By Ally Windsor Howell LL.M., $129.95; American Bar Association; 316 pages
Ally Windsor Howell LL.M.'s Transgender Persons and the Law, which the American Bar Association recently published, is a excellent compendium of the intricate and difficult legal cases concerning the rights and protections of transgender persons in the United States, and globally.
Broken into 11 different sections—identification documents, uses of public facilities, housing, military service and veterans benefits, family law, education and students, health care, personal safety, employment, immigration and criminal justice and corrections—each outlines in simple terms the various legal complexities and explains specific court rulings that impact the everyday lives for transgender people.
More impressively, an exhaustive appendix section touches the many specific laws that vary from state-state concerning changing one's birth certificate, marriage, housing non-discrimination ordinances and more.
Targeted for lawyers whose work rests in helping affirm the legal rights of transgender persons ( though helpful for anyone working in the various sections its organized by ), it reads as the legal, professional text it has set out to be.
Law professionals seeking guidance or case study on transgender identity, with a primer helping to define who transgender people are, should start here. Covering so many areas, the book should be required reading for every lawyer expecting to be able to represent any client who walks into his or her office.
However, it is accessible enough for non-professionals outside of the legal field. The book would be helpful for anyone looking for such a wide-ranging overview. Appendixes like "Cities and Counties with Public Accommodations Nondiscrimination Ordinances and Laws That Include Gender Identity or Expression" could be helpful for any transgender or gender-nonconforming person who wishes to know where in the U.S. they have specific rights protected. However, at $129.95, it is likely out of most nonprofessionals' price range.
In a forward by Phyllis Randolph Frye, J.D., the first openly transgender judge, she encourages lay activists dealing with this area of the courts or legislative lobbying to take interest in what Howell has outlined.
Readers may be shocked to learn that only 16 colleges and universities have student health plans that provide minimum or better transgender-inclusive coverage or about the death of Tyra Hunter from medical negligence. Facts and stories like these make up the bulk of the book, and it paints a daunting landscape.
With still so much work ahead, as Frye herself points out, the cases outlined in Transgender Persons and the Law might also been seen as something of a history—the first decades of an ongoing fight in our country's judicial system. As many battles for minorities' rights before this one, the judicial system has proven to be difficult, expensive and time consuming.
And the law itself does not solve all societies woes. Take racial segregation in public schools, for example.
But what the law can do is ensure the basis for a civil society, one built on mutual respect, and love.
What Howell does is show us a snapshot of where we are, and provides a tool to getting to where we need to be.
