Joe Biden took a question at his town hall on Thursday from the mother of an 8-year-old transgender girl who cited several of the Trump administration’s anti-transgender policies, including the ban on trans people serving openly in the military, and then asked Biden how he would protect the “lives and rights of LGBTQ people.”
“I will flat out just change the law, eliminate those executive orders,” Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, said. “There should be zero discrimination.”
He also acknowledged the disparities trans women of color face, particularly Black trans women and the high level of violence and murder they face. The Human Rights Campaign says that at least 33 trans or gender-nonconforming Americans have been killed this year so far.
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Another audience member, in a discussion about the Supreme Court, asked Biden what he would say to LGBTQ Americans who are “very worried right now about erosions of their rights and our democracy as a whole.”
“I think there’s great reason to be concerned for the LGBTQ community,” Biden responded, adding that he “fought for a very long time” to “make sure there’s equality across the board.”
Biden also criticized President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, saying that, during her confirmation hearings this week, she didn’t lay out “much of a judicial philosophy, in terms of the basis upon which she thinks, are there unenumerated rights in the constitution.”
