Student Major/Year in School
Business, second year
Faculty Mentor Information
Dr. Rachel Levitt, Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
Abstract
In this project, I asked what was likely to happen to black transgender people if federal civil rights law no longer formally protected transgender people from discrimination. To answer this question I explored what the potential ramifications might be for black transgender Kansans and black transgender folks nationally if the Supreme Court were to reverse the U.S Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC (a case that held anti-transgender discrimination was against the law because of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a law that bans discrimination based on sex).1 I studied the case and the legal implications as well as the available national and state data on discrimination transgender people experience. I worked to tease out how black transgender folk specifically experience lessened life chances by pulling information from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. What became obvious is that while anti-discrimination laws are an important tool for objecting to discrimination, they are not doing enough to remedy the remarkable levels of unemployment, homelessness, or violence experienced by black transgender people. If the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn the Sixth Circuit’s ruling in Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC then it would structurally permit discrimination and abuse while federally declaring black transgender people as unworthy of state protections.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Washington, Derrius (2019). "What Will Happen To Black Transgender People?," Kansas State University Undergraduate Research Conference. https://newprairiepress.org/ksuugradresearch/2019/posters/23
What Will Happen To Black Transgender People?
In this project, I asked what was likely to happen to black transgender people if federal civil rights law no longer formally protected transgender people from discrimination. To answer this question I explored what the potential ramifications might be for black transgender Kansans and black transgender folks nationally if the Supreme Court were to reverse the U.S Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC (a case that held anti-transgender discrimination was against the law because of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a law that bans discrimination based on sex).1 I studied the case and the legal implications as well as the available national and state data on discrimination transgender people experience. I worked to tease out how black transgender folk specifically experience lessened life chances by pulling information from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. What became obvious is that while anti-discrimination laws are an important tool for objecting to discrimination, they are not doing enough to remedy the remarkable levels of unemployment, homelessness, or violence experienced by black transgender people. If the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn the Sixth Circuit’s ruling in Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC then it would structurally permit discrimination and abuse while federally declaring black transgender people as unworthy of state protections.
