A publication of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois // Volume 74 // Number 2 // summer 2016

The Illinois

BRIEF

transgender rights: why we do this work

an interview with Aclu of illinois lgbt And Hiv project director John Knight The ACLU of Illinois is fortunate that our LGBT and HIV Project Director, John Knight, is recognized as an expert in the law supporting transgender rights because of his long experience working in the field. Mr. Knight currently directs a diverse docket of important legal cases and other forms of advocacy assisting transgender people overcome discrimination. In an effort explore this topic more deeply, we present this question and answer with Mr. Knight, addressing some of the most commonly asked questions about this work and his perspective on where the fight for transgender rights will take us. Why is the ACLU involved in advancing the rights of people who are transgender? Events and news coverage over the past year raised the profile of transgender people fighting for respectful and fair treatment, as well as the ACLU’s work to assist transgender people in defending and extending their rights to be treated fairly here in Illinois and across the nation. Two things can be said about the ongoing public discussion around these issues. First, the unprecedented level and vitriol of anti-transgender rhetoric, feeding fear and misunderstanding among some portions of the populace, shows how far we have to go to overcome the discrimination and violence transgender people face in so many aspects of life. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the public discussion of these issues allowed many people—for the very first time—to hear stories from and about our neighbors, co-workers, classmates and family members who are transgender that teach us what it means to be transgender, the challenges transgender people face, and the diverse talents, experiences and contributions of transgender people in communities throughout this country.

JK: Our work to partner with transgender people who are fighting for their rights has long been part of the ACLU’s work to advance the civil rights of people most vulnerable to discrimination. Throughout the organization’s long history, we have fought on behalf of people who were being targeted for abuse and discrimination by the government and the public in general—whether people of color, newcomers to our nation, or LGBT people. Viewed in this historical context, it is not surprising that restrooms have become the center stage of this battle.

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In this issue 2. From the Executive Director // 3. legislative roundup // 4. Alex’s story // 5. Meet Dr. garofalo // 6-7. reproductive justice in illinois // 8. predictive policing // 9. new staff

Unpacking whole women’s health A resounding victory for women’s health and liberty Colleen K. Connell, Executive Director The Supreme Court’s 5-3 decision in Whole Women’s Health v. Abbott, striking down two Texas laws that restricted abortion, marked a resounding victory for women’s health and liberty. The Court’s decision validated the essential constitutional role of the judiciary, especially in cases involving fundamental rights, to test legislative assumptions—and biases—against reality. Both Texas laws reflected the anti-choice strategy of passing laws that make it difficult for women to access abortion care. Under the guise of “protecting women’s health,” one law required doctors who performed abortions to have admitting privileges within 30 miles of their clinic. The other law required abortions to be performed in mini-hospitals—ambulatory surgical centers—despite the fact that Texas allowed medical procedures that posed much higher risks in facilities that were not subject to such intense regulation. These laws often are known as TRAP laws—Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers. The impact of the Texas laws was immediate and draconian. After the admitting privileges requirement went into effect, the number of clinics that provided abortions dropped from 40 to about 20. Had the surgical center provision been allowed to take full effect, the number of clinics would have dropped from 20 to 7 or 8. As a consequence, Texas women had to travel greater distances and wait longer to have an abortion; some were unable to access the care they needed. The law, in fact, harmed women’s health rather than protecting it. In striking down these two anti-abortion laws, the Court breathed new life into the “undue burden” analysis articulated 24 years ago in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, stepping back from the extremely deferential review evidenced in the the Court’s 2007 decision in Carhart v. Gonzales, upholding a federal ban on certain abortion procedures.

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Justice Breyer, writing for a majority including Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, concluded the laws did not further women’s health. The evidence, as found by the trial court, shows that abortion is exceedingly safe, and much safer than other medical procedures that Texas allows doctors to provide without admitting privileges and in facilities other than ambulatory surgical centers. The Court concluded that neither Texas law offered medical benefits, and that there was no justification for the burdens on access resulting from a decrease in the number of clinics offering abortions. Thus, balancing the non-existent medical benefit of the laws against the very real obstacles created in terms of travel time and delay, the Court held that each law imposed an undue burden on a woman’s right to decide to end a pregnancy. The Court’s decision has nationwide implications. First, it reaffirmed that abortion was a “constitutionally protected liberty,” and that restrictions of this important right must receive careful judicial scrutiny. Second, it reaffirmed the vital role the judiciary plays in evaluating burdens imposed on the right of women to have an abortion; the Court emphatically rejected as erroneous the Fifth Circuit’s repeated deference to the legislature in weighing these burdens. The Court’s decision, welcome as it is, does not mean our work is done. Since 2010, more than 300 draconian state laws have been passed across the country restricting abortion rights. The ACLU must continue to challenge these laws. And, we must continue our unrelenting vigilance here in Illinois protecting our earlier victories, including one restricting the enforcement of an Illinois TRAP law. As the article at page 6 makes clear, more than 4 decades of ACLU advocacy has made Illinois a “safe” zone for doctors and women seeking reproductive health care. We must keep it that way!

ACLU // RBF Staff

Legislative Roundup Putting Patients First // In a soaring victory for patients’ rights, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed Senate Bill 1564 in late July, which amends the Health Care Right of Conscience Act (HCRCA). The HCRCA, enacted in 1977, was one of the broadest and most radical religious health care refusal law in the country because it permitted health care providers to deny both information and health care based on their religion or conscience. This victory reflects the culmination of years of advocacy on this particular legislative effort, and decades of advocacy to guarantee that the health care needs of patients in Illinois are not compromised by the religious or conscience beliefs of health care providers.

aclu-il.org/putpatientsfirst Cell Site Simulator (Stingray) Regulation // Illinois will now have statewide guidelines on the use of cell site simulators by law enforcement, thanks to Senate Bill 2343 signed by the governor. Cell site simulators known as “Stingrays” are devices that simulate cell phone network towers, tricking nearby mobile devices into connecting, and are used by law enforcement throughout the country. The most notable change in the law will be that a court order based on probable cause will be required before the technology can be used, and a prohibition on the use of the devices for purposes beyond identifying or locating an electronic device.

aclu-il.org/stingrays change possession of 10 grams or less of cannabis from a criminal conviction to a civil violation punishable by a fine, like a traffic ticket, of no more than $200. This measure can bring Illinois one step closer to reforming our broken criminal justice

aclu-il.org/cannabis

Contraceptive Coverage // Another bill signed into law guarantees that people who have health insurance will be able to receive FDA-approved birth control prescribed by a health care provider without a co-pay in addition to an accessible and timely waiver process to access birth control methods not covered by a plan. Finally, insurance companies must cover birth control prescriptions for up to 12 months at a time.

K.T. Sullivan Associate Director Mollie Dawson Senior Campaign Associate Logan Turner Foundation Relations Officer Edwin C. Yohnka Director of Communications & Public Policy Emmalee Scott Communications & Public Policy Associate Maude Carroll Digital Communications Manager Jesse Larson Assistant to the Executive Director Althea Walton Finance Director Kimberly Koziel Project Associate

Legislative Staff Mary Dixon Legislative Director Khadine Bennett Associate Legislative Director Ben Ruddell Criminal Justice Policy Attorney

Legal Staff

Civil Enforcement of Cannabis // Governor Rauner also signed into law a bill to

system by reducing the number of people who enter.

Colleen K. Connell Executive Director

aclu-il.org/contraceptives

Gender Marker on Birth Certificates // We plan to continue working on behalf of transgender and intersex Illinoisians to amend the Vital Records Act (House Bill 6073), to replace an outdated 54 year-old requirement for surgery to correct a gender marker on a birth certificate. This summer, our legislative team will be making visits with legislators to ensure we will have the votes to bring us closer to being able to call the bill in the fall veto session. aclu-il.org/vitalrecords

Benjamin S. Wolf Legal Director Lorie A. Chaiten Director, Reproductive Rights Project John A. Knight Director, LGBT & HIV Projects Karen Sheley Director, Police Practices Project Rebecca Glenberg Gail Waller Senior Staff Attorneys Camille Bennett Special Project Counsel Lindsay Miller Staff Attorney Claire Stewart Institutional Reform Project Attorney Emily Werth Judicial Bypass Project Attorney Amy Meek Bharathi Pillai Jenna Prochaska Legal Fellows Ghirlandi Guidetti Pride Law Fund Tom Steel Fellow Rachel Murphy Pritzker Legal Fellow Chris Romer Kaitlin Towner Legal Assistants

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It shouldn’t be so difficult to use the bathroom There is a lot to do on the road to fairness and dignity for transgender Americans, but I am very pleased to report on an important success that I, in partnership with the ACLU, was able to achieve in Illinois— ensuring access to gender-appropriate locker rooms and restrooms for students in my school. In April, the school board for the Williamsville– Sherman school district approved an agreement allowing transgender students to use the school restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity, as opposed to the sex they were assigned at birth. The agreement resulted from a charge of discrimination I filed with the Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) against my school. I am especially pleased that the administrators and board of my school reached an agreement to help not just me, but the students that will come after me as well. Restroom usage by students and others who are transgender has been widely talked about in Illinois and across the nation recently. Let me tell you why this issue is important to me. I struggled for a long time with the fact that I had been assigned female at birth, even though I knew deep down that I was a boy. At the end of my freshman year in high school, I met another transgender student, and everything that I had been feeling suddenly made sense. I understood that I could be male, even though the sex assigned to me at birth was female. Seeing myself as male felt right, and I became confident as a man. When I came “out” to the superintendent and principal in my school, some things went well. I was able to be called by my new male name. I was able to participate in a boys’

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by Alex McCray

physical education class. Still, transitioning at school was not easy. I was targeted by one group of students who bullied me, even having pennies thrown at me on the bus. However, having to be secluded and required to use a separate bathroom than what my classmates were using quickly became the most difficult part of my day. Located in a remote part of the school, the restroom itself had a sign above the door that read “restricted use only.” It didn’t get better on the inside. The facility was old, poorly maintained, and rarely cleaned. The lock on the door didn’t work and the water barely trickled from the faucet. The restroom also was isolated and hard to get to, meaning that getting to the restroom in the time I had between my classes was nearly impossible. I began to formulate strategies (often drinking very little throughout the day) so that I didn’t have to use the restroom during the entire school day. To say the least, holding it for an entire day could be extremely uncomfortable and I don’t think anyone should be put through that kind of unpleasant experience. I never liked being forced to use a restroom that no one else used. I eventually realized that being separated into this restroom was extremely demeaning and just not right. After all, when I went to the movies, out to eat, or to the mall, I used the public men’s room. No one cared. Over time, I began to feel like I was singled out at school. When I did use the “restricted use” restroom, it outed me to the entire school, who knew that only a student who is transgender would be asked to use that restroom. I became anxious and uncomfortable. I now have graduated but I leave knowing that the agreement we reached will mean that no future student will be knowingly ostracized for simply being who they are. The next transgender student at my school will hopefully find things a lot better than I did. I am proud to say that my school has made significant progress.

Meet Dr. Robert Garofalo Division Head, Adolescent Medicine, Lurie Children’s Hospital The ACLU’s work on behalf of transgender rights, especially students who are transgender, brings us into contact with advocates from the LGBT community that we have worked with for many years. But we also are working with new partners, with special expertise and understanding of the issues faced by persons who are transgender. One such organization is the Gender and Sex Development Program at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The program, which provides a holistic set of services to young people who are transgender and their families, has been in operation for three years. Recently, we interviewed Dr. Robert Garofalo, the co-director of the Program, to discuss his work and the needs of transgender youth. ACLU: Has anything surprised you about doing this work? Dr. Garofalo: When Lurie’s stepped into this space three years ago, there was no way that we imagined ourselves on the front lines of the next great LGBT civil rights battle over the use of bathrooms and locker rooms by young people who are transgender. We believed that we were meeting a need for medical services, but have increasingly found ourselves involved in advocacy—helping policymakers and the public come to understand that the notion of a binary determination of gender is antiquated. Once people are able to understand and embrace that notion, it

Dr. Robert Garofalo

is so much easier to accept, as an example, that it is critical for a young woman who is transgender to be permitted to use the bathroom and locker room with other girls—that denying her that use actually undermines her identity. So, in many ways, our work advocating for changes to public policy has been a natural evolution based on our work for specific patients.

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ACLU of Illinois Board of Directors Jill Metz* President Thurston Bailey* Frank Baiocchi* Marc Beem* Michael Brody Leah Bruno Will Burns Grace Chan* Barbara Flynn Currie Heidi Dalenberg* *Executive Committee

Roxana Espoz Ami Gandhi Rebecca Gilman David Goroff* Luis Gutierrez Vinni M. Hall Harriet Hausman* James Holzhauer Aziz Huq Colby Kingsbury Diane Klotnia* Laura Kofoid*

Ruth Krugly* Shermin Kruse Scott Lassar* Betsy Lehman Levisay Ada Lopez Corey McDougle Kerry A. Miller* Robert Murphy, MD Carrie Newton Richard J. O’Brien* Brian Richardson-Varona Morton Rosen*

Lya Dym Rosenblum Robert Sash* Anne Shaw Mary Stowell Howard Suskin Stelios Valavanis Shyni Varghese* Hilda Vega Charles Watkins Cindy Wilson

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Keeping illinois safe for women

The numbers are staggering. In the years since the mid-term elections of 2010—when voters elected socalled Tea Party Republicans to state legislatures and Congress across the United States—more than 300 measures have been approved at the state level that limit a woman’s access to abortion. These

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restrictions are pernicious, in that they are advanced under the guise of protecting women’s health while really being about denying women abortion care. The picture in Illinois is different—and that is no accident. It is because of more than 4 decades of ACLU of Illinois litigation and coalition leadership.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to the effort to wipe out abortion care across the country with its decision striking down a set of Texas laws, including one requiring abortion clinics to be the equivalent of small hospitals and another requiring physicians in these clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. These laws were medically unnecessary and resulted in shutting down more than half of the abortion clinics in that state. (You can read more about this decision in Executive Director Colleen Connell’s column on page 2.)

“The ACLU has led advocacy in the courts, in the legislature, and before state agencies, to defeat efforts to limit abortion in Illinois,” said Lorie Chaiten, the director of the Project. “Because of our vigilance over more than four decades, Illinois has escaped the cascade of bad laws that have been part of the landscape in other states.”

Restrictions like these are not limited to Texas, or even to states of the former Confederacy. They are the result of a well-orchestrated, nationwide effort that is hurting women right here in the Midwest. But thanks to the ACLU of Illinois’ advocacy, our home state remains a place where women can come to access care.

In 1985, the ACLU successfully challenged Illinois’ clinic regulations, nearly identical to those at issue in the Texas case, which imposed costly and burdensome requirements —from complex HVAC systems to unnecessary high ceilings and wide hallways. Illinois had singled out abortion for this special regulation that it did not impose on other, riskier outpatient procedures. In our case, known as Ragsdale v. Turnock, the ACLU blocked these unnecessary restrictions and secured an evidence-based regulatory process that continues today.

A recent report in Crain’s Chicago Business described some of the laws in our neighboring states as “some of the toughest abortion regulations in the country.” For example, Missouri requires a woman seeking an abortion to meet with a counselor who delivers a state-mandated lecture designed to discourage the woman from having an abortion and then wait 72 hours before actually getting the procedure. This means multiple trips to the clinic and thus multiple days away from home and work. Wisconsin also imposes a state-mandated lecture and waiting period. Indiana—having previously passed laws requiring waiting periods and mandatory lectures designed to discourage abortion—recently passed a law banning abortions in the case of some fetal anomalies, such as Down syndrome. As a result of ACLU of Indiana litigation, that law was enjoined before it could be enforced. None of these restrictions, however, are in place in Illinois. This is not an accident, of course. Anti-abortion activists did not forget that the Illinois legislature exists or fail to try these, and other, tactics in Illinois. Rather, a number of restrictions have been introduced and even enacted in Illinois, only to be blocked as a result of strategic, carefully-crafted ACLU litigation. The ACLU of Illinois’ Women’s and Reproductive Rights Project has been a force within the state, repeatedly returning to court to secure and maintain access to abortion in the Land of Lincoln.

The Project’s first court victory came even before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. In that case, Doe v. Scott, the ACLU secured the right to the first legal abortion in Illinois.

In addition to our litigation around clinic regulations, the ACLU has gone to court repeatedly to protect a woman’s right to access abortion and birth control and to challenge other measures that would have grossly restricted reproductive health care in our state. This litigation was in response to measures passed by the legislature and signed into law in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s. In short, while Illinois remains relatively free of such nagging restrictions, we can never be complacent. There has never been a time when the right to abortion and other reproductive health care has been “safe” in our state without the constant advocacy of the ACLU of Illinois Women’s and Reproductive Rights Project. “As we look toward the future, it is critical that we continue to work to ensure that every woman in Illinois has meaningful access to a full range of reproductive health care,” added Chaiten. “That will require constant vigilance. We can never give up.”

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Predictive policing

The 2002 science fiction film Minority Report is set in a future where the police force makes arrests for crimes not yet committed. The reality of predictive policing is more troubling. The Chicago Police Department recently has been promoting a secret algorithm and database to identify and predict those most likely to be involved in a violent crime. It may sound like science fiction, but predictive policing— without oversight—is happening in Chicago. CPD has developed the algorithm (the details of which they refuse to share) with the help of at least one local academic. The secret algorithm assigns scores based on several variables, including prior arrests, shootings, gang affiliations and other unknown variables, in order to generate a list of people in Chicago that the software claims have the highest likelihood of committing or becoming the victim of a violent crime. The higher the score, the more likely—according to the algorithm—the person is to be a perpetrator or victim of gun violence. People who have scores beyond a certain threshold are then put on a list by the police: the Strategic Subject List. According to police, the list includes about 1,400 people who police claim are responsible for the majority of gun violence in Chicago. If a person is ranked high enough on the list, they receive a visit from an armed police officer and at least one social worker. The police officer warns the person, and sometimes their family, that the person is on the CPD’s radar and that they will be subject to higher penalties and

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higher prosecution charges if they’re involved in any illegal activity in the future—which could translate to longer jail time. The police department claims that the social worker offers assistance, such as drug treatment programs, housing, and job training programs. However, the police department has refused to share information about those programs, how often people accept the assistance, or their success rate. For the subjects on the list, all this means that they are subject to more police scrutiny with no public assessment of what services are offered to pull them out of a critical situation. The secret nature of the algorithm raises additional civil liberties concerns because algorithms similar to the one used by the Chicago Police Department have caused problems in other contexts. For example, studies have shown that algorithms used to predict whether someone may be involved in future criminal activity have been both wrong and racially biased. We are at a crisis point in Chicago regarding community and police relations. Transparency is critical to restore faith in the system. The department must embrace transparency, freely sharing information with the public, rather than shrouding policing in secrecy. At a minimum, the CPD must explain the factors and variables used in the algorithm, explain what kinds of services are being offered to people on the list, and put in place a process for individuals to challenge their inclusion on the Strategic Subject List.

STAY Informed Help raise freedom’s voice in Illinois and across the nation. Join the Action Alert e-mail list to keep informed and know when to act.

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ACLU WELCOMES NEW STAFF Ghirlandi Guidetti hails from Los Angeles. Having received his undergraduate degree in Philosophy with a minor in Psychology & Law from the University of Southern California, he headed east to attend Loyola University Chicago, where he obtained his J.D. and a Master’s in public policy. Ghirlandi knew he wanted to focus on public interest law based on the five years he worked as a paralegal prior to law school. It was at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights where he Legal Fellow Ghirlandi Guidetti really cut his teeth, working on issues of employment and housing discrimination as well as the school-to-prison pipeline where he defended young people in expulsion hearings. Ghirlandi joined the ACLU of Illinois in 2015 as a Loyola Public Interest Law Fellow, and since then has primarily worked on cases involving transgender students’ rights to access gender-appropriate bathroom and locker room facilities. “Talking to the parents and hearing how difficult this is for them has made me realize that improving the school’s policy now will encourage other schools to change their policies, and potentially help thousands of transgender students in years to come.” Ghirlandi will soon begin working on a project as a Tom Steel Fellow, funded by the Pride Law Fund, where he will work towards reducing the incidence of the rejection of LGBT youth in the foster care system.

Bharathi Pillai grew up in Peru, Illinois, a small town two hours southwest of Chicago. Bharathi

Legal Fellow Bharathi Pillai

studied psychology and finance at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Her background in counselling and interest in helping marginalized people navigate the legal system led her to obtain her law degree from New York University School of Law. After graduating law school, she traveled to her family’s hometown in Tamil Nadu, India to work at a human rights organization on issues relating to the caste system, gender violence, and criminal justice.

Upon returning to New York, she worked for the legal firm Ropes & Gray as a litigation associate, representing individuals in family law and asylum cases, and assisting in a class action against the NYC Department of Corrections for the unconstitutional use of excessive force against inmates on Rikers Island. As a Legal Fellow in the General Civil Liberties program, Bharathi has worked on a variety of issue areas including LGBT rights and police practices. She is currently working on litigation the case CANA v. City of Chicago, in which the ACLU and Central Austin Neighborhood Association are challenging the City’s discriminatory deployment of police officers.

Zsea Bowmani joins the ACLU of Illinois staff this fall in a newly-created position as the Tawani

Zsea Bowmani

Transgender Rights Fellow. Zsea will help the ACLU expand its legal, policy and outreach work regarding the many challenges faced by transgender people in interacting with institutions such as schools, employers, and prisons and in accessing necessary medical care. As a talented transgender lawyer with experience working on these issues already, Zsea is a wonderful addition to the ACLU legal staff.

Zsea received his J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law with a certificate in Public Interest and Social Justice Law and will soon complete a fellowship at the National LGBTQ Task Force where he worked as a Reproductive Justice Fellow. Most recently, Zsea submitted written testimony for the Congressional committee hearing on the First Amendment Defense Act, detailing the unprecedented level of discrimination that transgender and LGB people would face under that proposed bill. We are thrilled to welcome him aboard!

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Victory for transgender students (Continued from Page 1) Restrooms have often been part of civil rights battles in the past, whether we are talking about the struggles for equal treatment of African Americans during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, fighting for equality and respect for people living with disabilities, or during the height of public hysteria about HIV, when fear and misunderstanding about the condition led some to try to block access to restrooms and locker rooms for gay people. The ACLU has long stood for the proposition that unfounded fears of someone perceived to be “different” cannot be an excuse for discrimination. We always will fight that fight. What is the one thing that you want readers to understand about someone who is transgender? JK: The most important thing to understand is that we all have the same basic human need to be respected for who we are, whether we are transgender or not. And that includes respect for our core internal sense of our gender— our gender identity—as male, female, or something else. The bottom line is this: a transgender girl is a girl. She has been a girl at least as early as her realization that she is female, and often well before she shared that information with her family and began to live her life as a girl or woman. To suggest otherwise—that this girl is not really a girl—is cruel and heartbreaking. You worked to assist Student A and her family in District 211 to win her ability to use the genderappropriate locker rooms. Opponents in the District have raised concerns about the privacy of other students in the locker room. What do you say to those students and parents? JK: Everyone cares about privacy. I have sympathy for those who feel uncomfortable in a locker room. Adolescence can be a challenge for many of us. The reality is that some people are uncomfortable changing clothes in front of other people for a whole variety of reasons, not simply because someone is transgender.

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But there simply is no legally-recognized privacy right to demand that a student be barred from a locker room because the student is different, or her presence in the locker room makes other students feel uncomfortable. And we cannot stand idly by while students are denied the use of gender-appropriate restrooms and locker rooms solely because they are transgender, and made to feel less than human in the process. If there are a handful of students who are uncomfortable with transgender students in the locker room or restroom, we encourage school officials to take steps to assist these students. Schools can, for example, provide additional education to these students about what it means to be transgender, how harmful it is for transgender students to be excluded from the restrooms and locker rooms used by others, and how transgender students pose no threat to others in these communal spaces. If such information and education does not help, schools should offer these students alternative private spaces for restrooms and locker rooms. What schools must not do is bar transgender students from the communal facilities. We know that in schools that already have adopted transgender-inclusive policies, students overwhelmingly welcome and support transgender students and fail to see any problem with their inclusion in restrooms and locker rooms. Adults would do well to learn from these students. How important is the guidance issued to public schools by the Departments of Education and Justice on how schools across the country should address the rights of transgender students? JK: The guidance issued in May is critically important. It demonstrates that in this battle for basic fairness and humane treatment, we have a partner in the federal government which also is committed to assisting transgender students who are facing discrimination. The DOJ/DOE guidance provides important clarity to schools that receive federal financial assistance about their existing obligations under the law to protect all students from sex discrimination, including transgender students. This is not a change to any existing obligations, but simply a restatement and clarification.

Perhaps the very best thing that the guidance provides is a set of best practices to assist schools meet their obligations. We have regularly heard from and about schools who want to “do the right thing” but need some guidance regarding the policies they should put into place. These best practices should be a huge help for these schools.

Interview with Dr. Garofalo (Continued from Page 5) ACLU: When you describe the holistic services that you provide to young people who are transgender and their families, what are those services? Dr. Garofalo: We were fortunate in creating the program to have the support of the Tawani Foundation, which enabled us to put in place from the outset a comprehensive list of services for young people and their families. We have general pediatricians, endocrinologists, urologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and nursing staff that can provide a range of services to young people and their families. One thing that we saw from the outset was that many families did not know where to go to get services for a child who was transgender and might not have thought of the traditional LGBT health care providers, because the parents were not integrated into that community. We have created a warm, comfortable and supportive environment in which families can obtain a range of services in a holistic way, so that the medical and other professionals are talking and consulting with one another. One element that has emerged as incredibly important is our nursing services, where families often find assistance in dealing with insurance denials. Some of these treatments are very expensive and should be covered by health insurance, but it can be a process that is difficult to navigate. ACLU: What do you think are the myths that some members of the general public do not understand about people who are transgender, especially young people who are transgender? Dr. Garofalo: The biggest issue for me is the number of people who do not understand that gender identity is different from the anatomical sex assigned to someone at birth. The more research we do in this area and the more we understand about human brain function, we know that

gender identity results from a great many factors – not just anatomy. It is exasperating that the people who most virulently reject this notion have not really considered the human beings—especially the children—who are involved. When I hear people criticize our work, for example, I think it strange that they are not able to recognize that we are simply helping the well-being of the children that we serve. It also is painful as a clinician to see when groups or individuals, for example, purposefully mis-gender a student who is transgender. This intentional mis-labeling is really nothing more than a form of bullying, designed to demean the individual and create strife. I often wish that the people who engage in this behavior would just take the time to meet and get to know some of our clients. It would really change their views. ACLU: How would you describe the children and the families you work with? Dr. Garofalo: They are resilient and remarkable. The families also are incredible. Like my colleagues in this program, I do not think most of the parents who come through our doors believed that they would be part of the next great LGBT civil rights battle after the freedom to marry was affirmed by the Supreme Court. But once the parents understood that was the landscape, the entire family often jumps in full force. And, these parents are incredible advocates for their children and for all young people who are transgender. That is rewarding and fulfilling to see. ACLU: What is your hope for the future? Dr. Garofalo: My real hope is that in just a few years the care that we provide will be viewed not as specialized or remarkable, but just routine. The children and families we serve simply should be treated like every other family.

The Illinois Brief (ISSN: 1044-7225) is published four times per year - winter, spring, summer and fall - by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and the Roger Baldwin Foundation of the ACLU, Inc., 180 N. Michigan, Suite 2300, Chicago, IL 60601, (312) 201 - 9740. Subscription by membership; subscriber price: 50 cents per year. Periodicals class postage paid at Chicago, Illinois and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Illinois Brief, ACLU, 180 N. Michigan, Suite 2300, Chicago, IL 60601-7401. All unsigned articles may be reprinted without express permission. However, the following acknowledgement must accompany all reprints: “Reprinted from the Illinois Brief, a publication of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.” Express written permission is required for all signed articles in this publication.

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