{"id":3447,"date":"2025-10-14T08:15:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T08:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/3447\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T08:15:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T08:15:11","slug":"california-shores-up-protections-on-transgender-people-amid-white-house-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/3447\/","title":{"rendered":"California shores up protections on transgender people amid White House attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

California will seal records of transgender adults who change their names and gender markers on official documents and limit data sharing with federal agencies after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a handful of bills shoring up protections for transgender and nonbinary people as the White House has targeted the community for attack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under a 2023 state law, California courts seal records for minors<\/a> under 18 years of age who change their name and gender identifier to protect their privacy. In January, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, proposed extending those protections to adults via Senate Bill 59, citing an increase in transphobic attacks and the incoming Trump administration\u2019s antipathy towards the trans community.<\/p>\n

Newsom signed three other bills from Wiener and fellow Democratic legislators Rick Chavez Zbur and Chris Ward that expand confidentiality for trans people receiving gender-affirming health care and streamline bureaucratic processes for trans adults and children to change their gender markers and names on official documents.<\/p>\n

Ward, Zbur, and Wiener are members of the Legislative LGBTQ Caucus. Newsom signed their bills on Monday evening, hours before a deadline requiring him to sign or veto legislation elapsed.<\/p>\n

Immediately after taking office in January, President Donald Trump stripped federal anti-discrimination protections for trans and nonbinary people and banned federal agencies from acknowledging their existence. In June, the Department of Justice sued California for not repealing<\/a> a decade-old anti-discrimination law protecting transgender students and subpoenaed medical providers for lists of youth patients<\/a> receiving gender affirming care. Congress also curtailed trans adults\u2019 health care if they use Medicaid in states like<\/a> Texas, Florida, Ohio and Arizona.<\/p>\n

California Republicans\u2019 attempts to enact similar policy, like banning trans girls from playing school sports<\/a>, have failed to pass the Legislature\u2019s Democratic supermajority.<\/p>\n

SB 59 protects trans adults from further harassment or employment discrimination by sealing any previous records that reference their previous legal name and assigned sex at birth. The bill applies to all name and marker change request received starting July 1, 2026, and allows people to sue anyone who posts their gender identity and name change records online. Another Wiener bill Newsom signed, SB 497, prevents other states from subpoenaing California medical records that could be accessed by the federal government, expanding upon Wiener\u2019s 2022 \u201ctransgender state of refuge\u201d<\/a> law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump Administration is trying to make transgender people the scapegoats for their fascist takeover. Today, California stood up to protect them,\u201d Wiener said in a statement. \u201cPresident Trump has made it clear he is willing to violate laws and norms to target transgender people, and that he will not stop until their existence has been erased from public life. These laws strengthen legal and privacy protections to stop MAGA from targeting the transgender community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hazel Williams, a San Francisco organizer who pushed Wiener to introduce SB 59, welcomed the bill\u2019s passage but decried a lookback provision lawmakers stripped out that would have automatically sealed all past name and gender marker changes. Legislators said they were concerned about costs, and that people can still apply to retroactively seal their name and gender marker changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSB 59 will help trans folks maintain some basic dignity, privacy and safety in this increasingly hostile environment. It will protect countless people from doxing, harassment and worse,\u201d Williams said. \u201cIt\u2019s an important step towards protecting trans people from violence, but it\u2019s far from enough…I\u2019m particularly concerned about the ability of poor and under-resourced communities to benefit from this law with its limitations on retroactivity…Education, outreach, and resource allocation will be key, but all of those areas are underfunded and the state is not exactly chomping at at the bit to change that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s LGBTQ record under scrutiny<\/p>\n

Newsom signed Zbur\u2019s Assembly Bill 1084, which streamlines the process for transgender adults and children to request gender marker and names changes. He also signed Ward\u2019s Assembly Bill 82, which expands protections for reproductive care providers to include gender affirming care by limiting data about prescription drugs like testosterone and mifepristone from being stored in databases that are accessible to other states.<\/p>\n

He vetoed Sen. Caroline Menjivar\u2019s Senate Bill 418, which would have allowed pharmacists to dispense a year supply of hormone therapy for gender affirming and menopause reasons and required medical providers to cover treatment. In a veto message, he said the elimination of utilization management, a tool to management care, would have increased costs under SB 418.<\/p>\n

Menjivar\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Equality California had championed both SB 418 and Assembly Bill 554, which would have required providers to cover antiretroviral drugs to prevent HIV and AIDS.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s executive director, Tony Hoang, said he was disappointed that Newsom vetoed \u201ctwo commonsense measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the Trump administration doubles down on its efforts to restrict access to care for transgender people and dismantle federal protections for HIV prevention, California should be doing everything possible to protect those most at risk,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cThese bills would have guaranteed that transgender people and their families could continue to access essential medications without disruption and that people at risk of HIV could obtain PrEP quickly and affordably. The Governor\u2019s decision to veto these measures undermines California\u2019s longstanding leadership in advancing health equity and protecting the LGBTQ+ community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The governor has been under scrutiny since March, when he told the late MAGA pundit Charlie Kirk<\/a> that allowing trans athletes to compete with cis athletes was \u201cunfair.\u201d He doubled down in a recent interview with video game streamer ConnorEatsPants,<\/a> saying his \u201cstruggle\u201d with trans athletes was a minor footnote in his overall record on LGBTQ rights.<\/p>\n

On Monday, he signed Assembly Bill 749 from Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, D-Englewood, dubbed the \u201cYouth Sports For All Act,\u201d which will study inequalities in youth sports regardless of barriers like age, sex, location, income, and gender identity. His support is likely to rankle Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, who asked the governor last month<\/a> to veto it because he said it would \u201cbroadly support biological males competing against biological females in sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his interview with ConnorEatsPants, Newsom noted his godson, oil heir Nats Getty<\/a>, is trans, and called himself a \u201cchampion\u201d of LGBTQ rights: \u201cIt hurts me, it\u2019s not just offensive, as a guy who\u2019s literally put my political life on the line<\/a> for the community, for decades, has been a champion and a leader, that people think somehow I\u2019ve sold the community out, because on this issue (of trans sports participation), I disagree.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that highlighting that as if it\u2019s something that is genuinely affecting a lot of people is, in and of itself, hurting the trans community,\u201d ConnorEatsPants said in response, referring to the miniscule number of trans athletes<\/a> competing at the college level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California will seal records of transgender adults who change their names and gender markers on official documents and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,4295,536,457,4297,4294,3634,1621,4296,2805],"class_list":["post-3447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-chris-ward","tag-donald-trump","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-gender-affirming-care","tag-gender-identity","tag-rick-chavez-zbur","tag-scott-wiener","tag-transgender-adults","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}