By James Esseks, Director, LGBT & HIV Project

Over the past year, as public policy debates about transgender rights have deepened — and anti-trans rhetoric has escalated — in state legislatures and in the courts, our nation has started learning more about who transgender people are — our neighbors, our co-workers, our fellow students, and our family members. 

The national discussion often focuses on what restroom transgender people should use, even though the range of issues affecting the community is much broader. When it comes to single-sex spaces and activities, the ACLU has a clear position: Transgender people can use facilities and participate in activities that match who they are. We believe it is not only the right answer from a human point of view, but it is also legally required by statutory and constitutional bans on sex discrimination.

We have taken that position while fighting anti-transgender bills in at least 17 states this past year as well as in court, where we represent transgender people in all three of the current cases challenging bans on transgender individuals’ use of restrooms consistent with their gender identity (in Virginia, North Carolina, and Illinois). The ACLU’s position derives from our core commitment to equality and reflects our decades-long work to fight sex discrimination, including on behalf of women, transgender people, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. 

Everyone has to use the restroom. Transgender people live their lives consistent with their gender identity (the internal sense we all have of our gender). When transgender individuals are barred from using restrooms that match who they are, they are essentially closed off from participating in public life. A transgender woman is a woman. To tell her (as to tell any woman) that she must use the men’s room undermines her identity. In addition, it subjects her to a real risk of violence. 

Similarly, a transgender man is a man. To tell him (as to tell any man) that he must use the women’s room undermines his identity and subjects him to a risk of violence and harassment. In addition, for many transgender people, living their gender in all parts of their lives, including when using single-sex spaces, is part of the medical treatment that is prescribed for them — it alleviates what would otherwise be significant distress. 

It’s no accident that this issue is surfacing now, as protections for transgender people increasingly become part of the national conversation. Restrooms have been center stage in prior civil rights fights, including for African-Americans, for men and women around the Equal Rights Amendment, in the context of fighting for access for people living with disabilities, and during the peak of the AIDS crisis, when homophobia fed fears of gay people using restrooms. Opponents of transgender equality are seeking to exploit the public’s lack of knowledge about transgender people to incite fear and stop any further progress for transgender rights or more broadly for LGBT rights. 

We’re in the midst of a major civil rights battle, one that’s likely to continue for some time. Thankfully, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education are fighting for equality with us.

The ACLU’s work on behalf of transgender people, including educating the public about who trans people are through our communications and advocacy work, is far from over.

By Dr. Stephanie Dahl, Physician

I am a doctor in North Dakota, and I love my work. One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is helping cancer survivors who are now facing infertility from their lifesaving chemotherapy and radiation treatments achieve their dream of having a family. Some of these patients require in-vitro fertilization to have a baby, but others must rely on donor sperm or donor egg. However, if some of our lawmakers have their way, I will have to turn away cancer survivors and as well as many other couples with infertility.

A series of measures pending before the North Dakota legislature would interfere with the private, personal decisions of families all across North Dakota. These measures aim to ban abortion in all circumstances, and, if enacted, could prohibit IVF, outlaw most donor sperm and donor egg, and threaten access to several forms of contraception. By limiting women's safe reproductive health care options, politicians could put women's lives and health at risk.

As a physician and a concerned citizen, I see this as an ominous step for a state government. Not only are several states attempting to tell women how and when they can end a pregnancy, in North Dakota, lawmakers are telling women how and when they can or can't conceive that pregnancy, too.

But the battle for keeping health care decisions in the hands of patients won't stop at the North Dakota border. The people pushing these measures have their sights on other states, too. That's why we all need to pay attention to the efforts at our state capitols, wherever they may be. If you are in North Dakota, call your Senator today. If you are not in North Dakota, this battle for health care privacy may be coming to your state.

This week, we will see if politicians get the message. The State Senate is expected to vote on these anti-health care measures on Thursday.

Will our state lawmakers listen to the voices of local North Dakota residents and reject measures that interfere with the doctor-patient relationship? Or will they bow to outside extremists who are pushing a radical agenda in states across the country? The answer matters – not only for families in North Dakota but for families all across America.

By Nathaniel J. Turner, ACLU Washington Legislative Office

Last month, an Australian woman sunbathing topless in her back yard was accidentally captured in a photograph by a drone snapping pictures for a real estate listing. The picture was placed in online ads and billboards before the mistake was caught. With the U.S. working on regulations for commercial drones, you might think that cases like this would be part of the conversation. But so far, both Congress and the FAA have passed the buck on creating privacy protections for domestic drones. Some of the little work that has been done on privacy protections has fallen to the FAA’s six drone test sites across the country.

These test sites were authorized by the FAA in in December 2013 to research “certification and operational” requirements for bringing drones to American skies. The sites, in Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia, will test government and private uses for drones, from tracking caribou movements to monitoring beaches for law enforcement. And each must also create a privacy policy to address concerns about the data being collected at each site and how it is used.

The creation of the sites was ordered by Congress in the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act (FMRA). Despite rising concern over the privacy implications of drones, the FMRA made no attempt to direct privacy protections. The FAA also balked at developing federal privacy standards. Contrary to the urgings of the ACLU and others, the FAA provided no baseline privacy standards for the sites. Aside from some very general guidelines, all specifics about data collection, use, or retention were left to each test site to decide.

With such wide latitude from the FAA, the privacy policies are as diverse as the states themselves— ranging from the comprehensive to the perfunctory.

The test sites in both Nevada and Virginia have policies that clearly address a number of privacy concerns involving drones. Nevada’s site, for example, will choose drone flight paths based on the type of data they will collect to minimize the potential for invasion of privacy. The policyalso requires drone operators to log any potential privacy impacts that occur during flights. The policy at the Virginia site, while not as comprehensive, limits the storage of data to 14 days and requires notification of the public before a test flight begins.

The worst policies are those in Texas and New York. The Texas policymakes individual privacy violations almost impossible to remedy, and places the burden on the victim to show “demonstrable proof” that an image violating his or her privacy exists in order to compel the test site to destroy the image.

New York’s policy is even vaguer than Texas’s and offers only general assurances of privacy protection. It states that no data on individuals will be “intentionally” collected, but gives no specifics on how to mitigate unintentional collection. It goes on to say that unintentionally collected data will be destroyed, yet it offers no limits on how long data will be stored or how it will be determined if data collected violates a person’s privacy.

Somewhere in the middle are the policies in Alaska and North Dakota. The Alaska site’s policy has some good elements—it is the only policy to explicitly state that data collected during tests will not be turned over to law enforcement absent a court order. However, it lacks a data retention policy (it promises that the policy will be published separately). North Dakota is an unusual case in that it appears not to have any published policy, instead using a committee convened by the University of North Dakota to deal with privacy issues. The lack of details makes drawing any conclusions about the protection of privacy in that state impossible.

The purpose of these test sites is to chart the future course of drone use—including the privacy implications. But with each site taking a wildly different approach to privacy with little FAA oversight, whether or not this future will include protections for the fundamental rights of Americans remains to be seen.