Trump is swiftly undoing transgender protections in HUD’s housing policies

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Trump is swiftly undoing transgender protections in HUD’s housing policies

2025-05-05 21:18 Last Updated At：21:21

The Trump administration is swiftly remaking housing policy as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development retreats from long-established fair-housing protections for transgender people.

In recent months, HUD has been targeting the Obama-era Equal Access Rule that expanded protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Also in the bull's-eye are fair-housing complaint investigations and federally funded homeless shelters.

“This administration wants to pretend trans people don’t exist,” said Hannah Adams, a senior staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project. “Whatever they’re doing is not in line with HUD’s supposed mission to provide a safety net for families that are struggling in this country.”

HUD said in a statement that it is upholding the landmark Fair Housing Act that guarantees equal access to housing for all Americans, as well as implementing what it called Trump’s executive order “restoring biological truth to the federal government.”

Here are key takeaways about how HUD is taking on the battle over transgender rights.

The Fair Housing Act identifies sex as one of seven protected classes for housing discrimination. But it wasn’t until the Obama administration established the Equal Access Rule in 2012 that those protections were extended to cover sexual orientation, gender identity and marital status.

In 2016, the rule was expanded to include transgender people seeking help at federally funded emergency shelters.

Four years later, a 2020 Supreme Court ruling established that a landmark civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment. Housing advocates and HUD in 2021 under the Biden administration interpreted that as broader affirmation that LGBTQ+ people were also protected in the fair housing law.

Kim Johnson, public policy manager at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said transgender people experience homelessness at a disproportionately higher rate despite being less than 1% of the general population. The spirit of the Fair Housing Act is to protect everyone who is vulnerable to discrimination, she said, even if the text of the law does not explicitly include gender identity as a protected class.

“We really need to ensure we’re upholding what the law means, and the fact is that transgender people are some of the most marginalized people in this country,” Johnson said.

Since President Donald Trump appointed Scott Turner to take the helm at HUD, the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity has instructed staff to pause investigations of all gender identity discrimination cases, according to two HUD attorneys who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs or benefits.

One said letters were then issued closing the cases for lack of jurisdiction.

HUD has not disclosed how many cases have been dropped. A National Fair Housing Alliance report identified at least 195 discrimination complaints involving gender identity in 2023, though HUD has not specified how many cases are still outstanding.

With changes to the Equal Access rule and other guidance still unclear, what happens now often depends on where a case is filed. In blue states with laws offering protections beyond federal law, HUD can direct tenants facing LGBTQ+ discrimination to state-run offices still taking cases, said a HUD employee who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the hot-button topic.

To Sasha Samberg-Champion, HUD deputy general counsel in the Biden administration and now special counsel for civil rights at the National Fair Housing Alliance, “There is no public policy justification for permitting discrimination in the housing market against people because they are transgender. None.”

Community leaders say they’re facing seemingly contradictory requirements in new HUD contracts with nonprofits that find permanent housing for the homeless and run shelters.

One section stipulates that nonprofits can’t promote “gender ideology” while at the same time another requires compliance with anti-discrimination law, according to a copy provided to the AP.

In Memphis, Tennessee, a nonprofit that provides emergency shelter for transgender people is looking to increase capacity because of the uncertainty.

Kayla Gore, executive director of My Sistah’s House, said it can do that because it doesn’t take federal funding. But other shelters are removing information from their websites about serving the LGBTQ+ community, fearful that federal funding will be stripped if they don’t, she said.

“People are confused,” Gore said. “They don’t know what to do because they want to protect their bottom line.”

Soon after being sworn in as HUD secretary in February, Turner announced he was halting enforcement of the Equal Access Rule and quietly filed a proposal to revise the policy. HUD officials have declined to say what the proposed changes are.

In 2020, the first Trump administration unsuccessfully moved to relieve shelters of any obligation to accommodate transgender people.

With Trump back for a second term, advocates fear his administration will feel even more emboldened to go further and forbid shelters from accommodating gender identity altogether.

“Unfortunately, it’s making an already vulnerable class of people more vulnerable," said Seran Gee, an attorney for Advocates for Trans Equality.

"Our protections can’t be a pingpong ball that changes every four years.”

Video captures Minneapolis immigration arrest in a city on edge after shooting of Renee Good

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal agents carrying out immigration arrests in Minnesota's Twin Cities region already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman rammed the door of one home Sunday and pushed their way inside, part of what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest enforcement operation ever.

In a dramatic scene similar to those playing out across Minneapolis, agents captured a man in the home just minutes after pepper spraying protesters outside who had confronted the heavily armed federal agents. Along the residential street, protesters honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt the operation.

Video of the clash taken by The Associated Press showed some agents pushing back protesters while a distraught woman later emerged from the house with a document that federal agents presented to arrest the man. Signed by an immigration officer, the document — unlike a warrant signed by a judge — does not authorize forced entry into a private residence. A warrant signed by an immigration officer only authorizes arrest in a public area.

Immigrant advocacy groups have conducted extensive “know-your-rights” campaigns urging people not to open their doors unless agents have a court order signed by a judge.

But within minutes of ramming the door in a neighborhood filled with single-family homes, the handcuffed man was led away.

More than 2,000 immigration arrests have been made in Minnesota since the enforcement operation began at the beginning of December, said Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News on Sunday that the administration would send additional federal agents to Minnesota to protect immigration officers and continue enforcement.

The Twin Cities — the latest target in President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign — is bracing for what is next after 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by an immigration officer on Wednesday.

“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”

Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.

People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners Sunday in the neighborhood where Good was killed, watching for any signs of federal agents.

More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .

“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.

The protests have been largely peaceful, but residents remained anxious. On Monday, Minneapolis public schools will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.

Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.

While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said that the investigation into Good's shooting death should not be overseen solely by the federal government.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.

“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened," Smith said on ABC’s "This Week."

The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.

Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”

"That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.

Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn't be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”

The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests in cities across the country over the weekend, including New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Oakland, California.

Contributing were Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis; Thomas Strong in Washington; Bill Barrow in Atlanta; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio.