Welcome back to Trans Rights Weekly. Before we jump into the news, I’d like to mention that I have set up a newsletter for Trans Rights Weekly. Sign up at https://unclairethoughts.com/trans-rights-weekly-newsletter/ if you’d rather receive this in email form.

Also, quick reminder to everyone, stay safe, take care of yourself, and wash your hands please.

This isn’t a busy week, so this should be pretty short. We have two smaller victories for trans rights, and what may be the third murder of a trans woman this year.

Alaska

A librarian for the Alaskan state legislature won a court battle over medical coverage of her transition earlier this month. She was on the state healthcare plan, and found that her insurance would not cover transition-related care, in her case SRS (sexual reassignment surgery), forcing her to cover the thousands of dollars.

Her name is Jennifer Fletcher. Fletcher’s legal argument was pretty simple: under federal law, Title VII prohibits discrimination based on sex. The state argued that they won’t cover treatment for trans men either, so it’s not discrimination based on sex. However, Fletcher and her legal team from Lambda Legal rebutted with the argument that it’s impossible to discriminate against transgender people without taking sex or ‘sex stereotypes’ into account. The judge ultimately sided with Fletcher, although the state has not yet disclosed if it will seek to appeal the ruling.

This case is interesting for a few reasons. First, Alaska’s defense was that they are totally allowed to discriminate against transgender people. A cisgender person who theoretically needed SRS for some other condition would be able to get it. Title VII is one of the most common defenses used by trans rights activists in court; in fact, the Supreme Court has several pending cases on how Title VII effects LGBT people.

Illinois

In Cook County (which includes Chicago), Illinois, a woman named Jill Rose Quinn (pictured below) has won a primary and is almost certainly going to be elected as the first transgender judge in the state and the fourth in the nation, as there is no republican challenger. The 65-year-old judge has been out since 2002, and has made several rulings that advanced trans rights in her state.

This was part of a larger victory for LGBT rights in the primary last Tuesday. One of the most conservative democrats in the house, the only democrat to cosponsor the bill to prevent the government from penalizing businesses from discrimination on religious grounds, was defeated by a progressive candidate. Several more LGBT judges were elected as well.

This is significant because Jill is not just Illinois’ first trans judge, she is the first trans person ever elected to public office in the state. She has an excellent record and had endorsements from LGBT groups and the mayor of Chicago.

Jill Rose Quinn, image from https://www.votejillrosequinn.com/

North Carolina

There is very little information on this, I could only find a few paragraphs from a local news station. It appears that, on March 18, a transgender woman named Monica Diamond was shot and killed in an ambulance in Charlotte. We know that the ambulance had come to pick her up after experiencing shortness of breath, and some kind of disturbance took place, causing the police to be called. Whether this disturbance was the murder or something else is unclear.

While being treated in the ambulance, Diamond requested a friend come help her. A man named Prentice Bess attempted to enter the ambulance. Whether he was a friend of Diamond’s or not is also unclear. Either way, the paramedics refused him entry, and he returned soon after and shot her several times. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

It is not clear what the motivation of this murder was. Was Monica Diamond, like Alexa Luciano, a victim of a hate crime? Maybe, but trans people, just like everyone else, occasionally just get caught up in average acts of cruelty. We do mourn every soul our community loses, but the motivation behind Diamond’s murder is yet unknown.

For anyone interested, I have a quick plug and a request. First, I am opening up my services as an editor or writer, more details can be found under Contact/Business on my website ( https://unclairethoughts.com/contact-business/ )

Also, I’m looking to make a logo for Trans Rights Weekly. Contact me at that same link if you would like to help out <3