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Chase Strangio and the Supreme Court building
The ACLU's Chase Strangio will be the first out transgender attorney to argue before the high court as he challenges Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth.
The U.S. Supreme Court has set December 4 as the date to hear its first case on gender-affirming care, and that will mark the first time an out transgender lawyer appears before the high court.
In U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case challenging Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Chase Strangio will argue on behalf of the families and medical providers who sued. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Barchas Prelogar will argue on behalf of President Joe Biden’s administration, which has joined the challenge.
The case is over Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1, which Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed into law in March 2023. It bans surgery, puberty blockers, and hormone treatment for the purpose of gender transition for people under 18. The following month, three families with transgender children and one doctor filed a federal suit challenging the law.
The suit, originally L.W. v. Skrmetti, was brought by Samantha and Brian Williams of Nashville and their now–16-year-old transgender daughter, two other plaintiff families filing anonymously, and Dr. Susan Lacy of Memphis. They are represented by Lambda Legal, the ACLU and its Tennessee affiliate, and the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. The suit was filed in April 2023 in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.
It names as defendants Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, the Tennessee Department of Health, the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners, and various other state officials.
The suit argues that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process as well as the Affordable Care Act’s Section 1557, which bans sex discrimination in health care.
The challenge is limited to the provisions of ban regarding hormone therapies, such as hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers, and does not include surgery, as genital surgery is almost never performed on minors.
“Tennessee’s ban, like every other passed by politicians in recent years, specifically permits these same hormone medications when they are provided in a way that Tennessee considers ‘consistent’ with a person’s sex designated at birth,” the ACLU notes on its website. “This means, for example, a doctor could prescribe estrogen to a cisgender teenage girl for any clinical diagnosis but could not do the same for a transgender girl diagnosed with gender dysphoria.”
Strangio, co-director of the national ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, “is our nation’s leading legal expert on the rights of transgender people, bar none,” ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang said in a press release. “He brings to the lectern not only brilliant constitutional lawyering, but also the tenacity and heart of a civil rights champion. Our clients couldn’t have a better advocate in this case.”
“There is no attorney in the country better suited for this landmark moment in LGBTQ history than Chase Strangio,” added James Esseks, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “He has argued the issues before the court in Skrmetti four times before federal appeals courts, more than any attorney in the country. Anyone who has worked with Chase knows the intelligence, compassion, and courage he brings to every fight for the rights and well-being of his plaintiffs. It remains one of the great honors of my career to work alongside Chase and I have no doubt the court will be likewise impressed by the depth of his knowledge, the strength of his arguments, and the power of his empathy.”
Strangio, a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and Grinnell College, joined the ACLU as a staff attorney in 2013. Before that, he was an Equal Justice Works fellow and the director of Prisoner Justice Initiatives at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, where he represented transgender and gender-nonconforming people in confinement settings. In 2012, he cofounded the Lorena Borjas Community Fund, an organization that provides direct bail/bond assistance to LGBTQ+ immigrants in criminal and immigration cases.
He served as counsel in the Obergefell v. Hodges marriage equality case, the ACLU and Lambda Legal’s challenge to North Carolina’s notorious “bathroom law” House Bill 2, the ACLU’s challenge to Donald Trump’s trans military ban, and Bostock v. Clayton County, which resulted in the landmark 2020 Supreme Court ruling affirming the rights of LGBTQ+ workers under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
He has been a leader in developing the ACLU’s legal strategy against anti-transgender laws passed in state legislatures since 2016, including 12 legal challenges against state laws like Tennessee’s banning transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming medical care. In June 2023, Strangio was part of the team that won the first trial on the merits against such a ban in Brandt v. Rutledge, an Arkansas lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of four families with transgender youth.
“The stakes could not be higher for our communities as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral argument in U.S. v. Skrmetti and L.W. v. Skrmetti,” said a statement from Lambda Legal Chief Legal Officer Jennifer C. Pizer. “As hostile state leaders prepare to double-down on their cruel, unprecedented and discriminatory attacks on transgender youth, the court has the opportunity and duty to apply the law fairly, which means returning medical decisions to where they rightfully belong, to parents, their children, and their doctors.
“In the weeks ahead, we will work hand-in-glove with our co-counsel and with Chase to prepare for his historic appearance before the court. And we look forward to representing L.W., her parents, our two pseudonymous families, and Dr. Susan Lacy in their challenge to Tennessee, and, by extension, to the many other states which have decided to target this especially vulnerable group of young people and to interfere in intensely personal family medical decisions.”
Strangio recently spoke to Time about being the first trans lawyer to argue at the Supreme Court. “It signifies for so many communities, things are so far behind where they should be,” he said. “In 2024, no group of people should be having their first experience of anything. … 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 transmasculine 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.”
“I certainly feel a personal connection to this case,” he added. The central arguments are about not just the legitimacy of trans health care, but about, in some sense, the legitimacy of trans people, as members of civic life and public life. … 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.”
