A transgender employee at Dulles International Airport filed a lawsuit accusing the Department of Homeland Security of sex discrimination over the agency’s new policy banning transgender Transportation Security Administration employees from performing pat-down checks.
TSA, which is part of DHS, now operates in conjunction with President Donald Trump’s executive orders directing government agencies to issue policies based on biological sex instead of gender identity.
Under the new policy, transgender TSA employees are prohibited from performing airport security screening pat-downs, and they are required to use restrooms that align with their biological sex, triggering the lawsuit last week from Danielle Mittereder.
“Solely because she is transgender, TSA now prohibits Plaintiff from conducting core functions of her job, impedes her advancement to higher-level positions and specialized certifications, excludes her from TSA-controlled facilities, and subjects her identity to unwanted and undue scrutiny each workday,” the complaint says, according to the Associated Press.
Jonathan Puth, Mittereder’s lawyer, told the outlet, “This is somebody who is really dedicated to her job and wants to make a career at TSA. And while her gender identity was never an issue for her in the past, all of a sudden it’s something that has to be confronted every single day.”
In response, TSA spokesman Russell Read explained that the agency’s policy is that biological male employees pat down male passengers and biological female officers pat down female passengers.
“Male Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on male passengers and female Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on female passengers, based on operational needs,” Read said.
TITLE IX ACTIVIST PREDICTS GENETIC SCREENING ‘IS THE FUTURE OF WOMEN’S SPORTS’
The Trump administration has argued that basing policy on gender identity is “subjective,” “internally inconsistent,” and defies biological realities.
“[Gender identity] diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body,” Trump wrote in a January executive order. “Invalidating the true and biological category of ‘woman’ improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.”
