Sacramento is Now a Sanctuary City for Transgender People. What Does That Mean?

BY THERESA CLIFT UPDATED MARCH 27, 2024 11:55 AM

The city of Sacramento will serve as a safe haven for transgender people fleeing from states banning gender-affirming care, the City Council decided Tuesday.

The resolution, declaring Sacramento a sanctuary city for transgender people, passed unanimously Tuesday. “This is not a symbolic gesture,” said Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela, who proposed the resolution. “This is a binding resolution which is more critical today than it ever has been.”

The resolution will bar city staff — including officers and contractors — from detaining youths and adults for seeking or providing gender-affirming health care. It would also bar the city from cooperating with out-of-state jurisdictions that are criminalizing gender-affirming care. The city is already a sanctuary city for immigrants, and the resolution would enact the same protections for transgender people, stated a document prepared by Valenzuela.

Examples of gender-affirming health care includes interventions to align the patient’s appearance with the patient’s gender identity, such as hormone therapy and surgery. It also includes some types of mental health care treatment.

At least 23 states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for minors, and at least seven states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for adults, the document states. “As a transgender person I have watched with increasing concern as year after year states across nation introduce increasingly restrictive laws targeting trans life,” Emily Smet of Democratic Socialists of America’s Sacramento chapter, which drafted the resolution, told the Council Tuesday. “We hope the city of Sacramento is never put in the position where this resolution will have to be enforced. But this resolution prepares us for the rising tide of trans-phobic tide of hate in our country.”

Ahead of the meeting, several groups held a rally outside City Hall to oppose the resolution. “I am here because I want you to know humans cannot change sex,” said Beth Bourne, of Moms for Liberty’s Yolo County chapter. “My daughter thought she was transgender when she was in junior high after learning about it and after five years she’s become accepting of her healthy young female woman body … children are having their bodies permanently harmed.”

A California law, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in 2022, allows children from other states to come to California for gender-affirming care free of criminal or civil action. Sacramento’s resolution will include adults, which the state law does not, Valenzuela pointed out. Multiple health care institutions across the country have scaled back gender-affirming health care services in response to legal challenges, harassment, or threats of violence, the document stated. There are institutions providing gender-affirming health care in Sacramento, but local advocates report long waitlists and other issues.

At the start of the meeting in which the resolution passed, Mayor Darrell Steinberg presented a proclamation recognizing Transgender Week of Visibility.

The American Public Health Association advocates for policies in alignment with the one before the Council, mayoral candidate Flojaune Cofer, a public health professional, told the Council, sharing her support for it.

This article was originally published by the Sacramento Bee.