A Trump administration proposal would end gender identity protections for people in federally funded housing and shelters.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed rule would remove references to “gender” and “gender identity” from agency regulations and replace them with “sex,” defined as a person’s biological classification as male or female. That would repeal an Obama-era rule that ensured housing programs are open without regard to gender identity.
The new rule also would allow owners or operators of shelters and other facilities that permit single-sex or sex-specific facilities “to require reasonable assurances and evidence to confirm the sex of an individual seeking service.”
“Through these revisions, the rule would ensure equal access to qualifying facilities would be provided in accordance with the sex of an individual based on his or her immutable biological classification as either male or female rather than the ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity,” the proposed rule said.
The department will take public comments on the proposal through the end of June.
The National Housing Law Project advocacy group criticized the measure, saying it would force federally funded shelters to deny access to unhoused transgender people and allow federally funded housing providers to discriminate against applicants and tenants based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“Not only will the proposed policies directly harm families and communities, they will increase costs for state and local governments, hospital systems, and social services agencies by forcing more housing insecure people to live on the street rather than in shelter,” Chief Program Officer Deborah Thrope said in a statement.
The proposed rule would affect a population already experiencing disproportionate levels and risks of homelessness. Nearly one-third of transgender respondents in a 2022 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality said they had experienced homelessness, while a UCLA School of Law Williams Institute analysis found transgender adults were several times more likely than cisgender straight adults to have been homeless in the past year.
The measure could spark a legal battle between the administration and states that adopted gender identity protections into housing and shelter laws.
California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York protect gender identity in housing, public accommodations or both. On the other hand, Iowa and Idaho enacted laws that define sex biologically or restrict access to sex-specific spaces, regardless of gender identity.