Transgender lawyer makes history, takes case on puberty blockers and hormone therapy to Supreme Court

Chase Strangio surrounded himself with close friends on election night, knowing that Donald Trump might be sent back to the White House after a campaign that included extensive attacks on the transgender community Strangio is part of. Defending the community is his life’s work.

The American Civil Liberties Union attorney sensed early in the evening that he would not get his hoped-for result.

So, Strangio channeled his anxiety into finishing his written arguments to the Supreme Court on why the justices should strike down Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors. The Supreme Court takes up the case the first week in December.

He was grateful for the deadline distraction.

“I had my cheese and crackers. I had my reply brief and my compartmentalization,” Strangio told USA TODAY. “It was a reminder that there is work to do regardless.”

That work got more challenging with Trump’s victory and Republican control of both chambers of Congress.

In addition to fighting GOP-led states trying to restrict gender-affirming care, sports participation and bathroom access for transgender people, transgender rights advocates now face the likelihood of similar federal action. Trump, who spent millions of campaign dollars attacking transgender rights, promised to “end left-wing gender insanity.”

In response to the election of the first openly transgender member of Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., enacted new rules to prevent incoming Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., from using women’s bathrooms.

`Target on Day One of the Trump administration'

A week after the election, Strangio hopped on Instagram to acknowledge how scared the transgender community is, to provide practical advice and to be clear-eyed about the challenges ahead.

“When we think about who’s going to be the target on Day One of the Trump administration, it is going to be immigrants and trans people,” said Strangio, who wore a somber black hoodie as he streamed his remarks.

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He called the central issue in the upcoming Supreme Court case – whether Tennessee’s ban is a form of sex discrimination – the best tool to fight government actions targeting transgender people.

Tennessee – along with the more than 20 other states with similar bans – argues it’s protecting young people from the life-altering consequences of controversial medical care.

“The Constitution does not prevent the states from regulating the practice of medicine where hot-button social issues are concerned,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “People who disagree with restrictions on irreversible pediatric procedures for gender transition are free to advocate for change through state elections.”

The ACLU, which represents families challenging the ban, say the law is overly restrictive. Some patients may have regrets as with any medical procedure, they argue, but the majority seeking the care will benefit.

First openly transgender lawyer to argue before Supreme Court

The issue, which the justices will take up on Dec. 4, is the most high-profile case the Supreme Court is considering in the nine-month term that began in October.

In addition, Strangio – who will share time with the Biden administration’s lawyers in making their joint case to the justices – will make history as the first openly transgender lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court.

But it won’t be his first time in the courtroom.

Strangio was part of the legal teams that in 2019 successfully represented three employees fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, leading to a landmark decision barring workplace discrimination against LGBTQ employees.

During those oral arguments, Justice Neil Gorsuch – who ended up writing the 6-3 decision – asked whether judges should take into account the “massive social upheaval” that could result from such a decision.

The lead ACLU lawyer representing a transgender woman fired from her job pointed out that there were transgender lawyers in the courtroom who were following the male dress code and using the men’s room without disruption.

Strangio, one of two transgender lawyers at the counsel’s table, said his presence that day showed – just as it will on Dec. 4 − that “trans people have actually always existed in places and even among people who don’t think they’ve been proximate to trans people.”

“We’re just here, doing our jobs, living our lives,” said Strangio, a 42-year-old father.  “While we may have an outsized role in political conversations right now, that doesn’t mean in the day-to-day realities of people’s lives, that the presence of trans people changes anything for anyone.”

More: Meet the Tennessee family behind the US Supreme Court's major transgender health care case

Fighting both legal and cultural battles

The legal fight and the cultural battle have always gone hand-in-hand for Strangio. Despite wanting to avoid public speaking early in his career, Strangio realized how much his fight for equality depended on a greater public understanding of who transgender people are and what it means to be trans.

“The ways in which we understand the laws are informed by the way in which culture shapes our experiences of people and relationships and communities in the world − and vice versa,” he said.

In addition to devising legal strategies as co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, Strangio has been a public advocate, ambassador and explainer for the trans community.

In a 2016 article for Slate titled “What is a `Male Body’?” Strangio wrote that he was assigned female at birth “but I have never had a female body.”

“If it takes longer to convince the world of that than it would to simply say that I was born with a female body but am now male,” he wrote, “I am invested in that longer path, because ultimately we will all be better off when we can challenge the idea that our body parts define us.”

In 2019, Strangio was photographed by Annie Lebowitz for a Google ad campaign documenting prominent change makers. In the image, a shirtless Strangio is taking a photo of himself using a mirror, telling Out magazine at the time that he wanted to “disrupt our expectations about bodies in general.”

Not the first queer or trans attorney fighting for civil rights

Visible in the photograph are some of Strangio’s extensive tattoos, inked art that both represents something meaningful to him and – for someone who spends a lot of time in his head – helps him feel more grounded and connected to his body.

Amelia Earhart and Princess Leia are etched on his arms, the latter representing his Star Wars fandom and the former a tribute to a historical figure who has long interested Strangio in part because of Earhart’s “gender defiance” in becoming a pilot.

Strangio recently got another tattoo, part of the poem “Prophecy,” by Pauli Murray, a gender fluid, legal trailblazer whose strategy for overturning Plessy v. Ferguson in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case was adopted by Thurgood Marshall.

The tattoo, Strangio said, is “a reminder that there have been queer and trans people in this work always,” something he will think about when he enters the high court.

`Leading legal expert' on transgender rights

Strangio has argued the issues at the center of the case before four appeals courts and was part of the team that won the first trial about a similar ban.

He also worked on the case that led to the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, on the challenge to a North Carolina law requiring transgender people to use bathrooms based on their birth certificate, and on efforts to stop Trump from banning transgender people from serving in the military.

Cecillia Wang, the ACLU’s legal director, called Strangio “our nation’s leading legal expert on the rights of transgender people, bar none.”

Strangio said he’s preparing for the oral arguments not just with intense practice sessions but by eating three meals a day and following the advice of his brother, a military veteran, to drink lots of water.

“The motto in the family is, `Everything can be fixed with hydration,’” he said.

`Unending gratitude for being trans'

In the aftermath of the election, Strangio told his Instagram followers that he still wakes up every day “with just unending gratitude for being trans.”

Strangio explained to USA TODAY that the self-reckoning he went through, as painful as it was when he was younger, “has allowed me to sort of engage in the world with a strong sense of who I am.”

And the gender-affirming care he received after coming out as trans in law school, he said, give him a life of fullness, joy and hope.

“I certainly couldn't have the life that allows me to stand up in courtrooms, enter spaces, tackle fears if I didn't feel at home in my body and in my mind,” he said. “And that's what this care has done for me.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: This transgender lawyer is making history at the Supreme Court