Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) will take the reins of the Congressional Equality Caucus, a coalition of Home Democrats supportive of LGBTQ rights, within the 119th Congress, the group introduced Friday.
Takano will lead the caucus, based in 2008 by then-Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.), by means of what’s prone to be a tumultuous period for transgender rights within the U.S.
Republicans, together with President-elect Trump, made trans individuals and points a central a part of their 2024 campaigns and are already eyeing laws and administrative guidelines that will prohibit transgender rights and roll again nondiscrimination protections instituted by the outgoing Biden administration.
“Over the next several years, we will see a constant barrage of attacks on the rights and dignity of the queer community — especially against our transgender siblings — by the Trump Administration and the Republican majorities in both the House and Senate,” Takano stated Friday in a press release.
“As Chair of the Equality Caucus, I will lead our coalition of openly-LGBTQI+ members and our allies in the fight to both defend the queer community and push equality forward, including by reintroducing the Equality Act,” he stated, referring to a proposal he reintroduced final yr to make gender id and sexual orientation federally protected courses.
Home Democrats have filed iterations of the Equality Act, which might lengthen current civil rights protections to LGBTQ People, since no less than the Nineteen Seventies. Former Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who led the Equality Caucus between 2021 and 2022, launched the invoice in its fashionable kind in 2015. It is essentially unpopular amongst Republicans, together with Trump, who say the measure will undermine spiritual liberty.
Takano, the primary out homosexual particular person of coloration elected to Congress and the primary brazenly LGBTQ lawmaker of Asian descent, will exchange Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) as Equality Caucus chair. In a press release, Pocan known as Takano “a strong defender” of LGBTQ rights towards legislative assaults launched disproportionately by Republicans.
“I look forward to continuing to work with him — and every member of the Equality Caucus — in defending the rights of all Americans from Republican extremists in every branch of government,” Pocan stated Friday.
Republicans, who will management each chambers within the new Congress and the White Home, have signaled that laws concentrating on transgender People’ entry to transition-related well being care and restrooms, altering rooms and sports activities groups that match their gender id will likely be a high precedence over the subsequent two years.
The Home GOP included a measure to ban transgender student-athletes nationwide from competing in girls’s and women’ sports activities in an preliminary package deal of guidelines for the 119th Congress, suggesting an early ground vote on the problem might be on the horizon.
Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who made historical past in November as the primary brazenly transgender particular person elected to Congress, has already confronted some hostility from Republicans forward of her swearing-in Friday.
Within the days following McBride’s election, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) filed a decision to bar transgender girls from girls’s single-sex services on Capitol Hill, a transfer she stated was “absolutely” pushed by the Delaware lawmaker’s arrival to Washington. Later in November, Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) introduced a brand new coverage barring transgender individuals from restrooms and altering rooms that match their gender id on the Home facet of the Capitol complicated.
Johnson made the announcement on Transgender Day of Remembrance, acknowledged annually to memorialize trans individuals who died due to anti-trans violence.
McBride has stated she’s going to comply with Johnson’s rule, though she disagrees with it. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” she stated in a press release after Johnson introduced the brand new coverage.
Together with McBride, 11 brazenly LGBTQ Home Democrats — together with new members Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas) and Emily Randall (D-Wash.) — will function co-chairs of the Equality Caucus within the new Congress.
Takano within the 119th will even function rating member of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, a member on the Committee on Schooling and the Workforce, first vice chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) and a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).
