One case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this term is historic not just because of the legal precedent it could set for LGBTQ rights, but also because of the identity of the plaintiffs’ lawyer. Chase Strangio is set to become the first out transgender lawyer to argue a case before the nation’s highest Court.
U.S. v. Skrmetti challenges a Tennessee law barring transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming-care. Strangio, co-Director for Transgender Justice with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, will be representing the Williams family of Nashville, two other anonymous families, and a Memphis-based medical provider to argue Tennessee’s law is unconstitutional.
The high court’s decision will not only have an effect on the more than 3,000 transgender youth currently living in Tennessee, according to a UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute report, but could also extend to the trans youth in 26 other states that have passed gender-affirming-care bans.
Strangio feels the weight of his responsibility—particularly given his personal connection to the subject matter of the case. “I have this deep, intimate and personal connection to the work that I do that can make it both harder, but also more significant, more motivating,” he says. “I feel a lot of pressure, personally and on behalf of my community, to continue to figure out the best strategic decisions.”
TIME spoke with Strangio ahead of the start of the Supreme Court’s term in October. This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
How do you feel about becoming the first out trans lawyer to argue in front of the Supreme Court?
The first thing that comes to mind is that it signifies for so many communities, things are so far behind where they should be. In 2024, no group of people should be having their first experience of anything, and it is always a function of structural discrimination and barriers to access to various spaces that make it so much harder for people, and certain groups, to have access to different spaces. To the extent I’m the first out attorney arguing before the Supreme Court, it’s also not surprising that I would be a white trans masculine attorney, because, again, these are all just functions of the systems of power that make it easier and harder for different people based on the bodies that we inhabit to access different spaces.
So on some level, the first thing I feel is sort of sad about the state of the world. And then the second thing is I think about all the other advocates for trans people that have come before me. In particular, I think about Pauli Murray, who was likely a trans lawyer, certainly a gender nonconforming and queer, Black lawyer, whose work laid the groundwork, not just for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s work, but also for Thurgood Marshall’s work, and set the contours for so much of our constitutional arguments and work.
Are you planning to reference the historic nature of your oral arguments in front of the justices?
I don’t know the answer to that. I think it’s something where it can be very vulnerable.
The case you’re arguing, U.S. v. Skrmetti, could have serious repercussions on the ability of trans youth to access gender-affirming-care, but could also go beyond the scope of that. Do you feel a personal connection to the case?
I certainly feel a personal connection to this case. The central arguments are about not just the legitimacy of trans healthcare, but about, in some sense, the legitimacy of trans people, as members of civic life and public life. I think it just wouldn’t be possible to feel more connected to it. It has everything to do with my experiences in the world and my prospects for living in the United States in the future. So that is central to how I experience the legal arguments, but also the material consequences of the case. For all the healthcare cases in particular, I truly unambiguously believe that the only reason I’ve been able to have the rich, and full, and really beautiful adult life that I do have is because of gender-affirming medical care, and I feel that my experience is a refutation of the arguments that are being made.
Seeing that this is personal to you, does that make preparing for this more difficult than if it were a different subject matter? Does that weigh on you?
My entire career has involved issues and cases that feel intimately connected to my own life and everyone I love and care about. I don’t even know what it would be like to work on something that you’re only engaging with in some abstract way. I have this deep, intimate and personal connection to the work that I do that can make it both harder, but also more significant, more motivating. I feel a lot of pressure, personally and on behalf of my community, to continue to figure out the best strategic decisions. But these are not individual decisions. These are big, large, collective decisions, and so that is all just part of the work. And I feel really lucky, more than anything else, to be a part of it.
In terms of, what does it feel like to tackle it in the presentation of the legal arguments in court, I have always felt that it requires a certain degree of compartmentalization. I think we all do what we can to navigate that experience of compartmentalization in our advocacy when we’re advocating on behalf of our own communities.
Throughout your career, you’ve been involved in litigation about LGBTQ+ rights. Based on your experience, could you name one thing that worries you and one thing that gives you hope about the future?
Everything worries me about the future right now. We have this election, we have this Supreme Court case, we have this escalatingly vicious public discourse around transness and trans people. At the same time, my community and the brilliance and beauty of trans people, it gives me hope every day. It gives me faith for the future. It gives me a sense of endless possibility.
How does the transgender rights movement compare to other politically charged movements, like Freedom to Marry?
Looking at the LGBTQ+ movement broadly as it relates to gay and lesbian people versus where we are with trans people, I think this is really an inflection point. Are we about to have a Bowers v. Hardwick moment? A moment where the Supreme Court legitimizes government discrimination against trans people?
Is it going to be a Bowers moment, or is it going to be a bus stop moment? Is it going to be a moment where, rather than say the government can discriminate against people, the court says, ‘No, the laws that exist, the constitutional protections that exist, apply to trans people, just like they apply to everyone else.’ That really is what’s at stake here. What is the trajectory of the next 15 to 20 years? Because if they do rule against us, I think, like with Bowers, it will be a case that will seem wrongly decided and overturned. But hopefully we don’t have to go through that period again. And it’s not just affecting trans people, it’ll affect all LGBTQ people. It’ll affect all people who experience gender-based discrimination.
What message do you have for the transgender community?
I always want to say two things to trans people in this moment. The first is, I’m so sorry that this set of relentless political, cultural and legal attacks have been escalating over the last, in particular, 10 years. It is painful and it’s frustrating. And we collectively have to hold and honor each other’s vulnerability and pain in this moment.
The second thing I’ll say is, we have a long and rich history as trans people of leading resistance movements, not just for trans liberation, but for collective liberation more broadly, and that is going to continue. And this Supreme Court fight, critical as it is, is just one piece in a long struggle in a long and rich history of resistance, and so we will continue to collectively mobilize no matter what happens.
