Lived Values: Trans Employment Survey of National HIV Advocacy Organizations

In the summer of 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the wording of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act specifically around “sex” and previous precedent regarding “sex stereotyping” protects workers from discrimination based on their gender identity or sexual orientation. Bostock was a landmark decision that many social justice advocates across the nation hoped would open the door for extending similar gender and sexual orientation protections in other titles of the Civil Rights Act.

While some circuits are considering cases which might reflect broader protections, we have yet to definitively see how this ruling might impact the ways in which the higher courts may determine whether or not they feel LGBTQIA+ people deserve protection when accessing things like housing, education, and healthcare (spoiler alert: we do). In the meantime, even with active federal workplace protections, many LGBTQIA+ folk are still struggling to find and maintain the employment and employment benefits they need to survive, let alone thrive.

We know that previously existing workplace protections under the Civil Rights Act related to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin have far from eradicated experiences of racism, misogyny, ethnocentrism and any other discriminatory experience that these kinds of rulings are intended to ameliorate.

While these protections do offer some hope that a person with the right access to resources might be able to fight back if their rights are violated, many more average LGBTQIA+ workers, especially those with oppressed intersecting identities, are left wondering the same thing: “Will these rulings actually make any difference in my life?”

It feels entirely relevant to wonder about the durability of the few federal protections the LGBTQIA+ community is offered considering the current maelstrom of state-level legislative attacks on our community. As of May 2023, over 500 bills that aim to limit the rights of LGBTQIA+ people have been filed nationally, and organizers in nearly every state have been exhaustively strategizing in response.

In the midst of these attacks, many advocates have continued to champion the fight to update their own state employment anti-discrimination laws to mirror the protections for gender and sexual identity that Title VII offers. In many states, this is no new battle. For example, advocates in Louisiana came to their legislature for the 30th consecutive year, demanding protections for sexual orientation and gender identity this legislative session…but to no avail.

Last week, many passionate activists (myself included) held the Labor Committee chamber floor for 3 hours of moving testimony in which community members relayed the ways that homophobia and transphobia had negatively impacted their ability to find and maintain work in Louisiana. Advocates have been laboring just as fiercely in the sixteen other states that also have yet to expand these protections for their citizens. I cannot speak for how organizers are feeling in other states, but I can confirm that in Louisiana, many of us are deeply tired.

People who have dedicated their lives to HIV advocacy are no strangers to the kinds of personal and collective tolls that result from having to constantly fight for our community’s access to basic needs like healthcare, housing, and employment. A silver lining of this truth is that our community also has a rich legacy of developing community-level supports when governmental accommodations fall short. HIV focused organizations have been well ahead of the curve in promoting the benefits of hiring staff that reflect the communities they serve. This has resulted in generations of LGBTQIA+ identified public health workers starting their careers at organizations that focus on providing HIV care and prevention services… but is merely hiring people from our community enough to make an organization a safer space for LGBQ and transgender and gender diverse workers?

It can be challenging to shift the broader culture of a LGBQ-friendly work environment to adequately accommodate transgender and gender diverse employees. While there are noteworthy steps that can be taken to create safer work spaces for staff based on their sexual identity, creating work spaces and benefit designs that are reflexive to the unique needs of gender diverse people is a far more nuanced endeavor.  Precious few HIV focused organizations have had access to the kind of technical support or assistance they would need to more holistically consider how their hiring and promotion systems – that were likely designed to meet the needs of cisgender staff – might be insufficient when accommodating gender diverse employees. Hiring us with good intention is not enough.

“We cannot be tokens to garner funding at the expense of funding ‘by-for’ advocacy and service organizations in trans and gender diverse-centered HIV advocacy,” Jen Laws, President and CEO of Community Access National Network (CANN) shared with me. “We won’t achieve equity in access to treatment or quality of care, we won’t end this epidemic by waving a handful of trans staff in front of funders like a flag. We have to meaningfully invest in accessible benefit designs, leadership, and programming that reaches deep into gender queer spaces,” Laws continued. “The Denver Principles and decades of advocacy have shown us this. It’s time we hold ourselves accountable to these ideals.”

For these reasons, CANN is launching a nation-wide assessment for HIV advocacy organizations to help better gauge their strengths and support needs about hiring, promotion, and good benefit designs serving the needs of transgender and gender diverse staff. The survey will be accompanied by an anonymous employee experience survey to better inform CANN’s future goals of providing capacity building and training opportunities related to hiring and maintaining gender diverse workers. Most importantly, while the results of the survey will be de-identified, the goal of this assessment will be to create a sense of accountability within the culture of national HIV advocacy.

We absolutely have the power within our own organizations to advocate for evolving internal practices that would make it easier for gender diverse people to flourish. Now, more than ever, we need to be in communication with each other to ensure our values related to workplace equity are in alignment with our practices to create work environments that are supportive for people of all genders. “Integrity is integrating our values into our actions,” as Jen likes to remind his audiences. We hope you’ll join us in filling out the survey – we need your voice in our efforts to build an HIV advocacy movement that makes space for all of us to join and endure in this fight, together.

To learn more, please contact me at dietzconsultingllc@gmail.com or Jen at Jen@tiicann.org.

Several national HIV advocacy organizations received an introduction to this initiative in the last week. If your organization did not receive an introduction and you would like to see your organization participate, please, reach out to the emails above.