DAs have discretion. Use it to decline prosecution in cases that target trans community.

You’re reading one of two columns on transgender issues and the criminal justice system.

For more, read “As a trans woman, I was raped in prison. Change system to protect others.”

Over the past month, two lawsuits have been filed challenging an offensive Tennessee bathroom legislation that went into effect on July 1 and infringes on the rights of transgender people. And Davidson County District Attorney General Glenn Funk may be facing discipline – or worse, ouster – for protecting the people he serves from discrimination by refusing to enforce it.

This spring, as legislators around the country introduced a record-breaking number of bills targeting the transgender community, Tennessee passed a law requiring businesses that allow transgender people to use restrooms aligned with their gender identity to post offensive signage, with new criminal penalties for those that refuse.

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The law requires that signs state: “This facility maintains a policy of allowing the use of restrooms by either biological sex, regardless of the designation on the restroom” – which, as the ACLU notes in its June 25 suit challenging the law, is “offensive to transgender and intersex people because it asserts that transgender people are not the sex they know themselves to be and ignores the existence of intersex people.”

The Tennessee legislation is just the latest development in a long, cruel campaign to bar transgender people from using public restrooms. And DA Funk rightfully pushed back against what he deemed an attempt to “promote hate.”

District attorneys have well-settled and far-reaching discretion to decline to prosecute cases that do not serve the public, and there is absolutely no justification for using an office’s limited resources to advance discrimination and hate. As public safety leaders, we are all standing together in urging our nation’s leaders to protect trans lives and end the harmful attacks on the trans community.

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More than 70 prosecutors and law enforcement leaders recently issued a joint statement condemning laws that discriminate against and criminalize trans people. As that statement notes, these "blatantly unconstitutional attacks on some of the most vulnerable Americans will deeply harm public safety.”

Some of the most concerning bills introduced this year threaten to criminalize doctors who provide (or sometimes even the parents of children who seek) gender-affirming care for trans youth. And the deeply concerning impact of these efforts is very real.

Last year, a national survey found that 52% of trans and nonbinary youth seriously considered suicide. We know that access to gender-affirming health care not only reduces the risk of suicide in youth, it also significantly reduces their lifetime risk of suicidal ideation.

That’s one of many reasons that a slate of medical organizations – including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and Endocrine Society – all agree that access to gender-affirming care is crucial for trans youth. Efforts to obstruct trans youth from receiving medically recommended health care aren’t merely a gross misuse of the criminal legal system; they are an attack on the safety of all communities.

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Likewise, for several years, anti-trans legislators have attempted to pass laws that prohibit trans people from using single-sex facilities – mainly restrooms – that align with their gender identities. These bills have no legitimate public safety justification. While they’re often framed as protecting women and children, a 2017 review of several cities showed no recorded incidents of anyone trans or gender nonconforming having been arrested for sexual misconduct in a bathroom. That empty set underscores the real driver of these laws: to reinforce stigmatizing falsehoods that trans people pose a public safety threat and to prevent trans people from freely living, working and traveling in our communities.

Anti-trans bills will not make anyone safer. Instead, they will only make trans people more vulnerable to violence. Trans people are more than “four times more likely than cisgender people” to be victims of violent crime. And, this year, Alphonso David of the Human Rights Campaign observed in a New York Times column, “we are on track to exceed the number of trans and gender-nonconforming people murdered in 2020, which was already the deadliest year” on record.

Rather than protect trans people, the criminal legal system has often painted their very existence as a threat and criminalized trans survivors of violence. In fact, about 16% of trans people in the United States – and half of all Black trans people – have been incarcerated, according to a 2012 Lambda Legal survey. And when trans people are incarcerated, they too often face the denial of medical care and safe housing that align with their gender identity.

The trans community poses no threat to public safety, but anti-trans laws do. And enforcing laws that demonize and dehumanize trans people would be a betrayal of the obligation of prosecutors to serve as ministers of justice.

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Our nation finds itself at a fragile moment, where too many seek to divide us rather than bring us together. After a tumultuous year, trust in law enforcement – integral to promoting public safety – is fragile, and many are questioning the moral compass of our criminal legal system.

The criminalization of transgender people and enforcement of questionable laws will further erode already fragile bonds of trust and divert limited government resources, putting not just trans people at greater risk but our entire community. It’s well past time for all of us – including law enforcement leaders – to do better for trans people, and we can start by making clear that laws fueled by hate are incompatible with justice. Period.

Satana Deberry is the district attorney of Durham County, North Carolina. Justin Kollar is the prosecuting attorney of Kaua’i County, Hawaii. Miriam Krinsky is the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution and a former federal prosecutor. All are a part of the joint statement from prosecutors condemning laws that target transgender people.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DAs should decline to prosecute cases that target trans community