WASHINGTON (AP) — When the Supreme Court delves into the controversial issue of transgender rights this week, the justices will listen to a lawyer with deep knowledge.
Chase Strangio will be the first openly transgender lawyer to argue before the nation’s highest court, representing families who say Tennessee’s health care ban for transgender minors leaves their children terrified about the future.
The arguments in the case come amid increased pressure on transgender rights, including a presidential campaign that focused on Republican Donald Trump’s fierce opposition.
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Strangio will bring months of intensive legal preparation to the case, as well as hard-won lessons from his own experience.
“I can do my job because I have had this health care that has transformed and, quite frankly, saved my life,” he said. “I am a testament to the fact that we live among everyone.”
Strangio grew up outside Boston and came out as trans while in law school. He is now 42 and an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. His legal career includes representing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, challenging a ban on transgender people serving in the military and helping win an LGBTQ employment discrimination case in the Supreme Court. He is also the father of a 12-year-old, the son of a Trump-supporting father, and has a close relationship with his Army veteran brother.
He is also an advocate and speaks out about the fact that a number of US states have banned gender-affirming health care for minors. The laws are part of a wave of restrictions on school sports participation and toilet use across the country. After the first openly transgender person was elected to Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declared his support for limiting bathroom use to one’s gender assigned at birth.
Tennessee, meanwhile, will argue before the Supreme Court that treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones pose risks to young people and that the law protects them from making treatment decisions prematurely.
“Tennessee, like many other states, has acted to ensure that minors do not receive these treatments until they can fully understand the lifelong consequences or until the science has developed to the point where Tennessee could take a different view of their efficacy,” wrote state attorneys. in lawsuits.
The state’s attorney general, Matt Rice, is arguing for Tennessee. He served in 2019 as a law clerk for Judge Clarence Thomas, who dissented from the discrimination case against transgender workers that Strangio worked on that term. The attorney general’s office did not make Rice available for an interview ahead of arguments, but his background includes a few years as a minor league baseball player for the Tampa Bay Rays before earning his law degree from the University of California , Berkeley. .
The Biden administration is backing the challenge to Tennessee’s law, but the federal government’s position is expected to change after Trump takes office in January. Strangio said he will nevertheless continue to advocate for transgender youth to have access to health care that was not available when he was young.
“Many of us view our childhood and young adulthood as years lost, when we simply had our bodies stripped of our core,” he said. Major medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and have endorsed such care, saying it is safe when administered properly. Strangio also pointed out that many medical interventions for young people, such as gastric bypass surgery for weight loss, carry some risk and that it makes sense to inform families and let them decide.
“There is harm that is compounded when we force young people to deny the care that their doctors, their parents and themselves all agree they need,” he said.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case in the summer.
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Associated Press writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report.
