In the name of protecting women’s rights and religious freedom, the government’s top housing regulator proposed a rule on Tuesday that would roll back regulations protecting equal access to federal housing programs and services independent of sexual orientation or an individual’s gender identity.
Instead, the proposed rule by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would allow federally funded shelters and housing service providers to screen applicants on the basis of sexual orientation and gender, enabling single-sex and religion-based facilities to filter out transgender or gender nonbinary people.
The HUD proposal would also purge its rules and regulations of any references to “gender identity” while threatening to strip fu...