Trump's UCLA Settlement Proposal Reveals Massive Anti-Trans Attacks: Students And Faculty Fight Back

It’s not only students and faculty who have something to lose—countless doctors, trans youth, and families could see health care vanish.

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A historic billion-dollar settlement with the federal government could erode civil rights for trans students, faculty, and patients at the University of California - Los Angeles and its health centers. Now, community advocates are calling for the university system’s governing body—the Board of Regents—to hold the line against these sweeping threats, though some worry the Board is showing signs that it is prepared to make a deal with the devil.

Over 1,600 members of the University of California community signed an open letter, including renowned queer scholar and UC Berkeley professor Judith Butler, calling on the university system to resist Trumpian efforts to rebuild UCLA “in a conservative image,” as it was put by the Los Angeles Times. Federal officials are demanding discrimination against transgender students in bathrooms, in housing, and on sports teams, and seeking to strip trans youth of life-saving, evidence-based care.

Save UC Trans Healthcare—an informal group that describes itself as “UC faculty, staff, students and community members defending gender-affirming care”—penned the open letter condemning the Board’s apparent willingness to cede ground to the Trump Administration. The initiative was also promoted by the professors’ union, the UCLA Faculty Association.

A care stoppage at UCLA’s gender clinics could be catastrophic. It is the second-largest hospital system in the state; UCLA runs five hospitals and nearly 300 community clinics.

As one California parent of UCLA gender clinic patients told Erin in the Morning, families “are afraid, scared, and wanting to protect their kids.”

“We hope that the UC Regents are in our corner so that UCLA remains safe, supportive and protected by the university community,” the parent said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity due to personal safety concerns.

The Times obtained a preliminary copy of the proposed settlement from the Trump Administration’s Office for Civil Rights, which fined the school $1.2 billion over supposed “civil rights violations” against white people, cisgender people, and pro-Israel activists.

If the university complies, this could mean the institution will “make a public statement declaring that transgender people’s identities are no longer recognized,” cease “gender-affirming care for minors at medical facilities,” and grant government access to “‘all UCLA staff, employees, facilities, documents, and data related to the agreement’ not protected by attorney-client privilege,” the Times reports. This would be a monumental assault on the civil rights, medical care and privacy of hundreds of thousands of Californians—students, staff, patients, doctors and faculty. It evokes painful scenes from the McCarthyist witch hunts of the 1950s, which included the overhaul of academic freedoms and the mass purge of accused LGBTQ people from public life.

Governor Gavin Newsom, who has come under fire for his repeated attempts to break bread with anti-trans fascists and torpedo LGBTQ civil rights legislation, condemned the move as “extortion.” Many of the regents are gubernatorial appointees, including by Newsom, whose terms run well into the 2030s. The UC Board of Regents did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The University of California (UC) is signaling that they are willing to use the elimination of gender-affirming and trans healthcare as a bargaining chip in negotiations over Trump’s unlawful revocation of $584 million in federal grants and [the] unprecedented threat of a $1 billion fine based on falsehoods,” reads the open letter. “​​These efforts to eliminate gender-affirming care for trans people are rooted in vengeance and dogma, not in science.”

“Yet, instead of fighting in court for the reinstatement of research funding that the Trump Administration has illegally frozen,” the letter continues, “the UC Regents have begun negotiating with the federal government behind closed doors, and have made no commitment to preserve gender-affirming care or to reject any of the federal government’s anti-trans demands.”

The letter notes that lawsuits have been, at least in part, successful at throwing a wrench into Trumpian encroachment onto campuses and care centers.

However, “when other universities have negotiated rather than legally challenging these demands, the settlements have been devastating for trans healthcare and educational access,” the letter says.

For example, Brown University in Rhode Island and Columbia University in New York seemingly sought to appease the current Administration by capitulating, leading to many trans youth being stripped of evidence-based, life-saving health care. It has also led to discriminatory policies against its own trans students, segregating their access to housing, locker rooms, sports teams, and bathrooms. Prior to Trump’s second term in the Oval Office, students in Florida also saw New College in Sarasota—once a beacon for queer communities and progressive politics—dismantled by the state’s far-right Governor Ron DeSantis, who hand-picked replacements for its faculty and staff, stacking it with right-wing zealots. He also requested trans patient data from a dozen state-funded, university-adjacent health clinics.

Meanwhile, mass subpoenas have been used to terrorize university-affiliated health care systems that treat trans youth, casting wide-reaching nets to dredge up as much personal information as possible about doctors and patients. But some—including the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Boston Children’s Hospital—have fought back with promising results. A Massachusetts judge recently quashed a subpoena for sensitive information about trans patients—including the names and addresses of minors—finding that the true purpose of the subpoena was not to investigate unlawful behavior but “to interfere with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ right to protect GAC within its borders, to harass and intimidate BCH to stop providing such care, and to dissuade patients from seeking such care.”

Advocates are also calling on members of the community to voice opposition to any capitulation at the Board meetings on September 16 and 17, at the University of California - San Francisco. Public comment will take place on Tuesday, September 16 at 3:00 p.m. and Wednesday, September 17 at 8:30 a.m.

“The capitulation of one of the largest healthcare systems in the state will facilitate attacks on other UC and non-UC healthcare systems,” the letter says. “Given the national leadership of UC Health and the State of California in gender-affirming care, UC’s betrayal and dismantling of gender-affirming care would risk unraveling care across the country.”