The Trump administration is reportedly working to dramatically roll-back protections for transgender students and narrow the definitions of sex and gender that courts have increasingly used to provide protections for LGBTQ people.

James Esseks, director of the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project issued the following in response: “This is an attack on the very lives and existence of transgender people. It is painful, it is hateful, and it will not go unchallenged. Transgender people have the right to not only exist, but to fully participate in public life. Transgender people are real and transgender lives have meaning.

“If the Trump administration moves forward with these hateful and hurtful policies, they will once again be met with opposition in courts and in communities. More and more courts are seeing that policies targeting transgender people have no place in our country. The ACLU will fight back against any efforts to use transgender people as political pawns and continue to seek full equality for transgender and nonbinary people.”

The news of the change in policy has prompted LGBT activists to launch an online campaign titled #WontBeErased.

i am trans and extant and here is a selfie of me being trans (and… taking selfies) while working one of my two jobs, neither of which is done by a ghost or an ephemeral spirit that answers to my deadname 😄 #WontBeErased pic.twitter.com/AYjKMV5FIw — dylan morrison 🍁 (@dylan_thyme) October 21, 2018