Over 6,000 People Tell President Trump That Trans Elders Count

A bipartisan group of 75 members of the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday told the Trump administration that it cannot erase transgender elders from a national survey that allocates billions of dollars to vital elder services.

In March, the administration announced plans to remove the LGBT community from the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants (NSOAAP). In response, SAGE and its allies motivated some 14,000 comments against this move.
The administration heard those voices and restored lesbian, gay, and bisexual older people to the survey, but left out transgender elders.

Following this proposal, SAGE immediately filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to find out how many of those 14,000 comments requested the removal of transgender older people from the survey. We learned that not one single comment requested the removal of transgender older adults. One must ask why the administration acted contrary to overwhelming public opinion and continued to pursue the erasure of transgender older adults.

In response to a second public comment period, SAGE launched another grassroots campaign to tell the administration that it cannot erase trans elders from this survey. During the second 30-day comment period that ended yesterday at midnight, SAGE generated over 6,000 comments, insisting that trans elders be reinstated to the survey.

"Even though the Trump administration tried to pretend that trans elders don't exist, we showed them that trans older adults will not be silenced and will not be erased," says SAGE CEO Michael Adams. "The impressive number of people that SAGE moved to comment, trans older adults and allies alike, proves that our community is united in demanding justice for every LGBT elder."

SAGE is the country's largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) older adults. Founded in 1978 and headquartered in New York City, SAGE is a national organization that offers supportive services and consumer resources to LGBT older adults and their caregivers, advocates for public policy changes that address the needs of LGBT older people, provides education and technical assistance for aging providers and LGBT organizations through its National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, and cultural competence training through SAGECare. With staff in New York City, Washington, DC, and Chicago, SAGE coordinates a growing network of affiliates across the country.

For more information, visit sageusa.org