First openly transgender lawyer to argue at US SC

An American Civil Liberties Union lawyer will make history in December as the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the US Supreme Court, opposing Tennessee’s Republican-backed law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

The ACLU’s Chase Strangio, 41, represents a group of transgender people who pursued a lawsuit challenging the measure that prohibits medical treatments including hormones and surgeries for minors experiencing gender dysphoria.

In one of the most consequential cases of the court’s current nine-month term, the nine justices will hear arguments on Dec. 4 in an appeal by President Joe Biden’s administration of a lower court’s decision upholding Tennessee’s ban.

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered that the argument time for the ban’s challengers be divided between the Justice Department and attorneys representing the original plaintiffs who sued the state. Strangio will present the arguments for these plaintiffs at the lectern in the ornate courtroom.

ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang called Chase Strangio the leading U.S. legal expert on transgender rights.

“He brings to the lectern not only brilliant constitutional lawyering, but also the tenacity and heart of a civil rights champion,” Wang said.

Strangio, who joined the ACLU in 2013, is the co-director of its LGBTQ & HIV Project, helping the organization oppose state laws targeting transgender people, including 12 legal challenges against the laws like the one at issue before the Supreme Court.

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Chase Strangio has represented people in high-profile cases including transgender student Gavin Grimm, who fought a Virginia school board to use the bathroom corresponding with his gender identity, and Chelsea Manning, a transgender former U.S. soldier who served time in prison for leaking classified documents.

According to the Justice Department, Tennessee is one of 22 states that have passed measures targeting medical interventions for adolescents with gender dysphoria. That is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth.

Lawmakers supporting the restrictions have called the treatments experimental and potentially harmful. Medical associations, noting that gender dysphoria is associated with higher rates of suicide, have said gender-affirming care can be life-saving, and that long-term studies show its effectiveness.

Several plaintiffs – including two transgender boys, a transgender girl and their parents – sued in Tennessee to defend the treatments they have said improved their happiness and wellbeing. The Justice Department intervened in the lawsuit to also challenge the law.