Courtesy of Olivia Hill
The first trans person to be elected to office in Tennessee is being treated as a second-class citizen and may be forced to use the male bathroom at work despite identifying as female.
Five women, including openly transgender member Olivia Hill, were handed a sweeping victory on Sept. 14 by winning all the seats at large during Nashville Metro Council’s election and making the body majority female. However, the historic election victory is being overshadowed by an anti-LGBTQ law quietly passed in May that will make it harder for Hill to do her job and simply live her life in the state.
Senate Bill 1440/House Bill 239, which went into effect on July 1, establishes sex in all state codes as “a person’s immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth and evidence of a person’s biological sex.”