Make Philly an LGBTQ sanctuary city
Here's what City Council and Gov. Josh Shapiro can do to protect LGBTQ people.
President Donald Trump has begun to dismantle the rights of LGBTQ Americans.
On the chopping block: our ability to provide for ourselves and our families, to have equal access to educational opportunities, to have our relationships honored, to participate in the economy, to be safe while traveling abroad, and to access government services we pay taxes to support.
Trump acts illegally, trying to limit birthright citizenship, which is directly enshrined in the Constitution. Marriage equality rights codified in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision are being attacked, with states passing resolutions asking it be overturned.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has already suspended issuing passport gender marker changes, handicapping transgender and gender-variant people needing those documents for employment and placing them at risk of harm when traveling abroad.
The ability for trans people to serve our country in the military is disappearing, and rights flowing from court decisions like Bostock v. Clayton County that were incorporated by President Joe Biden in his executive orders on nondiscrimination are being erased by Trump.
It’s an overwhelming assault, and our options at the federal level are limited with a Republican-controlled Congress and a compromised federal judiciary. We need to look, instead, to what can be done locally and under the Pennsylvania Constitution to protect our LGBTQ children, neighbors, and families.
Following the lead of Los Angeles, City Council should pass legislation making Philadelphia an LGBTQ sanctuary city. Mayor Jim Kenney’s 2023 executive order protecting individuals seeking, receiving, and providing gender-affirming health care was forward-thinking, but executive orders lack the permanency and force of legislation. Council must act.
Trump’s targeting of transgender children’s education and health care is also appalling. The city should start by providing gender-affirming health services that don’t receive federal funding and ensure our LGBTQ neighbors have access to relevant prescription medication.
We can’t rely on the Bostock or Obergefell decisions to backstop statewide LGBTQ nondiscrimination policies derived from federal sex discrimination protections and privacy rights in Pennsylvania. But options exist that rely solely on the state constitution’s right to privacy and sex discrimination protections.
In Allegheny Reproductive Health v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision demonstrates how our state’s constitutional protections on sex and privacy are robust and can trump the elimination of federal protections under executive orders and federal court decisions within Pennsylvania.
As the state Supreme Court notes, the right to privacy is an explicit part of the Pennsylvania Constitution, existing before and more expansive than the federal Constitution, which does not directly codify a right to privacy.
Gov. Josh Shapiro should direct that this right prevents the state government from releasing information related to LGBTQ status, and supports marriage equality. This would prevent actions such as states subpoenaing the health records of transgender minors, or compiling enemy lists of transgender and gender-variant people who changed their driver’s license gender designation.
The Pennsylvania Equal Rights Amendment can and should be interpreted as outlawing LGBTQ discrimination in employment, housing, credit, education, and public accommodations. Pennsylvania’s privacy rights, along with the state’s Equal Rights Amendment outlawing sex discrimination, demonstrate that marriage equality can stand solely on the Pennsylvania Constitution and supersede a 1996 state law banning marriage equality, which was rendered moot by the Obergefell decision. This ordinance could be enforced if Obergefell were overturned.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Allegheny decision cites Jillian Todd Weiss’ “Transgender Identity, Textualism, and the Supreme Court: What is the Plain Meaning of ‘Sex’ in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?” and other sources in delineating what constitutes the expansive meaning of sex and sex discrimination under the Pennsylvania Equal Rights Amendment. These rights reinforce the indivisibility of sex discrimination for abortion rights, transgender rights, LGBTQ rights, and marriage equality.
Shapiro should formally recognize these rights under the Pennsylvania Constitution and direct that the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission recognize these rights as existing within the state constitution.
Kathleen Padilla is a longtime LGBTQ advocate who was involved in the passage of several civil rights laws. She retired as a deputy director of aviation responsible for civil rights programs and received local, national, and international awards for her civil rights work.