Supporters of Trans Rights Rally Despite Conservative Court’s Ominous Leanings
Outside supporters of trans rights showed their fighting spirit. While inside, questions about detransition signaled court’s openness to gender affirming care bans.
by Valorie Van-Dieman
A historic day. It’s a phrase that can be triumphant, but history is not always kind, and at the rally for trans rights outside of the Supreme Court on December 4th, few members of the crowd expressed confidence that the history being made would be kind to the transgender community.
“I mean, I don’t have a lot of faith in this court. This regime is corrupt to the bones,” director, writer, and producer Lilly Wachowski told Assigned Media, echoing a sentiment that seemed common among the crowd of trans rights supporters which had a mix of trans adults, parents of trans youth, and their allies.
Outside, supporters of trans rights greatly outnumbered the conservatives who gathered to vilify and spread misinformation about the transgender community and their medical treatments, but inside the court what matters are the justices. Appointed by Republican presidents, justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett have shown an appetite for reshaping the American legal landscape with sweeping decisions that have upturned pregnant people’s right to safely end their pregnancies and caused mayhem in federal rulemaking as lower courts have been directed to substitute their judgement for that of experts at federal agencies.
Under tough questioning from the conservative justices, both Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar representing the Biden Administration and Chase Strangio of the ACLU representing trans youth and their families remained poised and on message. They argued that laws which ban treatments for children based on their sex make a sex based classification.
In contrast, Solicitor General Matthew Rice of Tennessee seemed to struggle to explain to the more liberal justices why a law that bans treatments for natal males and not natal females isn’t sex discrimination in his eyes, and at times seemed confused about which treatments would be typically be available to cisgender children for which reasons.
Despite this difference in preparation and composure, the partisanship of the court has led few to predict a decision that protects transgender youth’s health and safety. This conventional wisdom is so entrenched the New York Times’ live updates dispensed with all kayfabe, using the headline. “Supreme Court Appears Inclined to Uphold Tennessee Law on Transgender Care.”
Tennessee’s law includes openly transphobic wording, stating that it furthers the state’s “compelling interest in encouraging minors to appreciate their sex,” something that, apparently, the legislature does not believe transgender youth can appreciate. This view of trans people as “disdainful of their sex” represents an extremist viewpoint, one that was raised repeatedly by Prelogar and Strangio.
The stakes of the case could not be higher, a point highlighted by Thom Rowell of Connecticut, who joined the rally for trans rights to support his son Dean who is transgender.
“My son Dean is 15 years old and depends on gender-affirming care. It has saved his life. And I firmly believe it is lifesaving for trans kids everywhere.”
Asked what he was hoping to see from the court, Rowell echoed a common sentiment among supporters. “I’m hoping to see the Supreme Court make the right decision and overturn the bans.”
The toll on trans youth was also top of mind for representatives of the organizations supporting trans youth and their families.
“The families that are at the center of this case have been faced with an impossible choice,” said Jace Woodrum of ACLU South Carolina. “Their children have lost access to medically necessary, lifesaving care. And they have to decide, are we going to leave our family, our friends, our neighborhoods, our schools, our homes, and uproot our lives to get our child medical care? Or do we stay and watch our child suffer when we know that transgender kids who are denied this healthcare are more likely to drop out of school, more likely to use drugs and alcohol, more likely to experience anxiety and depression, more likely to consider suicide?”
Hopes for the court to value the lives of trans youth seemed slim as conservative justices repeatedly raised the spectre of detransitioners, the 1 percent of youth who access gender-affirming care and regret having done so. “You agree there are some set of people that regret their treatment?” Justice Kavanaugh asked Strangio in one of many exchanges that seemed to indicate that no benefit to trans youth, however overwhelming, would outweigh the risk of occasional detransition in the eyes of conservative justices.
For her part, Wachowski suggested there were reasons for coming out to support trans youth that went beyond convincing the justices to value trans existence.
“I’m here for trans joy and trans love. For me, my hope is that trans people are able to fill up their trans-o-meters and connect in meaningful ways, and also to leave this place with a sense of urgency to expand those connections as much as possible.”
Valorie Van-Dieman (she/her) is the editorial assistant at Assigned Media. @valorievandieman.bsky.social