The Biden administration reversed a rule proposed by the Trump administration that would have allowed federally funded emergency homeless shelters accommodating people on a single-sex basis to decline admittance to certain transgender people.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development withdrew the rule, which “would have allowed for HUD-sanctioned, federally funded discrimination against transgender people,” Secretary Marcia Fudge announced on Thursday.
The withdrawn rule, which was proposed on July 24, 2020, and scheduled to publish in the Federal Register at the end of April, was titled, “Making Admission or Placement Determinations Based on Sex in Facilities Under Community Planning and Development Housing Programs.” It was put forward by HUD during the Trump administration as a response to a previous rule established in 2016.
That rule mandated that emergency shelter programs ensure shelter access to a person in accordance with that person’s gender identity.
The 2016 rule “impermissibly restricted single-sex facilities in a way not supported by congressional enactment, minimized local control, burdened religious organizations, manifested privacy issues, and imposed regulatory burdens,” according to the text.
“Under the proposed rule, if a single-sex facility permissibly provides accommodation for women, and its policy is to serve only biological women, without regard to gender identity, it may decline to accommodate a person who identifies as female but who is a biological male. Conversely, the same shelter may not, on the basis of sex, decline to accommodate a person who identifies as male but who is a biological female,” it stated.
The Trump-era rule “would have allowed shelter programs and operators to subject transgender individuals to inappropriate and intrusive inquiries, deny them accommodations, and subject them to greater harassment,” the Biden administration said.
“Access to safe, stable housing and shelter is a basic necessity,” Fudge said in a department press release. “Unfortunately, transgender and gender-nonconforming people report more instances of housing instability and homelessness than cisgender people.”
“This action reaffirms HUD’s mission and commitment to creating inclusive communities and quality housing for all,” the press release continued. “Excluding any eligible person from HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development funded emergency shelters, temporary housing, buildings, housing, or programs because of a person’s gender identity is counter to HUD’s mission.”
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President Joe Biden has issued at least two executive orders directing the government’s policies with respect to transgender people and gender identity, including one signed on his first day in office directing agency heads to “consider whether to revise, suspend, or rescind such agency actions, or promulgate new agency actions” to “combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.”
