DEFEND SECTION 504 — BEFORE MORE RIGHTS ARE LOST

The recent legal challenge to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is more than a debate over gender—it’s an attack on the civil rights of all Americans with disabilities. The Trump-aligned lawsuit Texas v. Becerra aims to block the inclusion of gender dysphoria as a protected condition under Section 504, despite established medical consensus and court rulings affirming that it qualifies as a mental health disability. Let’s be clear: Section 504 protects people with both physical and mental impairments—from wheelchair users to individuals with PTSD, anxiety, autism, and other serious conditions. If the courts allow gender dysphoria to be stripped from these protections based on politics, it sets a dangerous precedent: any mental illness could be next. Think about it: if they succeed here, what stops a future lawsuit from excluding Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—a condition affecting millions of veterans, survivors, and trauma victims—from coverage under Section 504? If someone claims it’s too burdensome to accommodate, or that it conflicts with institutional values, where does it end? This isn’t just about one group. It’s about the right to be treated with dignity and to have equal access to education, healthcare, employment, and public life—regardless of disability. And let’s not ignore the larger agenda. This fight is part of Project 2025, a sweeping policy blueprint backed by the Heritage Foundation and the Trump movement. One of its stated goals is to eliminate protections for transgender Americans by redefining gender and rolling back civil rights laws across federal agencies. Stripping gender dysphoria from Section 504 is not a one-off legal disagreement—it’s a planned move in a much larger rollback of civil protections. We must defend Section 504 as a whole. Because if we allow one thread to be pulled, the entire fabric of disability rights could begin to unravel