HUD to change transgender rules for single-sex homeless shelters [View all]
Source: Washington Post
HUD to change transgender rules for single-sex homeless shelters
The shelters could define sex based on biology, not self-identity.
By Paige Winfield Cunningham
6/12/2020, 8:52:03 p.m.
Single-sex homeless shelters could choose to accommodate only people whose biological sex matches that of those they serve, under a rule to be proposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the coming weeks.
The proposed rule would scrap the Obama administrations 2016 guidance requiring such shelters to accept transgender people but retains its 2012 rule barring federal housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The agency had been working on the regulation since spring 2019.
Under HUDs proposed new rule, details of which were obtained by The Washington Post, operators of single-sex shelters may consider someones biological sex instead of how they self-identify in making placement and accommodation decisions. They could determine an individuals sex based on a good faith belief that an individual seeking access
is not of the sex, as defined in the single sex facilitys policy, which the facility accommodates, the proposed rule says.
A person denied entrance to a shelter on the basis of this policy must receive a transfer recommendation to another facility, the rule says. Shelter operators could also choose to continue determining someones sex on the basis of how the person self-identifies. But whichever approach is chosen must be applied uniformly and consistently, the rule says.
The proposed rule, being circulated among lawmakers on Capitol Hill, is the latest effort by the Trump administration to rewrite federal rules on how government programs provide for transgender people. The Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule Friday that also emphasizes biological sex over how a person identifies.
-snip-
Read more:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hud-to-change-transgender-rules-for-single-sex-homeless-shelters/2020/06/12/d47a5744-ad03-11ea-9063-e69bd6520940_story.html