Kira Barrett ‘18
Assistant News Editor
Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed a federal policy that had protected transgender people from discrimination in the workplace. This policy, put into place by the Obama administration three years ago, was under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Washington Post revealed a memo written by Sessions on the subject, in which he argues that Title VII does not apply to transgender people. “Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination encompasses discrimination between men and women but does not encompass discrimination based on gender identity per se, including transgender status,” Sessions wrote.
The policy reversal was met with severe backlash and resistance from the left. According to CNN, Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said, “According to Sessions, an employer is free to hang a ‘Transgender Need Not Apply’ sign in their window. Fortunately, he is dead wrong on the law,” adding, “We’ll see him in court.”
Keisling is not alone in her stance. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which per the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enforces laws protecting people against discrimination in the workplace based on their race, religion, sex, etc., maintains that “sex” refers to a person’s gender identity. This definition of “sex” includes not only cisgender, but also transgender identity.
This is not the first time the Trump Administration has rolled back transgender rights. In July, President Trump announced that transgender people would no longer be allowed to serve in the military. Again, this was met with protests that erupted across the nation.
Sessions’s stance on transgender rights is also not a surprise. Before he was appointed Attorney General, he was notoriously against LGBT rights. According to CNN, in 1996, Sessions, then Alabama Attorney General, had publicly tried to prevent a gay rights conference from taking place at the University of Alabama.
More recently, Sessions’s stance against transgender rights has come into question. The New York Times reported that Sessions assigned a federal hate crimes lawyer to prosecute the murderer of a transgender high school student from Iowa. Sessions has made similar moves in the past involving individual cases.
The New York Times article reported that Sessions is expected to continue to investigate and condemn specific instances of hate crimes but is unlikely to address the underlying cause of those crimes as the Obama Administration had done with its interpretation of Title VII.
Despite this new reversal of protections for transgender people in the workplace, Smith College’s position on the subject is unwavering.
Katherine Rowe, Provost and Interim Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity at Smith College, released a statement on Smith’s official website and in a campus-wide email, asserting that Sessions’s reversal of federal protections for transgender people does not impact Massachusetts law or “Smith’s commitments to protecting its employees and students from discrimination and harassment.”
Rowe continued, “The college stands by and affirms all aspects of its Notice of Nondiscrimination, and Smith will continue to consider any instance of gender identity based discrimination as a violation of our policies and principles.”
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly used “transgenders” instead of “transgender” in the title. We sincerely apologize for the mistake.
