Over the past four years, the Trump administration has gone out of its way to launch attacks on women — including in housing, the workplace, and schools. When President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris take office, their administration and Congress must make it a top priority to not just undo the damage, but to push forward an agenda that will ensure everyone has the freedom to live, work, learn, and serve free from discrimination based on sex.

Here are just a few of the many items that should top the Biden administration’s to-do list: 

Assure safe and stable housing for women and families.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put as many as 40 million people in this country at risk of eviction. This is both a racial justice and gender justice issue: Black women face eviction at twice the rate of white renters. And, once a family has been evicted, the devastating harms can follow them for years, exacerbating and reproducing conditions of economic inequality and preventing families from securing stable housing anywhere else. 

Thankfully, the next administration can take concrete steps to ensure all people have access to safe and stable housing during the pandemic and beyond: 

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should extend and expand its eviction moratorium — currently set to expire on Dec. 31 — until Congress passes comprehensive relief. That must include measures such as rent relief that will allow families to remain stably housed, avoid debilitating amounts of back rent, and prevent the long-lasting harms of eviction. The Biden administration also can take action to address how prior eviction filings stop applicants from obtaining new housing, often for years, and advocate for the right to counsel for tenants, who usually are unrepresented in eviction cases.
• With reports that landlords are subjecting tenants to sexual harassment at alarming rates during the pandemic, the administration should require housing providers that receive federal funds take steps to stop this abuse by adopting policies to inform tenants of their rights. It should also support reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which — among other protections — would block local governments from adopting measures that allow eviction of  residents simply because they call 911, allowing survivors of gender-based violence to remain in their homes.
• The incoming administration must also restore tools needed to dismantle residential segregation that lock out women, people of color and children from housing opportunities. The 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule was one important step in this direction, but the Trump administration gutted the rule before it could be effectively implemented. Similarly, the Trump-led Department of Housing and Urban Development rolled back a 2013 Disparate Impact rule protecting people harmed by policies that disproportionately injure women, people of color, and other marginalized groups who have historically faced barriers to housing. Reinstating both rules will lay a legal foundation for fair housing for all.

Remove barriers to workplace equality for women.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put women at the center of the most unequal recession in modern American history; more than 2 million women have left the workforce since January 2020, with Black women and other women of color hit the hardest. As we plan a path toward recovery, it’s more critical than ever to ensure women have equal access to opportunities on the job. In addition to any pandemic recovery plans, the next administration must prioritize and call on Congress to pass these critical measures:

• Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, to protect workers who need temporary job modifications during their pregnancies, so that they won’t have to choose between their paycheck and having a healthy pregnancy. 
• BE HEARD in the Workplace Act, to make the promise of the #MeToo revolution a reality, and create workplaces free of harassment in all its forms.
• PUMP (Proving Urgent Maternal Protections) for Nursing Mothers Act, to make sure workers who need to pump on the job can do so safely, and without penalty.

In addition to fighting for these new protections, the Biden-Harris administration can help make existing protections a reality, through robust enforcement of civil rights and labor laws by government agencies. That includes holding corporations accountable for sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination and unfair labor practices by franchises, contractors, and others.

Eliminate sexual harassment and assault in our nation’s schools.

Sexual harassment and assault have no place in our schools, yet over a quarter of women endure sexual assault during their college years and more than half face harassment in junior high or high school. Instead of strengthening protections for these students, whose education can be derailed as a result, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos dramatically reduced schools’ obligations to respond to sexual harassment and assault at all. Thankfully, President-elect Joe Biden has already said his administration will withdraw DeVos’s damaging double standard, which allows schools to ignore reports of harassment based on sex where similar reports based on race, national origin, or religion would require an appropriate response. The Education Department must not only rescind the DeVos double standard, but replace it with strong protections against sexual harassment and fair processes for all students.

Ensure military opportunities are open to all regardless of sex.

The Biden administration should end the Department of Defense’s biased policies that harm women who want to serve in combat, including sex-segregated Marine Corps boot camp and refusing to assign junior female Army soldiers and Marines to combat units unless and until senior women officers are installed there, too.

The Trump administration’s quest to force abortion patients to needlessly risk COVID-19 exposure as a condition of obtaining care has entered its sixth month, and is as violently out of touch with reality as ever.
 
Following an October order from the Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland is considering new evidence in our lawsuit challenging a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy requiring patients who need a medication used for early abortion care to travel in person to a clinical setting for the sole purpose of picking up a pill and signing a form. That policy has been blocked under a court order we won in July — but Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has continued to fight us every step of the way.
 
Their latest argument: COVID-19 is no longer a serious risk, so the federal government should be free to force us to risk exposure as a condition of obtaining essential reproductive health care.
 
This could not be farther from the truth. On Oct. 30, the day the Trump administration filed their latest brief in the district court, nearly 100,000 people in the United States were diagnosed with COVID-19 — then a new global record — and nearly 1,000 people died from it. The United States broke its own record days later, and then again and again; yesterday, a staggering 196,000 new cases and 2,760 new deaths were reported in a single day. The nation’s top infectious disease experts warn that the country “could not possibly be positioned more poorly” for this winter and that we are entering the “most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic.”
 
Despite the Trump administration’s own experts at the CDC acknowledging that being Black or Hispanic is associated with dramatically higher risks of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, Trump’s lawyers argue that it is no big deal to force medication abortion patients — a majority of whom are Black or Latinx — to unnecessarily incur heightened COVID-19 risk.
 
Let’s be clear: There is no genuine dispute that forcing people to travel to a health center continues to impose serious COVID-19 risks. That is why the CDC still recommends that patients use telemedicine whenever possible and use mail-order or other delivery services to pick up prescription medications. It is because of this ongoing risk that HHS Secretary Alex Azar renewed the nationwide COVID-19 public health emergency and continues to allow patients to obtain addictive medications like fentanyl and OxyContin through telemedicine.
 
One look at the Trump administration’s legal filings shows just how flimsy their argument is. Unable to muster a single declaration from any employee at HHS or the FDA to support their argument that travel and personal contact no longer pose a meaningful threat, the administration instead asked the court to rely on declarations from officials in seven states (virtually all of which are already seeing sharp COVID-19 spikes), noting that their states have allowed certain businesses and services to re-open. But these local decisions have nothing to do with our case. Allowing people to voluntarily use in-person services cannot justify a federal mandate forcing higher-risk populations to engage in unnecessary travel and personal contact, regardless of their individual circumstances and their clinicians’ judgment, as a condition of obtaining essential reproductive health care.

Trump administration officials might be committed to maintaining the fantasy that COVID-19 is under control, but we know the truth: The pandemic is still real, still dangerous, and forcing abortion patients to needlessly risk exposure to it still poses real harm to them, their clinicians, and their families — with particularly severe risks for people of color.

The path forward is clear. First, the courts must keep the in-person requirement blocked. And as soon as President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January, he should not only direct the FDA to agree not to enforce the in-person requirement during the public health emergency (precluding the need for further litigation), but also instruct the FDA to undertake a comprehensive review of the full set of restrictions on mifepristone. This will ensure that beyond the pandemic, patients’ access to this safe, effective medication is based on the latest science and medical evidence. Medication abortion — like all abortion services — is essential health care, and we hope to never again see FDA restrictions weaponized for a political, anti-abortion agenda.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is at the heart of some of the greatest moral horrors of the last four years, personified in stories that we cannot forget: the children breathlessly crying for their parents after being separated at the border; the children sleeping in the dirt in open air cages and people trapped in cells so overcrowded that they pressed their palms against the windows in a desperate plea for help; and the little girl with her arm around her father’s neck, desperately holding on as they both drowned while attempting to cross the Rio Grande river.

As President-elect Biden enters office, he faces a stark imperative: These abuses must never happen again. It will take bold action in a climate where border fear-mongering has too often excused cruelty and met abuse with impunity. 

As President-elect Biden contemplates how to resource the Department of Homeland Security’s handling of the pandemic, it should focus on significantly cutting the budget of CBP. It is the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country and the largest law enforcement air force in the world, with a budget of more than $17.1 billion for both the Border Patrol and operations at ports of entry. Despite its already enormous size, in 2019 DHS claimed that 40 percent of CBP’s resources were being absorbed by an “unprecedented surge” in the number of families fleeing Central American countries, leaving the agency “[unable] to manage its other border security missions.” Simultaneously, it was illegally siphoning funds from other parts of the government to build Trump’s border wall. As the Trump administration’s fiscal ineptitude and cruelty has demonstrated, funding is not the issue when it comes to CBP. CBP simply must not have responsibilities that it’s proven incapable of handling. 

CBP should have no role in detaining people beyond a brief period for processing — including asylum seeking parents and kids. In the past two years, at least seven children died in CBP custody or shortly after being released, many after receiving delayed medical care or being denied care altogether. At Border Patrol stations, kids have gone “days, sometimes weeks, in facilities without enough food or toothbrushes.” In Texas, Border Patrol agents reportedly “took away the children’s blankets and mats,” forcing them to sleep on the cement floor as “punishment.” 

It’s not exclusively kids. Border Patrol stations don’t have bedding, showers, or staff trained to interact with or assist traumatized people. The ACLU and its partners have documented freezing temperatures and filthy cells where people are held virtually incommunicado for days. Border Patrol agents subject pregnant people to physical mistreatment, verbal abuse, and severe delays in medical care (if it is provided at all). In February 2020, a woman in Border Patrol custody was forced to give birth to her baby while standing up, holding on to the side of a trash can in a Border Patrol station near San Diego.

Yet in 2019, CBP unlawfully spent emergency funds Congress allocated for the care of adults and children on dirt bikes and dog food — instead of medical care, food, and sanitary conditions. As the Biden transition team contemplates a new model for receiving asylum seekers, it should develop alternatives to detaining them. The incoming administration cannot forget what this recent history shows: CBP simply cannot be trusted with detention.   

CBP should also be removed from the asylum process, where life or death is often at stake. CBP personnel confiscate crucial (often irreplaceable) personal documents from people seeking asylum and have lied on government forms. Implementing the Trump administration’s disastrous forced Return to Mexico policy, Border Patrol agents sent asylum seekers back to Mexico with fake future court dates, even writing “Facebook” in place of peoples’ actual addresses. The Trump administration replaced trained asylum officers with CBP agents to conduct credible fear interviews — a crucial step in the asylum process. That’s akin to having an arresting police officer also sit as the judge.  

CBP should also never make decisions about how and when to separate families arriving at our border. Families belong together, and that presumption should never be challenged by a law enforcement agency that is notorious for human rights abuses.
 
We also need reforms that address CBP’s culture of impunity for abuse — including the death of people at the hands of CBP. Since January 2010, at least 117 people — including some U.S. citizens — have died following encounters with CBP. On May 23, 2018, 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gómez González was shot in the head by a Border Patrol agent shortly after she crossed into the United States. CBP only admitted the facts of this killing after the release of a bystander video. Agents almost never face consequences for their actions and some deaths go unreported altogether.

We need stronger standards to limit CBP’s use of deadly force. CBP officers should be required to keep their badges visible at all times and wear body cameras (with appropriate privacy protections in place). We need a complaint mechanism that’s accessible online, and a uniform process for review and investigation of abuses. 

President-elect Biden has pledged to ensure that CBP personnel are held accountable for inhumane treatment. Accountability will require more than the appointment of new leadership. It will require a reckoning with and recalculation of CBP’s role.