Transgender people could get reservation status under new Rights Act
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-3379333/Transgender-people-reservation-status-new-Rights-Act.html
Daily Mail/By Neetu Chandra Sharma Published: 18:00 EST, 30 December 2015 | Updated: 17:59 EST, 30 December 2015
"Transgender people could soon enjoy special social and legal rights, like people belonging to reserved caste categories if the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment's draft Bill on the Rights of Transgender Persons Act, 2015 is accepted.
According to the draft legislation, transgender people who do not belong to Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes by birth may be declared Backward Class, and would be entitled for reservation under the existing ceiling of the OBC category."
This, went over my head... what is it trying to say and would this apply to all states in the US?
Quote from: Shana-chan on January 01, 2016, 07:16:10 PM
This, went over my head... what is it trying to say and would this apply to all states in the US?
The news venue is from India, so I'm assuming it is referring to the laws there.
I found these articles helpful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduled_caste
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India
The following is my almost certainly flawed understanding from reading the above articles, and then going back to re-read the news story:
The bottom line is that the Indian legal system now recognizes transgender people as a disadvantaged minority, and is taking steps to shelter them from discrimination, provide them financial assistance, and ease their access to government services. In many regards, this doesn't translate to the american system at all, but bears similarity to affirmative action, medicaid, social security, and more.
The really cool thing about this is that the system of benefits is fairly mature, and the draft (keep in mind, not passed) legislation simply adds transgender people as a protected class -- it doesn't seem to require a huge amount of work on anybody's part. I can't say whether or not the system works, but at least this won't be voted down because it's "too hard to implement" or something.