“Harming Young People”: Chase Strangio on SCOTUS Trans Heathcare Ban & End of LGBTQ Suicide Hotline

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. I’m a six-to-three decision Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender youth, paving the way for other bans on trans healthcare to remain in effect in 24 other states. According to the ACLU, over 100,000 transgender people under the age of 18 now live in a state with a ban on their healthcare. The Court’s right-wing justices rejected arguments on behalf of Tennessee trans kids and their parents, which claimed the ban on those treatments discriminated on the basis of sex because they remain permitted for other medical treatments for non-trans youth. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused her conservative colleagues of, quote, “Contorting logic and precedent and abandoning transgender children and their families to political whims,” unquote. Trans activists rallied at a Washington D.C. church after the ruling.

DEVON OJEDA: They can say I’m a woman, but I live as a man. I love as a man. I move through this world as a man. And nothing, nothing they say or legislate will ever change that.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now in studio by Chase Strangio, the ACLU attorney who argued the case known as United States v. Skrmetti before the Supreme Court in December. Chase made history by becoming the first openly trans attorney to argue at the high court, a story captured in the new document, Heightened Scrutiny. Chase, welcome back to Democracy Now!. Thanks so much for being with us. Explain what happened. Explain the decision of the Supreme Court this week.

CHASE STRANGIO: Thanks, Amy. So, in the decision, the Supreme Court, in essence, said that Tennessee’s law, which bans puberty blockers and hormone therapy when they are prescribed in a way that is inconsistent with an adolescent’s sex, that’s what the statute says, is not discriminatory. It doesn’t discriminate based on sex or transgender status, and therefore, the government of Tennessee has wide latitude to regulate in this area. Now, I think Justice Sotomayor got it exactly right in her dissent that they had to contort logic and precedent in order to reach the conclusion that a law that says you can do something consistent with your sex, but you can’t do something inconsistent with your sex is not a form of sex discrimination. But ultimately, the six-three conservative majority said that it was not discriminatory, as you’ve noted, paving the way for the 24 laws that ban this care for adolescents in the United States to remain in effect.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the story of the family that’s at the core of this case.

CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, so one of the most heartbreaking things about this moment is just thinking about the families and the parents, and as a parent, what it means to watch your child suffer. So, we represent three families. L.W. is one of the adolescents, and her parents, who we sued Tennessee on behalf of.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to interrupt for one second just to read about this case an excerpt from a New York Times opinion piece written by Samantha Williams, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care. Her daughter has only been identified by the initials LW. The op-ed is titled, “My Daughter was at the Center of the Supreme Court Case on Trans Care. Our Hearts are Broken.” She writes, “My daughter L.W. came out as transgender late in 2020. She was just shy of 13. Four and a half years later, she’s thriving, healthy, and happy after pursuing evidence-based gender-affirming care. I’ve devoted myself to finding our daughter consistent care in one state after another. The nightmare of our disrupted life pales in comparison with the nightmare of losing access to the healthcare that’s allowed our daughter to thrive. If one thing gives me hope, it’s my daughter. Even after all the emotions of today, L.W. has been texting me all day about her plans for how to continue the fight for young people like her.” Tell us more, Chase.

CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, so I think Samantha hits it on the head is, these are parents who watched their children suffer tremendously for many years, looking for a solution, doing their own research, talking to medical experts. And then, what they found was that their children, who were experiencing this intense distress, began to thrive when they had access to gender-affirming medical care like hormones and puberty blockers. And these are not rushed decisions, these are careful decisions that parents are making with their children and their doctors. And what Tennessee did, what these other governments have done is come in and displaced the judgment of parents, and adolescents, and doctors and substituted their own ideological preferences for how people live and identify.

AMY GOODMAN: Clearly a blow to the transgender community. It was a six-to-three ruling. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority, opening, quote, saying, “This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field. The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound. The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements.” And again, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the high court, quote, “Abandons transgender children and their families to political whims,” as well as undermines the Constitution, saying the decision causes, quote, “Irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight. In sadness, I dissent,” Justice Sotomayor said.

CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, I think Chief Justice Roberts’s language there is just wrong in so many different ways. First, the medical debate that he is referencing was not a debate that the district court found in the court’s factual findings. It was a Trump-appointed district court judge who looked at the evidence and concluded that Tennessee’s arguments in support of their ban just did not hold up to scrutiny. But even more importantly, the question of whether or not the law discriminates based on sex on its face does not consider that medical debate. Looking at the plain language of the statute, it says you can do something consistent with your sex, you can’t do something inconsistent with your sex. If the Court starts importing their own ideas about what’s a good or bad sex-based distinction, we’re back to 50 years ago, when they’re allowing all sorts of discriminatory laws to stand.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s Bostock, and explain how it’s affected by this.

CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, so as much as this is a devastating decision, I think it’s important to make sure people understand that it does not do some of the damage that people fear. So, Bostock is a 2020 Supreme Court decision in which the court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits sex discrimination in employment, also prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ people. And that decision was a six-three decision from Justice Gorsuch, and in the Skrmetti case, the Court explicitly leaves intact that decision, and the Court says that they are declining to address whether that decision applies outside the context of Title VII. And that’s important because it means that litigation over things like discrimination in school, other forms of discrimination by the government remain open to fight another day.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the other cases in the last few weeks that have gone actually both ways? But before you do, the irony of conservative justices, or conservatives states, or states run by Republicans that have always insisted, for example, when it comes to abortion, a kid has to tell their parents when it comes to parental consent, etc. You have L. W.’s parents with a doctor in a room with L. W. They’re all hashing this out.

CHASE STRANGIO: Yes, you have this aligned judgment of parents, adolescents, and doctors, and the government is coming in and imposing their preference. The same governments that in every other context are spouting how important parental rights are. Parental right to not mask your child, parental rights to not have your child learn about LGBT people in school or the history of racism in the United States. So, this is hypocrisy at its most clear point, and I think we should really be watching for when the Supreme Court upholds the parental rights of parents to, for example, stop their children from accessing contraception or abortion. But when it’s the parents who love and support their trans children, all of a sudden their parental rights don’t matter.

AMY GOODMAN: Separately on Wednesday, Trump’s Health Department ordered the National Suicide Hotline for LGBTQ+ youth to shut down. In its announcement, HHS omitted reference to the transgender population, using the term, “LGB+ youth services.” One advocate called the move a potential death sentence for thousands of LGBTQ+ youth. It reminded me of erasing from the federal website around Stonewall, which is a federal monument now, that was led by trans women that launched the modern-day LGBTQ movement, taking out the T there. What about here? And what about the hotline itself, what it means?

CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, this is a population that has a unique vulnerability to suicidality. This service was vital for LGBTQ young people, and what the administration is doing is making abundantly clear that their systematic attacks on the LGBTQ community are not about protecting anyone, they are about harming young people, taking away vital services. If you put this in conversation with the bans on trans people serving in the military, the bans on people going to the bathroom, participating in sports and now the decision in Skrmetti, you have a country that is prepared to not only fully attack us across all areas of life but take away our lifelines, quite literally.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Judge Young and the decision that came out of Boston?

CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, so this is a decision in a challenge to the government’s attempts to cut off NIH grants any time they reference LGBT people or people of color. And Judge Young issued an injunction, in essence forcing the government to reissue those grants and said from the bench that in his 40 years on the bench, he has not seen such rank discrimination on the basis of race and that this is plain as plain can be that this government is invested in discriminating against people of color and LGBT people and ordered them to restart those vital grants. Because not only are we living in a moment that is anti-people of color, anti-LGBT people from this administration, but they’re also anti-science and cutting off vital research avenues that judges thankfully are stepping in and trying to restore as much as possible.

AMY GOODMAN: And Young was a Reagan-appointed judge. He said he’s never seen discrimination like this.

CHASE STRANGIO: Yes. And there’s another Reagan-appointed judge in the district of D.C. that ordered the administration to stop banning gender-affirming medical care for trans people in the Bureau of Prisons. This is an administration that is attacking us in every aspect of life, and judge after judge across the political spectrum, going back to Reagan-appointed judges, are stepping in and saying, “Absolutely not.”

AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to The New York Times piece that just came out, major hit piece against you, Chase, that was written by Nicholas Confessore. Its headline, “How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost.” Confessore writes, quote, “Strangio and other advocates for trans rights have cast Skrmetti as the case they had to bring, and they also have set back their movement back a generation.”

CHASE STRANGIO: Well, I think that’s just absolutely wrong. This is a fight that extends back 100 years, and we will keep fighting for 100 more years. The piece absolutely gets it wrong in terms of what this decision does and doesn’t do. It’s a narrow decision. It leaves open many other avenues to fight back against discrimination on behalf of trans people. But for everyone that is saying that the movement got ahead of public opinion, that litigators got ahead of public opinion, the very purpose of the Equal Protection Clause, the very purpose of the Reconstruction Amendments, is to be a check on majoritarian discrimination. If the public’s opinion is that you deserve to have your constitutional right infringed, then the very purpose of the Constitution is to step in. That is the role of the federal courts, and that is the role of civil rights advocates, and we will keep fighting.

AMY GOODMAN: The hit piece comes at the same time as a major documentary on you, Chase. The document premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It was also at DC/DOX, the new film festival in Washington D.C. It’s called Heightened Scrutiny. It shows you addressing trans community members and supporters outside the Supreme Court after you made history as the first openly trans lawyer to deliver oral arguments in front of the Court. The hearing back in December was for this case.

CHASE STRANGIO: We are the defiance of everything…

PEPPERMINT: [inaudible].

CHASE STRANGIO: Okay. Peppermint loves to give me advice about how to project, so I’m going to work on it. We are collectively a refutation of everything they say about us. And our fight for justice did not begin today, it will not end in June, whatever the Court decides. We are in this together. We are in it together. Our power only grows. I love being trans, I love being with you, and we are going to take care of each other. Thank you for being here. I felt it inside.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Chase Strangio, a clip from the new film Heightened Scrutiny. That will also premiere in Los Angeles next week at the Hammer Museum. Talk about what you’re hoping to accomplish with this film.

CHASE STRANGIO: I think one of the really important things about this film is that it offers a critique of mainstream media coverage of transgender people and our healthcare in addition to the vérité parts that are me preparing for oral argument. And one of the things the film really highlights is the ways in which the media’s outsized fixation on transgender people contributes to anti-trans policymaking. Media Matters reported that in the last four months, Fox News ran 400 segments on transgender athletes. If you think about the fact that we are less than 1% of the population, transgender athletes must be 1/100th of a percent of the population, and yet this outsized fixation with us and our lives is what is driving so much of the anti-trans policies that we’re seeing. And so, it’s so important that we challenge those narratives, that we make people aware of the misinformation that they’re receiving. Because if we don’t, we’re going to continue to see these attacks.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, the decision also this week around passports.

CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, I think it’s really important for people to know that we’re still getting good decisions in the lower courts. The judge said that in essence, Trump’s policy of forcing people have to have passports listing their sex assigned at birth is blocked, not just for our six named plaintiffs but for everyone across the country. People can reapply for both binary passports and X passports under the policy…

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean. Either you’re male or female, doesn’t have to match your…

CHASE STRANGIO: Your sex assigned at birth. So, if I…

AMY GOODMAN: Or you can do X.

CHASE STRANGIO: Or you can do X. And that was the policy on January 19, and in essence, the court says we’re back to January 19 with respect to the policy. And transgender people, nonbinary people, and intersex people can apply for the M, F, and X passports that match who they are, not what their sex was at conception, which is the Trump administration’s preference.

AMY GOODMAN: Chase Strangio, thanks so much for being with us. Co-Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, LGBTQ & HIV Project. In December, he became the first openly trans lawyer to argue in front of the Supreme Court when he presented oral arguments in the United States v. Skrmetti. Coming up, we speak to a Columbia University graduate who was just denied entry back into the United States because of his writing about pro-Palestine protests on campus. The authorities at the airport were very explicit about why they were deporting him. Stay with us.

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