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Over 50 Companies Reject Proposed Change To Legal Definition Of Sex

Activists say a reported proposal from the Trump administration could roll back certain protections for transgender people.
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Over 50 companies are standing up against the Trump administration's reported proposal to narrow the legal definition of sex.

The companies, which include Google, Facebook and Apple, signed a statementagainst the idea that sex should solely be interpreted to mean a person's anatomy at birth, regardless of their gender identity. The businesses say they QUOTE: "stand with the millions of people in America who identify as transgender, gender non-binary, or intersex." 

Their statement comes after a report by The New York Times revealed the content of a federal memo regarding the issue.

The document from the Department of Health and Human Services reportedly said, "Sex means a person's status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth."

It reportedly wants to establish this definition under Title IX, the law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs. That means under the proposed change, people whose gender doesn't match their sex at birth could lose certain protections against discrimination.

But the companies argue that "policies that force people into a binary gender definition determined by birth anatomy fail to reflect the complex realities of gender identity and human biology."