The White House did not brief the HELP committee before the New York Times report came out, a Murray aide said.
Another member of the HELP Committee recommended an existing legislative recourse to address the administration's planned policy shift.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., the first openly gay person elected to the Senate, said Congress should pass her bill, the Equality Act, co-sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. The Equality Act would provide consistent federal protections for people based on sexual orientation and gender identity, two criteria which currently are not protected under existing federal non-discrimination law.
\"This is another reason why Congress needs to take action and pass the Equality Act. We cannot allow the Trump Administration to erase transgender people from federal civil rights protections,\" Baldwin said.
The reports also spurred strong responses from the larger LGBT community, and about 100 people or so participated in a protest sponsored by the National Center for Transgender Rights in Washington D.C. Monday afternoon.
Before Trump himself weighed in, the White House referred comments to HHS, whose spokesperson Caitlin Oakley noted that a 2016 federal court ruling found that the Obama administration had gone beyond federal statute in its own recognition of gender which went beyond a binary designation.
“That court found that the Obama administration regulation was overbroad and inconsistent with the text of the 1972 Title IX law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex. The court order remains in full force and effect today and HHS is bound by it as we continue to review the issue,” Oakley’s statement read in part.
Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., also tweeted their initial disapproval of the new policy without delving into specifics about how they might take congressional action to challenge the policies.
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