Enact Full Trans Sports And Bathroom Bans

- Over 100 Trans People Missing or “Presumed Dead” After Israel Bombs Iranian Prison

- Ohio Blocks Funding For Trans-Affirming Mental Health Care For Youth And Adults

- 11th Circuit Rules Trans Teacher Must Misgender Herself In Classroom In Accordance With FL Law

- Trump Admin Begins Processing Some Trans Passport Updates, Though It Will Maintain Data On Requests

Trump’s DOJ Subpoenas Trans Care Records From 20 Hospitals

S. BAUM | JUL 11, 2025, 5:57 PM EDT | SOURCE

For the safety of patients and doctors alike, health care institutions can&#8212;and must&#8212;fight back.

Photo by David Trinks on Unsplash

Hospitals, gender affirming care clinics and health care systems are once again being put to the test on how much they will stand up for the rights and safety of their patients—starting with trans kids.

This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi filed more than 20 subpoenas against gender-affirming care clinics and health care providers across the country that it says treated transgender youth. It could function as a litmus test for how far health care institutions will go to protect doctors and patients, and not just trans ones.

“With respect to civil and criminal fraud—although the exact details of the targets of our investigation are not yet public—we have issued nearly 20 subpoenas against clinics who are engaged in transition-related investigations,” the Department of Justice Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle said at a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) event on July 9.

“The Department’s investigations include healthcare fraud, false statements, and more,” Bondi said in a press release that same day about “clinics involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children.”

The names of the impacted hospitals and further details about the requested information is not yet known, but earlier this month, Fox News reported on rumors of potential FBI probes into Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Erin in the Morning was able to independently verify at least one hospital was subpoenaed after Bondi’s announcement.

In recent months, the Trump Administration has characterized gender-affirming care as “fraud,” citing far-right activists, including the “ex-trans” movement and non-affirming parents of trans kids. Bad faith actors seek to paint trans-affirming care as the extremist, ideological indoctrination of children, or otherwise as a nefarious plot to prey on vulnerable young people via the “gender industry.” In reality, trans-affirming care saves lives, and is supported globally by medical and human rights institutions.

Much of the anti-trans movement today can be traced back to extremist groups with deep pockets and deeper ties to the far-right and Christian fundamentalism, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Principles Project, both of which sent speakers to the aforementioned FTC “workshop.” Another panelist, Erin Friday (who self-identifies as a California Democrat) denounced the “transgender mafia.”

The bulk of the right’s legal crusade against trans-affirming care has historically targeted providers, but parents of trans kids as well as adult trans patients are suffering, too. At least

24 states have professional or legal penalties on trans-affirming health care providers who treat minors, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A Human Rights Watch report from May further found that “allegations suggesting a parent is coercing their child to identify as transgender have become a tactic in custody disputes, particularly in cases where one parent does not affirm the child's gender identity.” And in Texas, the receipt of gender-affirming care was used to launch child welfare investigations into supportive families. Countless states have also restricted or attempted to restrict gender-affirming health care for trans people well into their 20s. Puerto Rico’s Senate passed a GAC ban on people under 21 last month.

In theory, AG Bondi’s subpoenas could be construed as unconstitutional; the Supreme Court has a long-held tradition of upholding an implicit right to privacy when it comes to health care, such as with access to contraception. In practice, we live in a post-Roe world. The sturdiness of legal precedent, privacy laws, and established civil rights has been overcast by the shadows of Trump’s authoritarian ascent and the Supreme Court’s blindly conservative majority.

But medical staff, patients, and when applicable, parents, can apply pressure to local officials to enforce state laws—in New York, for example, State AG Letiticia James warned hospitals against withdrawing care due to non-discrimination laws, which guarantee comparable treatment for transgender and cisgender people alike.

Meanwhile, hospital CEOs and boards can also be pushed to fight the subpoenas in court; unlike the average American, these institutions are more able to pool robust legal and financial resources. And it’s important that they do, as these efforts don’t exist in a vacuum—efforts are also underway by ICE and by anti-abortion prosecutors to weaponize medical data. If trans kids become acceptable cannon fodder in Trump’s medical-culture war, anyone can be next.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trumps-doj-subpoenas-trans-care-records at Jul 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT.

After Trans People, Trump Now Erasing Bisexual People From Stonewall National Monument

ERIN REED | JUL 10, 2025, 1:23 PM EDT | SOURCE

The "History and Culture" page no longer includes bisexual rights.

Publisher’s note: After the publication of this article, bisexual people were added back to the front page of Stonewall National Monument, though they are still removed in the history and culture section.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration digitally erased transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument, scrubbing them from the history they helped shape. The decision sparked widespread protests at the civil rights landmark and raised alarm about broader efforts to censor transgender people from the public record. Now, new signs suggest the administration has set its sights on another target: bisexual people. Key historical and cultural pages associated with the Stonewall site have been updated to describe the uprising as a milestone for “gay and lesbian rights,” quietly removing any mention of bisexual or transgender individuals.

Signs that the pages dedicated to Stonewall were being tampered with emerged early in Trump’s second presidency. Before the first update, the Stonewall National Monument page acknowledged that "before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal.” The revised version then stated, “almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal.” Now, a new version of the page indicates that “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living authentically as a gay or lesbian person was illegal.”

You can see the changes here:

The changes were not limited to the front page. In the “History and Culture” section, the page once indicated “Stonewall was a milestone for LGBTQ civil rights that provided momentum for a movement.” Then it was changed to “Stonewall was a milestone for LGB civil rights that provided momentum for a movement” by the Trump administration. Now, the page says that it was a milestone for “gay and lesbian” civil rights. Likewise, the page now reads that living “openly as a member of the Stonewall comunity |SIC| was a violation of law,” rather than living as an openly LGBTQ+ person, as it had previously read.

The erasure is historically inaccurate. Stonewall was heavily led by transgender and gender-nonconforming leaders like Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P Johnson, and Zazu Nova. At Stonewall, Sylvia Rivera famously stated that while she did not “throw the first Molotov cocktail,” she did throw the second. Transgender woman Zazu Nova is among those credited with “throwing the first brick,” sparking the uprising. Marsha P. Johnson, another key figure in the protests that followed, played a critical role in shaping the movement.

Likewise, bisexual people played a pivotal role in the Pride movement that emerged from Stonewall. Brenda Howard, a bisexual rights activist often referred to as “the mother of Pride,” helped organize the rally that became the Christopher Street Liberation Day March on the first anniversary of the uprising. Both transgender and bisexual people have long viewed Stonewall as a civil rights milestone—and for good reason. Living openly as either in the 1960s carried enormous risk, and both communities were targeted in the police raid that sparked the movement.

These edits were not the only ones made to Stonewall since Trump took office. Individual pages dedicated to transgender figures instrumental in the Stonewall uprising were also altered to erase transgender references. The changes were often sloppy and rushed, revealing the haphazard nature of the effort. In one glaring example, Sylvia Rivera’s section originally stated, “At a young age, Sylvia began fighting for gay and transgender rights.” The revised version read, “gay and rights,” with the word “transgender” removed entirely, rendering the sentence nonsensical:

Bisexual, transgender, and queer people were at the forefront of the Stonewall movement. Though the language was still evolving, many of the patrons defied conventional categories of gender and sexuality, refusing to be neatly classified. Erasing them from Stonewall is not only historically false—it is a deliberate act of political revisionism. The recent removal of “bisexual” from official Pride histories is a warning: attacks on transgender people will never stop with us. They are part of a broader effort to narrow the scope of who is allowed to belong, to be seen, and even to be remembered.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/after-trans-people-trump-now-erasing at Jul 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT.

Trump’s FTC Lays the Groundwork to Charge GAC Providers with “Fraud”

S. BAUM | JUL 10, 2025, 12:01 PM EDT | SOURCE

Instead of working to protect Americans' privacy, the FTC is hosting what amounts to an anti-trans rally.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hosted a July 9 “workshop” on what it called “unfair or deceptive trade practices in ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors.” However, others might call this descriptor false advertising. The 6-hour long event, held in Washington, DC, was arguably more like another avenue for stoking stochastic terrorism, as well as threatening and intimidating providers of trans-affirming health care—this time under the guise of accusing them of “fraud.”

The conference featured dozens of anti-trans zealots—including anti-trans parent activists, disgraced doctors, people from notorious right-wing extremist groups and “detransitioners”—to purportedly “help the FTC to understand whether consumers are being or have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about ‘gender-affirming care.’”

In other words, the FTC under President Donald Trump is asserting that trans kids and their parents have been robbed of informed consent. They argue that trans-affirming health care, which is supported by most every major medical organization in the country, lacks evidence rigorous enough for an Administration whose medical politics are, at best, completely arbitrary, unscientific, ideologically-charged, and internally inconsistent.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, condemned the panel on Bluesky in response to Erin in the Morning’s live-reporting. “Instead of working to protect Americans' privacy, the FTC is hosting what amounts to an anti-trans rally,” he wrote. “Nobody is more obsessed with controlling the private decisions of the American people than Republicans.”

The event’s framing was, of course, dripping with pretext (to borrow the words of federal Judge Ana Reyes). It had McCarthy hearing energy—it reeked of conspiracy theories gone wild about “the gender industry,” which the feds painted as a surreptitious and far-reaching ploy “built on lies and deception,” as per Chad Mizelle, the Trump-appointed Chief of Staff of the Department of Justice.

This kind of spectacle is not usually in the purview of the FTC, staffers say. Almost 150 FTC employees sent joint letters to Congress pushing for the workshop’s cancellation. Signatories remained anonymous, citing “credible fears” of retaliation from the White House. They wrote that this kind of encroachment “would chart new territory for the Commission by prying into confidential doctor-patient consultations” and that “regulation of the practice of medicine falls under the jurisdiction of state licensing boards, not the FTC.”

“The FTC's mandate is to address unfair or deceptive practices in interstate commerce—not to second-guess established medical standards widely accepted by experts in the field, based on their professional judgment, or to overrule clinical and familial decision-making,” the letter continues.

But these pleas fell on deaf ears. The meeting transpired with no counterweight to the lies, vitriol, and disinformation of panelists.

For example, there was Ethan Haim, a disgraced physician who allegedly lied to a hospital to obtain and leak the confidential patient records of trans minors to the right-wing press. (The Department of Justice functionally charged him with a form of health care fraud, but dropped the case upon Trump’s return to office). There was Brandon Showalter, a far-right reporter from The Christian Post who likened gender-affirming care to Nazi experimentation in concentration camps. And then there was Erin Friday, a California attorney and anti-trans advocate who has bragged about forcing her child to abandon an expressed transgender identity.

It was perhaps Friday’s speech that was the most telling about the real purpose of the event, which again, was marketed as a symposium on “‘gender-affirming care’ for minors.”

“My goal is this: to see the decimation of the deceitful gender industry for both minors and adults and to see that the individuals who set society on this course are held accountable civilly and criminally,” she said, vowing to take on the “transgender mafia,” and presenting a list of doctors, hospitals, and medical associations she declared were at the center of “the crime board.” The room burst into applause.

It remains unclear just how far the Trump Administration can and will go with the FTC. On the one hand, they may not need to successfully prosecute someone or win a lawsuit to achieve their desired effect. Their application of anti-fraud laws remains deeply controversial. And even before rumors swirled of FBI probes into this or that hospital, many gender-affirming care clinics around the country preemptively closed their doors, hoping to thwart a potential legal situation. Communities rallied and some clinics reopened as a result, while others remained closed or have since closed, including in supposedly liberal states like California and New York. Panelists also identified medical associations as well as state legislatures, courts and medical boards as pressure points—institutions that anti-trans activists see as safeguards for trans-affirming care, and barriers in banning it.

However, this means the trans community and our allies can organize around protecting them, too.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trumps-ftc-lays-the-groundwork-to at Jul 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT.

California Rejects Trump's Demands To Enact Full Trans Sports And Bathroom Bans

ERIN REED | JUL 8, 2025, 1:05 PM EDT | SOURCE

The State Superintendent of Education responded to Trump's Title IX complaints against trans participation in sports with a rejection of its demands.

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

On June 25, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced that it had found California in violation of Title IX. The alleged violation stems from the state allowing transgender athletes to participate in school sports, even after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and the California Interscholastic Federation partially capitulated to anti-transgender pressures by barring transgender students from competing for the same awards as their cisgender peers. The Department of Education has instead demanded a full ban on transgender athletes, threatening unspecified enforcement actions. In response, the California Department of Education issued a firm rejection of the department’s demands.

“Although Governor Gavin Newsom admitted months ago it was ‘deeply unfair’ to allow men to compete in women’s sports, both the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation continued as recently as a few weeks ago to allow men to steal female athletes’ well-deserved accolades and to subject them to the indignity of unfair and unsafe competitions,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in the initial demands. “The Trump Administration will relentlessly enforce Title IX protections for women and girls, and our findings today make clear that California has failed to adhere to its obligations under federal law. The state must swiftly come into compliance with Title IX or face the consequences that follow.”

In response, the California Department of Education replied rejecting the demands: “The California Department of Education (CDE) received the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR’s) June 25, 2025 Letter of Finding and Proposed Resolution Agreement in the above-referenced OCR matter. The CDE respectfully disagrees with OCR’s analysis, and it will not sign the Proposed Resolution Agreement."

CA Department of Education Response

The U.S. Department of Education’s demands included a list of discriminatory actions for California to implement. Among them: a ban on transgender students from participating in both school sports and using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, the adoption of far-right definitions of “male” and “female” that explicitly exclude transgender people, retroactive stripping of medals from transgender athletes to award them to cisgender competitors, personalized apologies from schools to cisgender girls for having competed alongside transgender peers, and a federally mandated “monitoring plan” to oversee athletics in the state.

The rejection of federal demands comes during a turbulent time for transgender people in California. Recently, the state barred a young transgender athlete, AB Hernandez, from competing for the same medals as her peers, instead awarding her “duplicate” medals for any victories. In one event, she placed first in the long jump but was forced to share the title with another athlete; official rankings list her as tying for first, effectively segregating her from the participation rules that apply to cisgender competitors. Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom has shown an increasing willingness to distance himself from transgender rights, telling far-right activist Charlie Kirk in a recent interview that he aligns with conservatives on some transgender issues—particularly around sports.

In recent years, calls for sports bans have expanded to encompass an increasingly absurd range of activities. Darts, disc golf, fishing, billiards, beauty pageants, competitive hot dog eating, and even chess have all come under scrutiny. The International Chess Federation ruled that transgender women have “no right to participate” in female chess categories, and more recently, a young German trans girl faced calls to be banned from competing against her cisgender peers. The U.S. Department of Education’s demands would impose similar restrictions across a wide array of activities that may fall under the umbrella of interscholastic sports in the state. For those who believe that sports bans are a “losing issue” and that Democrats should capitulate to such bans, they would have to be comfortable with bans in a wide variety of sports like those mentioned here.

The California Department of Education’s response offers a glimmer of hope that the state may finally push back after a string of capitulations and retreats on transgender rights. Following Governor Newsom’s troubling comments and the quiet rollback of care in some hospitals after Trump threats—like the closure of gender services at LA Children’s Hospital—transgender Californians are watching closely. They want to know whether their state will defend them or continue caving to federal pressure. In this escalating battle over basic dignity and rights, California’s firm rejection of the Department of Education’s demands is a much-needed signal: there is still fight left in the state.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/california-rejects-trumps-demands at Jul 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT.

Over 100 Trans People Missing or “Presumed Dead” After Israel Bombs Iranian Prison

S. BAUM | JUL 8, 2025, 10:27 AM EDT | SOURCE

&#8220;The Israeli attack on Evin Prison &#8212; carried out in broad daylight, in front of families and visitors &#8212; is clearly a war crime,&#8221; says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi.

Picture: Mostafa Roudaki/mizanonline via AP

Over 100 transgender and gender nonconforming people incarcerated in Iran are missing and/or presumed dead—killed by an Israeli air strike, a human rights lawyer in the region told The New York Times. The targeted strike destroyed parts of Evin, a Tehran prison known for vicious human rights abuses and detention of political prisoners, in late June. The facility’s “trans ward” was reportedly flattened in the attack.

Israeli officials framed the mass slaughter of civilians—including human rights activists, medical staff, and nearby residents—as “somehow an act of liberation,” The Times reports.

It’s a telling example of Israel's fraught relationship with LGBTQ rights, one that is often deployed in order to justify massacres in the region.

“History shows that authoritarian regimes often use wars and external crises as a pretext to intensify repression at home,” a widely-shared statement reads, which was signed by almost two dozen high-profile Evin prisoners and ex-prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi. “The Israeli attack on Evin Prison—carried out in broad daylight, in front of families and visitors—is clearly a war crime.”

This stands in stark contrast with the image that Israel seeks to project to the world when it comes to LGBT rights: That the country is an “LGBTQ haven.” That the Israeli government is committed to “spreading the values of freedom, tolerance and democracy to the world.” That its military aggression is in service to, at least in part, the preservation of LGBTQ “love.”

In a 2024 article for The Society for Queer Studies, sociologist Izat Elamoor condemned Israel’s claims to LGBT allyship as incompatible with committing war crimes and other atrocities against them. “Israel exploits queer rights to project a progressive, queer-friendly image of itself,” Elamoor writes. But in its unrelenting assault on civilians, it “contradicts its avowal of being a beacon of queer rights” and human rights more broadly.

Over the course of twelve days in June, around 1,000 Iranians were killed by Israeli forces. By comparison, 28 Israelis have been killed by Iran in the same timeframe. The IDF has also bombed Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen over the last few months. This is all in addition to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine, where military operations have killed tens of thousands of people, largely women and children, since October 7, 2023.

The exact body count of the Evin bombing continues to grow by the day. Doctors and nurses in the hospital ward, as well as at least one young child, were also killed in the attack. We may never know all the names and identities of the dead, as the Iranian government has subsequently cracked down on families speaking out about lost loved ones. If any trans prisoners survived, it’s not immediately clear where they will be placed—in solitary, with other inmates, or with what gender. Nor do we know whether they will stay in Tehran or be transferred to somewhere farther away.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/over-100-trans-people-missing-or at Jul 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT.

Ohio Blocks Funding For Trans-Affirming Mental Health Care For Youth And Adults

S. BAUM | JUL 3, 2025, 1:10 PM EDT | SOURCE

Governor Mike DeWine vetoed some anti-trans measures of the state budget bill, but signed off on others. The fight still isn&#8217;t over.

Ohio Capitol // MJ // Wikimedia Commons

On June 30, 45 minutes before his midnight deadline, Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine signed off on a sweeping budget bill. Tucked between thousands of pages of fiscal items and expenditures is a jarring declaration: Trans-affirming mental health providers have been explicitly cut off from Medicaid funds, impacting both minor and adult patients.

Prior state laws had outlawed Medicaid funds for “gender transition” treatment, which includes “including social, legal, or physical changes.” But in 2019, The Washington Post reported that Ohio officials were “no longer following policies that exclude those services,” and in 2024, the state’s HB 68 made it so that “assistance provided under the medicaid program shall not include coverage for gender transition services” for minors.

This new policy doubles down in explicitly articulating that mental health care is subjected to this rule and that it extends not just to minors, but also adults. It is not a categorical health care ban, as private insurers may still cover such care, and there are out-of-pocket options. But it does make care profoundly more difficult to access, especially for low income Ohioans, and even more, it stokes terror among health care providers.

Like many state laws around the country, the rule creates a vast and vague grey area both legally and medically. The recent budget item, for example, “does not outline clear modes for enforcement in any way,” said Dara Adkison, TransOhio’s executive director, in an interview with Erin in the Morning. “And how could it? It's written in fiscal policy.”

This leaves enforcement “nefariously up in the air,” they said, and this is intentional. One might argue the uncertainty is the enforcement measure—it can cause some providers to comply in advance or over-comply in order to skirt a potential legal battle. The state doesn’t even have to bring charges to get some health care systems to close their doors, such as in California, where the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles shuttered its division for trans youth care despite state protections for it.

The Medicaid ban is not the only anti-trans item in Ohio’s budget bill. “It is the policy of the state of Ohio to recognize two sexes, male and female,” the bill declares, enshrining a patently unscientific and ideologically-driven definition of sex into law. In reality, there are a wide range of biological sexes encompassing many combinations of chromosomes, internal genitalia, external genitalia, and secondary sex characteristics—such as breast tissue or facial hair.

The policy functionally rewrites any aspect of state code that touches upon gender or sex, similar to President Donald Trump’s executive order in the same vein, and erases the existence of at least 5.6 million intersex Americans. It throws countless trans Ohioans’ state identification into possible disarray in the process. The bill also bans the government from putting menstrual products in the men’s room of a public building.

Like the Medicaid ban, enforcement mechanisms for these mandates remain unclear.

State-level tensions have soared since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of anti-trans policies in its U.S. v Skrmetti decision. According to Ryan Thoreson, an assistant professor of law at the University of Cincinnati, however, Skrmetti does not constitute the carte blanche destruction of trans people’s legal rights. There are still other battles to be fought.

“Skrmetti has to do with a very particular interpretation of the federal Constitution and doesn't necessarily decide state law claims that might be brought across the U.S., particularly those states with stronger equal protections provisions,” Thoreson told Erin in the Morning.

For example, Ohioans benefit from a right to choose their health care in their state constitution; this can be an avenue for challenging the Medicaid policy. Similarly, Montana courts have overturned numerous statewide anti-trans laws on account of the Montana constitution’s right to privacy.

Meanwhile, Medicaid restrictions are also being debated at the federal level. While the Senate Parliamentarian did determine that GOP’s anti-trans, Hyde Amendment-like provision was not germane to the budget bill, the document is now in the House. It accompanies a slew of harmful policies pertaining to everything from mass deportations to cuts to food stamps.

Pressure must still be added to those legislators to keep the federal trans care Medicaid ban at bay, and even more, to vote “no” on the bill altogether.

“Anything to mitigate the harm of cutting money from Medicaid, federally, is going to help at the state level,” Adkison said. “If the funds are significantly chopped at the federal level and the funds don't even exist for the coverage, even if the coverage is possible, that's a whole other issue.”

Back in Ohio, the passage of the budget bill was, to some level, bittersweet. In Governor Mike DeWine’s record-breaking list of vetoes, he struck down policies designed to ban Pride flag displays on state grounds, heavily censor LGBT content in libraries, and defund trans-affirming youth homeless shelters. But pressure points remain there as well. The state legislature can still override DeWine’s vetoes until December 31, 2026, and they have done so successfully in the past to advance anti-LGBT policies.

Other states are taking a proactive approach to beat Trump to the punch. Massachusetts, for example, is on track to allot one million dollars to an Affirming Health Care Trust, relegating funds to gender-affirming care for trans people. This ensures access even if the federal government does not financially support it. Existing state law further reaffirms that “access to reproductive health care services and gender-affirming health care services is a right” and that “interference with this right, whether or not under the color of law” is prohibited.

Individual cities may be able to take action, too—the Democratic nominee for New York City Mayor, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, has promised $65 million in city funds to support trans-affirming care, if he is elected.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/ohio-blocks-funding-for-trans-affirming at Jul 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT.

11th Circuit Rules Trans Teacher Must Misgender Herself In Classroom In Accordance With FL Law

ERIN REED | JUL 2, 2025, 2:51 PM EDT | SOURCE

The ruling by Trump-appointed judges contradicts other classroom speech cases and is a clear case of the state barring disfavored speech, according to the dissent.

Edward Parr Turtle US Court of Appeals Building - Public record

On Wednesday, Trump-appointed judges at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals released a baffling conclusion: that forcing a transgender female teacher to misgender herself in the classroom is somehow not a first amendment violation. This decision stems from a challenge to a Florida law that states it is “false to associate to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex” and bars teachers from using pronouns or honorifics that “if such preferred personal title or pronouns do not correspond to that person’s sex.” Previously, a federal district judge found that the law was a clear viewpoint discrimination on a personal identity matter for the teacher. Now, according to the dissent, the precedent means that states could control the names and pronouns all teachers use in classrooms, including things like married names and honorifics.

In 2023, Florida enacted House Bill 1069, a significant expansion of the state’s “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” policies. Most notably, the law prohibits teachers from using “a pronoun or personal title” that “does not correspond to such person’s sex.” This provision was enforced against transgender educators, including Ms. Wood, who would be required to go by “Mr. Wood” in the classroom—an act that violates her personal dignity—or risk losing her job.

Ms. Wood brought suit, and in 2024, a federal judge ruled that the law was egregiously discriminatory and violated her First Amendment rights by imposing a viewpoint-based speech restriction. The statute explicitly declares it “false” to use a pronoun that “doesn’t correspond to a person’s sex.” The judge found this to be a clear constitutional violation, ruling that personal titles—such as pronouns and honorifics—are a matter of individual identity, not subject to government control. As such, the law infringed upon Ms. Wood’s protected right to free expression.

The 11th Circuit disagreed. In a ruling handed down by Trump-appointed judges Andrew L. Brasher and Kevin Newsom, the court determined that using one’s pronouns and title in the classroom constitutes “classroom duties” and therefore falls under the control of the state. In essence, the judges ruled that Ms. Wood had no First Amendment rights while performing her job as a teacher, granting Florida the authority to compel her to use whatever pronouns or honorifics the state sees fit—even if they contradict her identity, and that requiring her to do so was not viewpoint discrimination, despite the clear ascribing of such a pronoun or honorific as “false.”

Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a scathing dissent. “The statute at issue here, § 1000.071(3), has nothing to do with curriculum and everything to do with Florida attempting to silence those with whom it disagrees on the matter of transgender identity and status. Florida cannot justify its viewpoint discrimination by relying on the very reason that such discrimination is constitutionally suspect—that it gets to decide what speech is permissible (the speech it likes) and what speech is prohibited (the speech it disagrees with).”

Judge Jordan also points out troubling implications of the ruling for married people or for those who change their names, stating, “If the majority opinion is right, and I do not think that it is, Florida can require that married female teachers use the last name of their husbands in the classroom even if they have chosen to keep their maiden names (because it declares as a matter of state policy that it does not like female teachers to appear to students to be in-dependent of their husbands); it can demand that unmarried fe-male teachers use “Mrs.” instead of “Ms.” in the classroom (because it declares as a matter of state policy that it wants students to think that their female teachers are all married or should aspire to be married); and it can require all teachers to call themselves “Teacher Smith” in the classroom instead of using their actual last names (because it declares as a matter of state policy that any pedagogic individuality is bad). If these possibilities sound ‘First Amendment crazy,’ it is because they are.”

Lastly, Judge Jordan points out the clear contradiction on free speech policy when it comes to transgender people. In another ruling in the 6th Circuit, teachers were ruled to have the freedom of speech to misgender their transgender students. Meanwhile, in the 11th Circuit, teachers now apparently have no free speech rights in the classroom. Therefore, caselaw is building that seems to suggest teachers only have free speech when they disagree with transgender people, but as soon as transgender people come into play, they lose those rights - even in intensely personal subjects such as what name or pronoun or honorific one uses.

He cautions the 11th. Circuit of the implication of the precedent they created on this topic: “We should be wary of holding that everything that happens in a classroom constitutes government speech outside the ambit of the First Amendment. Those who wield the power of the government today and are on one side of the gender and culture wars will be the ones at risk of being compelled to speak against their beliefs, or silenced, when their opponents are in charge. Today’s opinion will then not look as attractive.”

The case now returns to the district court, but in the meanwhile, transgender teachers in Florida are forced to misgender themselves in their own classrooms—a direct assault on their basic dignity and identity. The ruling marks yet another escalation in Florida’s increasingly authoritarian campaign against transgender people. In a country that claims to value free speech and personal liberty, this ruling lays bare just how conditional those rights have become when it comes to transgender people.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/11th-circuit-rules-trans-teacher at Jul 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT.

Trump Admin Begins Processing Some Trans Passport Updates, Though It Will Maintain Data On Requests

ERIN REED | JUL 2, 2025, 9:28 AM EDT | SOURCE

On Wednesday, at least some transgender people applying for passports in person at passport offices for urgent travel have received updated passports with correct gender markers.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

On Tuesday, a government source familiar with the process told Erin In The Morning that approvals are beginning to move forward for transgender people seeking to correct the gender markers on their passports. At least two transgender people who applied in person on an urgent travel basis at passport offices confirmed separately that they have received their updated passports. The news comes after weeks of intentional delays and reported noncompliance with a federal court ruling requiring the government to process such requests. However, transgender applicants changing their passports will have data collected indicating their class status—data that could potentially be used to compile lists of transgender passport holders, especially if the court’s ruling is later overturned.

Notably, as of the time of publication, the decision to process gender marker changes only applies to in-person passport applications for urgent travel, though it is expected to expand to mail-in applications in the coming days.

In June, a federal judge granted class certification to all transgender people seeking to update the gender markers on their passports. The decision expanded a previous ruling—originally limited to a handful of plaintiffs—which found that blocking such updates likely violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The certified classes include transgender individuals without a valid passport, those with a passport set to expire within a year, those needing to update their gender marker or name, or those reapplying due to a lost or stolen passport. Passport offices will instruct applicants to sign an attestation form affirming they fall within one of these protected classes; at least two transgender readers has confirmed they were informed of the form which will be given to them by the passport office tomorrow.

In the immediate aftermath of the class ruling, multiple transgender people reported that they were not granted passports, even though the ruling took effect immediately. Several transgender people went to passport offices to receive rush passports due to impending travel, and were denied updated gender markers and told their passport may be held indefinitely while they await guidance on the ruling. One transgender person in San Francisco was denied a passport after an agent at the passport office reportedly responded to a question about following the court order by saying, “We don’t answer to courts.” When the applicant asked, “You’re telling me you don’t have to follow the law?” the supervisor replied, “We don’t.”

In response to the continued lack of compliance, the ACLU filed a motion to compel compliance, stating that the State Department had “not complied and are refusing to provide meaningful information to Plaintiffs about when they will be in compliance.” That motion appears to have been effective in pressuring the government, as passport approvals have now reportedly begun—at least for transgender individuals who visited passport agencies in person, have confirmed upcoming travel, and require emergency processing. For those applying through more traditional means, it is uncertain when the new procedures will be disseminated.

It’s important to note that individuals who apply through the updated process will have data collected indicating that they belong to the certified class—effectively identifying them as transgender and seeking to update their passport. For those concerned with privacy, this may factor into whether they pursue the update, especially amid escalating government crackdowns on transgender people. Still, for many, the ability to travel with an accurate gender marker may outweigh the risks.

As of Wednesday morning, multiple transgender individuals have reported successfully obtaining updated passports at in-person passport offices. These approvals appear to have been granted on an urgent travel basis—applicants had confirmed international travel within weeks, such as hotel bookings or plane tickets. One recipient shared the attestation form required to process the request, seen here:

Transgender people who wish to update their passports are advised to hold off until official word is announced either by the government or organizations involved in the legal process, according to a source at the ACLU, who stated that they could not confirm that passports are being processed yet. The ACLU currently maintains a FAQ that transgender people should follow closely to determine when and how they should update their passports.

Update: The state department has released official guidance here. For those wanting to update their passports, your window opens now and may not remain open long.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trump-admin-begins-processing-some at Jul 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT.

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