A coalition of U.S. businesses pushed back on Thursday against any effort by the Trump administration to remove civil rights protections for transgender people.
Fifty-six companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, American Airlines, and Dow Chemical issued a statement opposing any policy that “violates the privacy rights of those that identify as transgender, gender non-binary, or intersex.”
Speculation is mounting that Trump will seek to narrow the definition of gender, which would erase legal safeguards for such individuals.
[More: Transgender Republicans ‘completely devastated’ by Trump’s LGBTQ switch]
“Cognizant of growing medical and scientific consensus, courts have recognized that policies that force people into a binary gender definition determined by birth anatomy fail to reflect the complex realities of gender identity and human biology,” the coalition wrote.
Discrimination “imposes enormous productivity costs” and runs in opposition to the expansion of rights for transgender people across much of the business community, the group wrote. More than 80 percent of the 500 top U.S. companies have gender-identity protections, the letter states, and most have healthcare coverage that includes transgender individuals.
“Transgender people are our beloved family members and friends, and our valued team members,” the coalition wrote. “What harms transgender people harms our companies.”
The New York Times reported last month that the Trump administration would propose limiting the definition of gender to include only male or female, based upon the biology of an individual at birth – effectively reversing Obama-era policies.
The shift is expected to come in proposed rules this fall from the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.
