Staff and community members at Lawyers for Good Government are dismayed at the abuse of our federal government’s legal counsel to strip core, foundational constitutional rights from transgender Americans and call on all attorneys of conscience to stand united against this massive escalation in discriminatory action by the Trump administration. As reported by CNN Thursday, senior officials from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have confirmed the agency’s intention to strip transgender individuals of their right to self-defense secured under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Another report quoted one official using offensive, discriminatory language to describe this incredibly marginalized population while expressing their desire to strip them of their right to bear arms and said the agency would categorize them as “mentally ill.”
L4GG Supervising Attorney – Civil Rights Khadijah Silver (they/them) said in a statement:
“The U.S. Supreme Court has been unflinching in its analysis that individual self-defense is the central component of the second amendment right and yet the U.S. government is threatening to take away this right from transgender people just as they are being demonized by the nation’s president, with the administration’s discrimination seeping into a wave of stochastic terrorism against us for merely existing. As a minority group who is being directly targeted by the state, our right to self defense has never had greater significance – any attack on it is an attack on the Constitution itself.”
There is zero correlation between transgender identity and gun violence: transgender people make up 1% of the total population in the United States according to an August 2025 study by the Williams Institute but account for only 0.11% of mass shooters, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. Therefore statistically, transgender individuals are significantly less likely than the general population to commit these crimes. Further, transgender people in America are four times as likely to be victims of crime.
This unlawful plan should concern everyone regardless of gender identity, transgender status, or political belief. We call upon all attorneys, elected officials, and Americans to condemn this unquestionably unconstitutional attack on the basic freedoms afforded to all of us by the United States Constitution.