American Civil Liberties Union attorney Chase Strangio will become the first openly trans lawyer to make oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Wednesday. As historic a moment as that is, Strangio’s appearance before a court with a 6-3 conservative super majority will come with an overwhelming sense of impending doom for trans people like me. The justices will hear oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, which involves Tennessee’s youth gender-affirming care ban. Strangio will argue on behalf of the transgender adolescents, their parents and a doctor who treats adolescents with gender dysphoria, the plaintiffs who initially filed a lawsuit after the state’s ban.
The case will determine just how deeply the government can interfere in the private medical lives of everyone, trans or otherwise.
The case will have wide-ranging implications for transgender Americans, and it will determine just how deeply the government can interfere in the private medical lives of everyone, trans or otherwise.
It’ll be the first major trans-related case to hit the court since the 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which banned workplace discrimination against LGBTQ people. Given the vote in that case, there are five possible justices — the three liberals along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch — who may vote in favor of trans people’s right to live as trans people.
But a win for trans rights is still unlikely. This is the same court, after all, that in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision.
The Dobbs case actually looms large over this case, as it will likely be the first citation in any conservative judgment in the case. The decision allowed state governments to place limits on individuals’ medical decisions in service of the state’s interest in producing more babies, which Republicans call “protecting fetal life.” And it’s a straight line from banning abortion in the state interest of increasing the population to banning gender-affirming care, which, in certain cases (but not all) can result in sterilization. It’s just another small step forward to go from banning gender affirming care to banning, let’s say, birth control.
The case against Tennessee’s ban was originally brought by two parents, Samantha and Brian Williams of Nashville, who are parents to a 15-year-old trans girl, named as L.W., along with two other anonymous trans youths, named in court documents as Ryan Roe and John Doe. The plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. Later in the process, the Justice Department jumped in to argue on behalf of the families, and Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, who is in charge of defending the state’s laws, is named as the defendant in the case.
Strangio will make the case on behalf of the ACLU, and he is no stranger to big trans legal cases. He was second chair during oral arguments in the trans case involved in Bostock, and he has spent his entire legal career arguing on behalf of LGBTQ plaintiffs. I wrote a profile of him last year in which I described him as “one of the most consistent, impassioned public voices raising the alarm around the spike in anti-trans legislation.”
The case comes at a particularly vulnerable time for trans rights. Donald Trump just won the presidential election after conservatives spent $216 million in anti-trans ads. Republicans control both houses of Congress, and conservatives control the Supreme Court. At the same time, some Democrats and Democratic-aligned pundits seem eager for compromise on the equal rights of trans people.
Republican-controlled legislatures over the last four years have carried out an all-out assault on a broad swath of everyday life for trans people, from health care to government identification to sports participation. Tennessee was among the 26 states that banned youth gender-affirming care, and while each of those 26 bans has been challenged in federal courts, Tennessee’s law is the first to reach the highest court in the land.
The case comes at a particularly vulnerable time for trans rights.
The outcome of the case will set a significant legal precedent for medical-related cases, especially those pertaining to gender-affirming care, in a time when some Republican lawmakers are promising to eventually outlaw gender-affirming care even for trans adults. In a January X Space, one Republican lawmaker, Michigan state Rep. Josh Schriver, said, “If we are going to stop this for anyone under 18, why not apply it for anyone over 18? It’s harmful across the board, and that’s something we need to take into consideration in terms of the endgame.”
Ohio state Rep. Gary Click responded: “That’s a very smart thought there. I think what we know legislatively is we have to take small bites.”
A conservative win in Skrmetti would represent a very large bite into the trans right to live free of government interference, and it would signal to states and the Trump administration that it’s truly open season on trans lives. A conservative victory would likely prompt Republicans to start banning gender-affirming care for adults without fear of being stopped by the court system, especially with Democrats waffling in their support for trans people.
This is particularly terrifying for trans people like me. It seems likely the Supreme Court will have a conservative majority for the rest of my lifetime. Even though I live in a relatively blue state, I wouldn’t be able to escape future federal laws banning me from my lifesaving medical care
It’s hard not to feel like a doomer on all things trans rights right now, and this case is a microcosm for why. There will be no salvation through our government institutions; we must turn to ourselves and our community for mutual protection. Trans people have weathered worse times. Even so, we’ve never had to contend with the possibility of having transition care completely banned.
We’ve never had to contend with the possibility of having transition care completely banned.
We should start now in thinking through ways to ensure our survival and access to medical care. We should be developing mutual aid systems, especially for our trans siblings in conservative states. Let’s look to the underground abortion operations of old for inspiration. Fortunately, though, we have the luxury of being able to go overseas for gender reassignment surgeries and not resort to back-alley procedures.
I’m not going to lie: It’s dire to be trans in the U.S. right now. We can only hope that Chase Strangio and the other attorneys arguing on behalf of the right to be trans prevail, but if they don’t (and even if they do) we must stick together and watch out for one another now. It’s the only way through.
