WASHINGTON (AP) — When the Supreme Court considers the contentious issue of transgender rights this week, the justices will hear from a lawyer with deep knowledge.
Chase Strangio will be the first openly transgender attorney to appear before the nation’s highest court, representing families who say Tennessee’s ban on health care for transgender minors leaves their children fearful of the future.
The disputes in the case come amid rising opposition to transgender rights, including a presidential campaign in which Republican Donald Trump highlighted his bitter opposition.
Strangio will bring months of intensive legal preparation as well as hard-won lessons from first-hand experience to the case.
“I can do my job because I had this health care that changed and, quite frankly, saved my life,” he said. “I am proof that we live among everyone.”
Strangio grew up outside of Boston and came out as transgender while in law school. He is now 42 and an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. His legal career included representing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, challenging a ban on transgender military service and helping win a discrimination case against LGBTQ people 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 brother, an Army veteran.
He is also an advocate who has pushed for a number of US states to ban gender-affirming healthcare for minors. The laws are part of a wave of restrictions on school sports participation and restroom apply across the country. After the first openly transgender person was elected to Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., expressed support for restricting bathroom apply to the gender assigned at birth.
Tennessee, meanwhile, will argue before the Supreme Court that treatments like puberty blockers and hormones pose risks to newborn people and the law protects them from making hasty treatment decisions.
“Tennessee, like many other states, has ensured that minors do not receive these treatments until they fully understand the lifelong consequences or until science has advanced to the point where Tennessee may have a different view of their effectiveness,” they wrote Prosecutors in court documents.
Representing Tennessee is Attorney General Matt Rice. In 2019, he served as a law clerk for Judge Clarence Thomas, who recused himself in the transgender worker discrimination case Strangio worked on that term. The attorney general’s office did not make Rice available for an interview ahead of the altercation, but his background also included a few years as a minor league baseball player for the Tampa Bay Rays before earning a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
The Biden administration is supporting 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 would still continue to advocate for transgender youth to have access to health care that wasn’t available when he was younger.
“Many of us view our childhood and young adulthood as lost years in which we were simply stripped away from our core,” he said. Major medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and support the treatment, saying it is protected when used correctly. Strangio also noted that many medical procedures for newborn people, such as gastric bypass surgery for weight loss, carry some risk and it makes sense to inform families and let them make the decision.
“The harm will be compounded if we force young people to deny the care that their doctors, their parents and they all need,” he said.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case this summer.
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Associated Press writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report.
