San Francisco is being sued for allegedly giving unlawful preferential treatment through its “Guaranteed Income for Transgender People” program.
The program, also known as GIFT, is solely focused on helping low-income transgender adults over the age of 18 who reside in the City and County of San Francisco.
The initial GIFT pilot program, which runs from January 2023 to June 2024, includes 55 recipients and gives them $1,200 of taxpayer money per month through a reloadable debit card, per the program’s website.
GIFT also prioritizes transgender people who are black.
“Sixty percent of people that we’re going [to] try to have in the program are black trans folks,” said Samual Favela with the Transgender District, reported RedState.
Aubrey Davis, an executive associate with Transgender District, argued that the program was necessary since transgender residents purportedly face more financial struggles than non-transgender people. However, different organizations across the country have claimed the program constitutes the spending of taxpayer money to promote preferential treatment.
Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit against San Francisco to stop the allegedly discriminatory program funded by taxpayer dollars. The organization describes itself as a “conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability, and integrity in government, politics, and the law.”
“Any expenditure of taxpayer funds or taxpayer-financed resources on the GIFT program is illegal under Article 1, section 7 of the California Constitution because the requirement that eligible participants be transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, or intersex is immediately suspect and presumptively invalid and cannot survive strict scrutiny review,” the legal action states, per RedState.
This would not be the first time that San Francisco has been sued over its welfare programs. This past November, the American Civil Rights Project sued the city and county for “illegal use of government resources and public funds to provide cash benefits to San Francisco residents on a discriminatory basis,” per the lawsuit.
