2020 Has Been the Deadliest Year for Transgender Americans

According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 31 trans or gender-nonconforming Americans were violently killed this year. This number reflects the most ever reported transgender homicides in a single calendar year.

The HRC confirmed the troubling numbers of unprecedented, anti-trans violence in a recent news release mourning the loss of Felycya Harris, a black, trans woman who was fatally shot this week in Augusta, Georgia. Harris was an interior decorator who owned and operated her own small business, she was 33 when she passed.

Harris was misgendered as well as deadnamed by local media in the initial reports of her death. As the Trans Journalist Association notes, police often deadname or misgender victims of anti-trans violence when speaking to reporters.

Her death comes just days after a string of brutal, transgender homicides in America and U.S. territories. Michelle Ramos Vargas, also 33, was found dead last week in San German, Puerto Rico. Including Harris and Michelle, four known, transgender or gender non-conforming American’s were killed violently in the last four weeks alone.

America’s epidemic of anti-trans violence is no secret. Each November since 1999, the trans community takes a day to honor those we lost. 2020’s Trans Day of Remembrance is set to be the bleakest in history. Trans people of color, particularly black, trans women like Harris are disproportionately impacted.

Historically, trans homicides have almost always involved gun violence as well. According to an Everytown report in 2019, 75 percent of trans homicides were the result of gun violence.

“This epidemic of violence, which is particularly impacting transgender women of color, must and can be stopped,” HRC president Alphonso David said addressing 2020’s grim violence report. “We must work to address the factors that underpin this culture of violence and openly discuss how the intersection of racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia work to deprive transgender and gender-nonconforming people of equal access to opportunity and necessities like employment, housing, and healthcare.”

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