Skrmetti: Trans Healthcare at SCOTUS

And no parent should be told by doctors that their child won’t be happy unless they undergo irreversible surgeries. No child’s gender is a mistake, because every child is made in the image of God…

Medical decisions, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court on its face. SB, one, bans medical care only when it is inconsistent with a person’s birth sex. An adolescent can receive medical treatment to live and identify as a boy if his birth sex is male but not female, and an adolescent can receive medical treatment to live and identify as a girl if her birth sex is female but not male. Tennessee claims this sex based line drawing is justified to protect children, but SB one has taken away the only treatment that relieved years of suffering for each of the adolescent plaintiffs.

A Hey, fam. It’s me, Imara, welcome to the translash podcast, a show where we tell trans stories to save trans lives. Well, we at the translash podcast, hope that you had a restful and restorative Thanksgiving. That’s because after a consequential presidential election. This week, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in a consequential case that of US versus scarmetti, which was heard on Wednesday, just the day before this is getting to your ears. Now, I was in the chamber to hear the oral arguments in this historic case, which ostensibly is designed to answer the question of whether or not gender affirming care for trans youth is protected by the Constitution. If the court rules that it is then gender affirming care for trans kids will proceed as it does at present. If they decide that it is unconstitutional, then it could be banned outright. So that’s why I wanted to talk to two people who can help us break all of these consequences down what we heard in court yesterday, and begin to just prepare us for this landmark decision, which is likely to be issued in June, during pride month. First, I’m joined by the director of gender justice at rights behind bars, Dee van Goren, who joined me right after attending the argument at the Supreme Court. I thought going into the argument before hearing it, that it was gonna follow what the Sixth Circuit did and distract the issue and focus on age, but I think we’re gonna get a quite sweeping decision.

Next, I’ll talk with the director of impact and innovation and the campaign for southern equality, Allison Scott, about the trans youth emergency project, which provides logistical and financial support for families seeking gender affirming care. We’re fighting for ourselves. We’re fighting for some of us, the childhoods we never have. We’re not going to give up, but before we get to these illuminating conversations, Let’s start out as always with some trans joy. You the fallout from election day has been undeniably weak, but it wasn’t all bad news that night, from the US Congress to city council boards, trans candidates up and down the ballot have won historic victories. Emma Curtis is one of the candidates born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, Emma has been working in her community as an organizer and documentary filmmaker. She decided to run for the District Four city council seat to help create safer roads, more affordable housing and better public safety. And after beating the incumbent by more than 300 votes, Emma is now the second out transgender person elected to office in Kentucky. Here she is to tell us more about where she’s finding resilience and hope when we’re thinking about the folks who are pushing to roll back our rights and to treat us as second class citizens. We have something that those people don’t, which is that we have each other and we know that we’re worth fighting for. One of those sayings that you hear a lot when you’re in activism spaces is that you know there’s no greater act of resistance than joy in the face of oppression. And I think there’s truth to be found in that they can try to take away our rights, but they can’t take away our humanity. Emma

Curtis, you are trans joy, so like Emma, do you know a person or a group that deserves a shout out in a future trans Joy sex? Comment will send us an email at translash_podcast@translash.org make sure to include their name, contact info and why you think they embody trans joy. We might just use your suggestion in a future episode. You can find the email to make a recommendation for trans joy in our show notes, and with that, let’s get into my conversation with Dee. I’m excited to get into this conversation with lawyer and co chair of the National trans Bar Association, Dee dangarin. Dee is the director of gender justice at rights behind bars, where they specialize in using litigation and advocacy to help incarcerated trans people access gender affirming care. And the rest of Dee’s resume is no less impressive. They received their JD from Harvard Law School, where they served as an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. After graduating, Dee clerked on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as co chair of the National trans Bar Association. They’re dedicated to supporting trans and non binary law students and legal professionals from around the country, and starting next year, Dee will return home to become an Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Hawaii Manoa. I also want to congratulate Dee on being admitted to the US Supreme Court bar this week. Dee, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. I know it was an early morning for you.

It was very much an early morning for me, and I’m not a morning person, just to be entirely transparent about it, but it was incredibly powerful for me to be witnessing history in real time in the oral arguments today, and to be in the chamber despite the fact that the press call time was hours and hours before the arguments actually began. But just yesterday, you were in the chamber itself, being sworn into the Bar Association for the Supreme Court. Congratulations for that. And how did that feel? That’s like starting us out on a good news note. Yes, it is. There was a lot of trans joy in the room yesterday as seven transgender and non binary attorneys in the national trans Bar Association were sworn into the US Supreme Court bar and so I was excited. I was there with my partner and some good friends. And you know, it’s been a lot of work to get to this point, and I’m really glad that I was able to celebrate that the day before these kind of painful arguments, to have that joyous experience. So first of all, tell us, what is it, what is the process, and what does it mean to be admitted to this august body. Yes. So you have to be a lawyer in good standing check. You have to have been barred in a state for at least three years. Okay? So you have to pass the bar exam and then be in good standing for three years, and then you can apply. And then once you apply, who reviews the application like any other state bar, there’s basically a check for disciplinary history, and that can be the biggest hurdle. It’s the Supreme Court’s, you know, bar itself. I’m not really sure who is doing those checks, but I think the Supreme Court bar has a body that reviews that, and we to get it in it as a group, because we want to be able to appear in front of the entire Supreme Court of nine. That’s the really special part that takes a lot of extra planning. And so Kristen browdy, our first co chair of the National trans Bar Association, has done this for three years now, where we have a group of trans attorneys appear in court and stand up live, and they hear us say, national trans Bar Association, and they see that there are trans attorneys in their body, right as a part of their bar and we think that has done something for the visibility in the court’s eyes of what it means to be a trans attorney, such that trace change Strangio coming in today as the first attorney to argue before them didn’t have to be the first attorney they ever met was trans, right, right? Because it actually means that trans people are their colleagues, officially, right, exactly. This also means that you can argue cases before the court, exactly, member of the Supreme Court bar, amazing. So, you know, Chase is the first, but will not be the last, hopefully not with this happening. So first of all, let’s just set a little bit about what this is, right? Just basically, supposedly, all of the nine justices have read all of the briefs, yes, right? And so they are supposed to come in prepared, right? And the lawyers are essentially there to answer their questions based upon the briefs that they’ve read. So when you have this kind of exchange, you get right to the heart of the matter.

Yes, exactly. And so you learn what the court and what each individual justice is thinking as like the tension point in the arguments, and that’s really revealing how they might decide the case. And so the beauty of an. Argument is that, especially in the way the court does it now, with each justice really having the opportunity to have a direct back and forth with the attorneys you get to get into the head of each justice before they actually issue their decision. And one of the things I think that is really important for people to understand as well is that it is an interrogation, right? So the justices ask questions. They want you to answer the question, and if they believe that you’re not answering the question, or if you’re veering off, form, will cut off, will interrupt, will direct, right? So it is a I just want people to understand that it’s not, you know, just patiently listening like this is an active and involved conversation. Yes, I like to think of it, especially with nine, it’s kind of like a kitchen table right of the holiday, a contentious debate during a family holiday, and you have some order and some structure, but there’s a lot of interruptions, and the person who’s trying to really get their point across might not feel like they got the chance to. And so there’s a lot of shifting dynamics of who gets to ask a question and when. And I think since COVID, the court has really changed the way that these arguments flow, because I did not ever see before the kind of turn based asking questioning that the justices have done in this argument they’ve been doing recently. That’s a pretty new invention. But yeah, here you get to see the person who’s arguing right chase this Solicitor General and the attorney for skretti, they knew what they wanted to say, and they start off with that little introduction, and just hope that they can put everything else that they want to say into their responses to the justices questions. Yeah. And I think that one of the things that strikes me kind of about that setup is that they do get to go in turn, but when it gets really involved. I mean, sometimes the justices will interrupt the answer from and we saw that today. So do my you’re like, in a moment where, you know, she was very animated about something, literally cut off the answer of someone else. And was like, Is that what you’re really saying? You know? So I think that, like, for to scene set for everyone, that the court itself is very serious and very contained, very structured, very hierarchical. The Chief Justice sits in the middle, and all the justices are arrayed in rank order of time on the court. And then the room is packed. But in the middle of all of that sort of seriousness and stillness and containment bears a lot of fire.

Yes, I think so. And I think I remember when Justice Sotomayor basically said, I’m sorry, counsel, you know, there was this tone shift, because she said, you’re saying that these specific forms of medical care carry risk, but every medical intervention carries risk, even aspirin, right? So she came in strong against the Council for Tennessee. And that was that kind of tone, then set that entire argument. And I think Justice Jackson was also very fiery and gave me a lot of hope today. Listen, Mama came in, hi, forgive me if Justice Jackson, you are listening to this doubtful, but if so, like, forgive me for calling your mama. But Justice Jackson came in H, O, T, and sometimes both of them had that, like, that voice that your mom does get to you that, like, I they weren’t even talking to me. And I was like, set up straight. I was like, oh yes, ma’am, it’s really it’s because the argument was so preposterous. Yeah, they knew that Tennessee is making this outlandish claim. Yeah, because when you read the statute, it’s so obvious, it’s clear. Okay, all right, so let’s, let’s get into the substance. That’s like scene setting, because we were naturally already going there. So just to recap, the key question that was before the court is whether or not the Equal Protection Clause applies to trans people, specifically in this case, with respect to gender affirming care. And the equal protection clause says that all people in United States are treated equally under the law, and the court, over time, has said Who that applies to and how it applies to there is a certain way that it applies to sex that scrutiny is called intermediate scrutiny, and that means that the state has to basically substantiate any laws that they are Passing which might discriminate against people based on sex, and so what Chase and the plaintiffs were essentially arguing and the Solicitor General is that this Equal Protection Clause applies to this particular case, and how Tennessee ruled on it violated that and that’s why you all should send it back.

Yes,exactly. There are three tiers of scrutiny, and the fight today, for the most part, was on which tier applies, because the lowest tier is called rational basis review, then the intermediate scrutiny is that second tier that you just mentioned that applies to sex and the highest is basically reserved for race and religion, and that strict scrutiny that’s off the table. People, but we’re all arguing about whether intermediate scrutiny applies in this case of a transgender discriminatory ban on gender affirming care or rational basis review. And the Attorney General of Tennessee is arguing that rational basis review applies because the medical purpose of the medical treatment is what’s at issue in the ban, rather than sex itself. And so that’s where everything then fell apart. And the issue here that Tennessee was arguing so the Sixth Circuit, which is the Federal Circuit Court that’s above the District Court. And just remind everybody in your civics class that three levels of federal judiciary, right? There’s district, there’s circuit, and there’s supreme right? So essentially ignored a lower court ruling, which did say that this law was discriminatory based upon the Equal Protection Clause, along the lines that we said, kind of ignored that and said that the purpose of the law was different.

Yes. So Chief Judge, Sutton, on the Sixth Circuit, is a prolific judge at this point. That’s something that I think is really important to note. Brings it prolific. What do you mean? He’s the judge who authored the case that was overturned by the court in Obergefell. So he denied same sex marriage as a right under equal protection. Wow. And he has this kind of It feels to me like he has this agenda against LGBT rights and equality under the equal protection clause, because he does not think that the judiciary is the branch, the proper branch to be deciding this issue. I actually took a class from him in law school, a state constitutional law class where he and a former law clerk of his he taught at Harvard. He taught at Harvard for a short course in January, and his former law clerk, who wrote the case with him, disagreed with him on it. And so they got to discuss what it was like for the law clerk to be working on same sex marriage and denying it, even though the law clerk wanted to issue it, and for this judge to not be persuaded by his own law clerk trying to advocate for him to find properly, as the Supreme Court did, that same sex marriage is a right. And so in this case, you know the facts were so clear, a Trump appointed District Judge got it right and realized that the statute was clearly a discriminatory statute based on sex. And he, if you listen to the argument in the Sixth Circuit, he really muddled the waters and through an age as a possibility purpose, talked about gender dysphoria that’s not really trans. Is trans gender dysphoria replaceable? Are they the same thing? Are they interchangeable? And he just tried to do everything he could to get away from the text of the statute, which is so clearly about sex, it says sex in the statute. And so he did a song and a dance to show and support what ended up being his decision that this was not a sex discriminatory statute and therefore did not receive intermediate scrutiny. So let’s get to like the Tiktok of sort of what happened, right? That’s the frame and what the technical, broad constitutional questions were. I don’t know about you, but it seemed to me that in some ways, the conservatives on the court recognized that this was an error, because none of them said, Oh, the district court was correct in the way they’re ruling. This was purpose. This wasn’t sex like no one stood up on that. There were all of these other arguments that were made by Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett and all these other people that were essentially along the lines of, Well, isn’t this care harmful, right? And because it’s harmful, shouldn’t it be regulated, right? That was one thing, and I think that the reply from the Solicitor General and Chase was really effective. And they were like, yes, you can restrict this care like West Virginia does, but the criteria, because it’s not a blanket ban, how did that conversation strike you?

Yeah, I think the justices realize the Sixth Circuit got it wrong, and I think the Solicitor General and the ACLU have done the right thing by arguing for them to basically, instead of decide it the right way now and set the final law they’re saying you can just vacate and remand, so you can just overturn what the Sixth Circuit did, and then send it back to them to do it again, with guidance Exactly. And so I think that you know, the closest that I heard in the arguments of someone actually defending Tennessee’s position was Justice Kavanaugh, and perhaps the Chief Justice, but he asks so few questions, but justice Kavanaugh and justice Coney Barrett, to your point, we’re trying to say, Well, isn’t there something to be said for de transitioning, for the harm that those those children experience harm in quotes, right? Exactly that was quoting them. And so I think that that all comes at what Chase really clearly showed was step two, and we’re not. Even there yet, because step one was wrong, we need to accept that the Sixth Circuit was wrong, and this is a sex discriminatory statute, to then realize we’re at step two. And the Tennessee attorney trying to say, well, this is not sex based discrimination, made it really clear that the arguments about step one, but all of the justices questions were already peering over into step two, but explain step two? Yes. So under the equal protection clause, once you decide what the tier of scrutiny is, that’s step one, you move to step two. And for the intermediate tier of scrutiny, the government needs to show an exceedingly persuasive justification for their sex based discrimination, right, right? So we all know that discrimination happens. They have to say why it’s happening and why it’s justified. That’s right? And that’s that means end test that they referenced, right?

And because it has to be a legitimate interest of the state exactly, exactly.

So step two has some sub steps, right? But when, when they kind of created a two step paradigm. They just mean first you have to pick the tier, and then you do the analysis. And so the Sixth Circuit didn’t do the intermediate scrutiny analysis. The Sixth Circuit basically did rational basis review, which is the lowest level, the lowest level. And so because the government at that level can just basically state any, any interest, any rational basis.

Well, an assertion of rational interest. Yes, they don’t even have to really prove it in the facts. That’s right. And so at the intermediate level, as the justices were saying, this allows us to look at the evidence and chase argued, I think too, we need to look at all of the evidence. And so this harm analysis, quote, unquote, harm that Tennessee kept trying to argue that shouldn’t occur at step one of the, you know, tier of scrutiny. Well, one of the interesting things to me, I think, is that, I think one, you know, they didn’t argue that this can’t be regulated, which sometimes the justices were asserting and and chase and Solicitor General, like, no, like, there are, we’re giving you a firm example of a law which actually hasn’t been challenged at all, which means that there probably isn’t a good case to be made, right? And secondly, followed some standards for the regulation of this care. And they even asked, Chase, you know, is this, in your opinion? I think was either Chase or the civil engineer, in your opinion, is this constitutional? And I think they said, Well, I can’t answer because has been litigated, but I personally think that it probably is right. It wasn’t in a reasonable position like and so then that closed one of the routes for the justices, right? Because you can’t say that this is, you know, they you know, like they’re not saying that it can’t be regulated at all. And then secondly, even when the justices were trying to assert that, okay? Well, this is harmful, right? And Jason them were like, Okay, well, that’s okay, but you have to prove that it’s harmful, right? And then you can’t do a blanket ban like they did in Tennessee, because this is sex discrimination. And then when the justices, conservative justice, were essentially trying to argue, well, you know, how is it sex discrimination? Because this was Thomas like, Well, boys are different than girls, so even though they receiving the same type of medical care, both can receive puberty blockers. It’s more harmful for boys are more you know, harmful for girls. You know, there was an argument about, well, problem, because you’re coming back to the argument of sex discrimination. And so we’re in this like cul de sac, anytime, anytime we’re trying to leave the argument, we’re always back to sex discrimination, because it’s written into the law.

Exactly. And so I really think that even step two should find for the plaintiffs here, but that’s not what the petitioners have asked the court to resolve. They need the court to realize that the Sixth Circuit got it wrong. They should therefore win on appeal, because it needs to receive intermediate scrutiny, and everything about this statute screens sex discrimination and screen sex classification, and so if we can win and get intermediate scrutiny to apply to the statute, that’s doing a lot of the work for us already. And I think that the evidentiary arguments that the conservative justices were looking to, and I think Justice Alito really had a long back and forth with the Solicitor General about this, too, in the beginning of the argument, I think that that is something I’m not excited to see the court resolve with the numbers that they have, because at that step two, and this is where I get scared, I actually think that the justices will probably, the conservative justices will probably agree with the Sixth Circuit and find, even though it’s on different terms, that the statute can be upheld because they are grappling with this understanding of what it means to protect who they want to protect right under the statute. So they say, while also acknowledging that there’s real harm on the record to trans people who would be banned from accessing care. And you know, since we’re not in strict. Scrutiny where it needs to be the least restrictive means. I don’t know what they’ll do with the West Virginia example. It’s helpful to see the alternative, but just the sheer fact that there is an alternative won’t be the be all, end all for this case, because we’re not in strict scrutiny. The intermediate scrutiny analysis does not require the government to have the least restrictive means for furthering their government interest. What did you think about when they were having this debate about, you know, the conservatives? Well, this care is, you know, harmful and so it can be regulated. And no one was saying that it couldn’t, but they were basically saying, We should uphold this law because this is harmful care. That was the shorthand I would I would say, at least amongst three of them, solidly, yes. A part of that for me that was really hard, is that so much of what they were saying, I know, I knew, was pseudoscience, and that, like the disinformation campaign that’s been constructed by the Christian nationalist movement to literally disinform the public around what gender affirming care is like, using talking points from the American College of Pediatricians using talking points from, you know, essentially Gen SPECT and these other places that are of dubious backgrounds. Professionally, that was hard for me, because I was like, Well, I know that’s pseudoscience. And then, personally, I mean just saying, like, well, you know, 85% of the people who, you know, there’s this made up, stat, 85% of the people who say that they have gender dysphoria end up regretting saying that they have it. That was, you know, how did you experience that as a person who’s trans and as a lawyer, like, how did that conversation strike you?

I think it’s it was upsetting, and I think that’s par for the course, because right now, most of the discussions and debates happening even in the district courts come down to this battle of the experts. And there are enough doctors out there, psychologists, psychiatrists, whatever, whatever their background is in who are willing to side with the Conservatives here and are giving them enough expert reports and medicalized information or scientific information that they can then run with to fight against the mountain of evidence from leading medical associations in this country that find against What they’re trying to say, and the moment they create a dispute in the record, that’s how in the district court level, they’re continuing to advance their case, because if there’s a dispute of fact, they can keep fighting it. That’s the whole point of why it’s necessary to hit intermediate scrutiny and get into that record, and why it’s important to vacate it instead of trying to reach at the Supreme Court level, because that’s an analysis that’s really detailed, and looking at those facts and trying to weigh Okay, how much do I value some of these whack medical professionals, if we can call them that, how much do we value their opinions over the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, right there are these leading psychologists who’ve been leading the studies on trans care for years now, and all of their work is just being dismissed By again, like very few radical peers of theirs, and that shouldn’t be enough to create a dispute and say that there’s a reasonable dispute. It’s just that the conservative states are clinging to what they can find when people say this, and it’s happened in one of my cases. I succeeded in a preliminary injunction in Georgia, and we were able to win some care for my client and the two expert witnesses from the defendants of Georgia Department of Corrections were people that we see in other cases like this in you know, whether in prison or outside of prison contexts, Stephen Levine is a famous one, and I’ve seen his name for too many years right now, and it’s just it’s upsetting to me that They have these vendettas against trans care and the people who are providing trans care that just has them continually making these claims?

Yeah, I think a couple of things. I think one like I was thinking about that because I was looking at all of the amicus briefs and for everybody listening that people who essentially agree with one side of the argument or another, and who are deemed to be experts, normally are asked to, on the part of the court, essentially file their thoughts about why the essential argument made on one side or the other are valid, like they use it as a third party validation to see, you know what the what the real world impact is, and all the rest of it. And I was looking through the the people who had filed amicus briefs, and I immediately went to the people supporting Tennessee, an organization supporting Tennessee. And it was people that I’ve studied in great detail. It was Alliance Defending Freedom, right? It was the American College of Pediatricians. But when you’re looking at it from a judge, if you see American Medical Association, American College of Pediatricians. And you don’t realize that one has 70,000 members and the other one has 700 you know that, like, they’re not the same, you cannot say but from their perspective, we kept hearing that all day. They were like, Well, you say that it’s beneficial, but then these people say that they we have all these de transitioners, right? And they were equating things that are not equal, and saying that they were equal, yeah, and that’s the part that’s really painful for the trans attorneys who are in the room, the other members of the trans community who are in the room, and for people who are doing this work, because we know that those folks aren’t the ones bringing the claims and harmed actually harmed by these statutes. The people who are are the plaintiffs who keep suing, and it’s because they have their real stake involved, and that is that they need this care, I think, Chase and the Solicitor General acknowledged the existence of some people out there who are de transitioned and who have experienced a trans identity, and then decided that it didn’t fit them. And that shouldn’t, in my opinion, and I think in the way that the intermediate scrutiny analysis should work, that shouldn’t at all mean that the challenge to this statute just goes away. Right? There’s a real, valid argument that the statute is harming the plaintiffs, and regardless of the ostensible harm to a small amount of other people, the harm done by the statute in itself is reason to overturn it.

So let’s spend a little bit more time one last big question on the kind of judges that are skeptical of gender affirming care, and then we move to kind of the more spicy side of the conversation of the people who were skeptical that this gender affirming care shouldn’t continue. Amy Coney Barrett said a really interesting thing where she basically said, Well, why are we applying equal protection to trans people as sex? Why don’t we create essentially, a new class that is specifically for and about transgender people, and then under that classification, I think that it would be hard to uphold a law like this, because trans people historically haven’t really suffered from formal legal discrimination. And I, and I, I, yeah, Chase, handle that, and it was out of the left conversation. And and she said it casually. She was like, and you mentioned something about a military ban. But what are some other examples? Kind of like, that’s the only thing that you got. And then chase came up with another example about cross dressing laws. And then, you know, there are others. I’m wondering, what did you think about that? I was like, How can you be a member of the court and you not realize that trans people face formal legal discrimination? Yeah, I don’t know what news she pays attention to. I think just right. I think justices are meant to be an apolitical branch of government, and they are supposed to confine their views of each case for the record before them. I’m sure that in the amicus briefs, there was discussion of the types of subjected discrimination that trans people experience, and that, you know, it’s as my mentor, Chinyere azier has said, there is a discrimination to incarceration pipeline right trans people, trans youth specifically experience discrimination and disproportionate rates of homelessness, of abuse, of police violence every step along the way in the experience, especially of black trans youth, higher suicide rates. Just the precarity that faces our community is if you pay attention to the numbers. The sociological data is striking. And so I think that Justice Barrett was asking that question from this place of I think Justice Kagan also was speaking towards, well, what about a trans classification? Yeah, a trans status classification. And so if they wanted to create one, how could trans people hit the quasi suspect classification requirements? And that’s why we also heard and suspect that as in, like a criminal suspect, but like that, a suspect in terms of having extra judicial like scrutiny of what’s going on with that group of people.

Exactly. It goes back to those tiers where suspect is race and that’s the strict quasi suspect, or half suspect is intermediate and not a suspect category would be rational. And so if they’re going to do that, I think that’s where justice Barrett’s question has some relevance that can you prove that this group experienced what she called de jure discrimination? Has the law actually discriminated against trans people? We can look at conversion therapy right in the allowance of that. We can look at all of these medical bans as de jure. Examples of discrimination and legal discrimination, and to Bostock like that, you know, like, that’s why you had to, that’s why you had to issue a ruling.

And so, right, exactly, all of the employment discrimination. So I think that, you know, there’s the difference between de jure and de facto, right, right, just like how people might make the private practices right. And I think that they’d had this little back and forth about, like, well, whatever people do in the private do in the private world, that’s just de facto, right? Exactly. That’s not the law discriminate against them. Because they were trying to argue that there is sex discrimination here, and that’s a classification that applies to trans people. I heard the Solicitor General and chase not putting forth like the all of the strongest arguments for creating a trans suspect, quasi suspect classification. I don’t think that’s the approach they want to take, because they realize that’s a much harder battle, right? The court would be more worried about doing that than realizing this is sex discrimination, right? Well, so then let’s turn to the spicy part, I think, where it was really interesting that, I think, and maybe it was because, you know, the Solicitor General and chase held their own so well. But was interesting to me, dynamically, is how, for the justices that were trans skeptical, Kagan Sotomayor and Jackson essentially let them have free reign in that part, right? They didn’t really say anything. And that really struck me. I was like, they don’t really have much to say. And maybe, I mean, I would think that it was because they were like, well, one supportive questions would be expected of them from their colleagues, so that might undermine, you know, their legitimacy when they have to get behind closed door doors and argue. And secondly, I thought that, like both of them, the Solicitor General and chase were standing 10 toes down. They didn’t really need, you know, there was why waste energy when they’re doing when they’re like, carrying the day.

Exactly? I totally agree. I think we we heard justice. Sotomayor listening with her expert ear of what she has to do to convince her colleagues later, when she told Chase, I don’t think you actually answered so and so, just that was, that was Thomas’s question, yes. So she knows that she’s letting the party answer the question as she knows they can, and then she’s kind of jumping in not to respond to Justice Thomas, but say, I need to hear your argument on this, because this is what’s gonna it’s gonna take to try to convince him. And so please give me that answer. Because if he’s asking you, that’s what he’s asking me behind closed doors, that’s right. And so I do think that she and the other justices on the left, so to speak, know that that’s the task, right? That they are up here three six, and if they have any hope at trying to persuade anyone in the middle, the parties need to do the work like they’re just going to bang their heads against the heads against the wall if they just try to do the work on their own. But I think what they can really do effectively is what we saw in their questions to Tennessee.

That’s when they kind of like, you know, like Jack in the Box, they’ve all jumped up and those like, they’re brilliant legal minds, I think, kind of surged forward. And I want to hear like, let’s just kind of take some of the big things that they did one by one. For me, a standout moment was when the Solicitor General for Tennessee, defending the case, got up and basically said, equal protection doesn’t apply here, because this is sex discrimination and Sotomayor says, but it’s literally in the law like you. It’s written in the text that this applies to people because you guys are trying to reinforce the gender binary. And he goes, Well, no, it’s not. And then she read it out loud to him, yes.

And I you know, it’s, it’s rare that you have those kind of obvious moments where the attorney is doing lawyering to kind of shroud the facts, the facts being the statute itself. And so I do think Sotomayor, Kbj, like they didn’t let him off. It was so obvious. And this is such an obvious instance, you know, I’m gonna enabling a minor to identify with or live as a purported identity inconsistent with the minor sex that’s what they read. You just read that. I just read that from the statute. There’s no way that can be in a statute. And you’re actually trying to argue that the statute doesn’t make a sex classification, doesn’t do that. It’s literally doing that on its face. There’s no inference. You have to leap to. The inferences are actually all in what Tennessee is trying to do, in how they’re twisting the actual facts.

Okay, so then, what about another, like, spicy moment? There’s so much spice in that, like, if you had to do a dramatic rendering, you know, like a play, you would, you would really focus on their questions, I think, yes. So what about the other part, where both and it was, like, I think it was Kagan and and Jackson got into this exchange, and they were like, well, one of the reasons why this is sex discrimination is because given to a boy because the boy wants to deepen his voice, and it’s given to a girl because she wants to deepen her voice. That’s the same thing, but you. Saying that the boy gets to do it because that’s consistent with their gender or biological sex, I think they said, and you can’t do it with the girl because it’s inconsistent with hers. Like, how is that not sex discrimination? And then he was saying things like, but that’s because the purpose of it is totally different. And they just, like, cornered him. Yes, cornered him is one way to put it. I think that at certain points, both of them seem to have really lost it, like they were like, how are you really making this argument? And so I think, you know, Justice Kagan said, Isn’t that the point? Like, the point of the statute is to point out that there’s a gender dysphoria prohibition. Gender Dysphoria has to do with sex. That’s right. That’s the point of the statute. That’s right. So she said the Medical purpose Bard is utterly and entirely about sex. If he’s trying to say there’s a difference in purpose, and the purpose that’s allowed is the one that’s not about sex. The purpose that’s barred is about sex. That’s still talking about sex. And so I do think that they were frustrated by his inability to concede anything. But he knows that if he concedes that he loses, that’s right. And so, yeah, I do think that the justices were frustrated by his answers. And I think, you know, if Tennessee is trying to win and win by taking what they got from the Sixth Circuit and trying to convince this court to adopt it, they had to do what they did, as awkward and painful as it was for all of us to witness, and as wrong as it is on the face of the statute, and it just shows exactly how wrong the Sixth Circuit decision is, that the justices would Be this upset about it, that none of the conservative justices were really defending it. And so I would be very upset if they decide, the court decides that this receives rational basis, just like the Sixth Circuit, it is so obvious that this is a sex discriminatory statute. And I think that’s why you saw the justices being so fiery and spicy, yeah?

And it’s like they were insulted, and they they kept saying, You’re not gonna You’re not insulting our intelligence, are you? And he basically was. He kept doing it, and I think it made them more and more upset, right? And it’s also because this is something from even law school, right? Law professors hate it when you hypo their hypo. So they’re giving you a hypothetical question. Don’t resist the hypo. You know, run with our hypothetical. He kept talking about the other statute that bars the kinds of care that they’re talking and then that’s when Justice Jackson was like, cut him off and was like, but I’m talking about this statute Exactly. She and she said, it just like that, exactly. There’s no question that this statute, in her hypothetical, she could create a situation where the purpose is the same, the medical care is provided for that same purpose, and the only difference is sex in giving the person the care or not. I think if it wasn’t today, I’ve heard it in this, in a circuit argument, where the hypo or the point really is the same, and it’s, there’s no way. I think this was actually Justice sotomayors question that. Justice Jackson then jumped on, you know, she said, I think she said something like, you don’t know the child sex when you look at them. She’s like, I got it wrong.

Yeah, she did. She did. Yeah.

So if, when you’re looking at the child and they ask for care, you don’t know if the statute bars it unless you know their sex. It’s a sex discriminatory statute. And I think that’s a brilliant point, that there’s no way to know if the person asking for care is asking for it for gender dysphoria or not, unless you know they’re sex assigned at birth, right?

That’s right. I think it was at this point where they kind of tag teamed him. And he then suddenly abandoned the legal argument, and then went on this tangent about girls as uteruses, and how, like, this care is damaging to the uterus and it causes infertility. And then started talking about, like, made allusions to the lining of the vaginal wall. And I’m sure that for them, they were also like, whoa. Like, how do we get here? Like we’re talking about, like, legal standards and hypotheticals. And he’d gotten so off his rocker, that kind of the obsession, the true obsession that they have on these issues and about control over bodies, and not necessarily concerned about the bodies of who they would say are boys, right? They were obsessed with like fertility, and it got reduced to this fertility argument. That’s why we hate gender affirming care. That really seemed to shift the mood in the courtroom and and I saw like the reporter next to me was a cis woman, and she literally shifted in her seat like she moved. Because everyone was like, how do we start talking about the lining of vaginal walls? Yeah,

I think this goes back to right, the Moral Majority. This goes back to the protect the children arguments of the right and why trans people are in the crosshairs. Altogether in these conservative states. We know that the Christian right has it. You know, in their plan to use trans people to actually make this larger, broader attack on anyone challenging the system of one man one woman in a nuclear family, dynamic heterosexual couples having babies, right? This is about what it means to be a family and what it means to be, in their minds, American. And I think that reproductive justice is at on the line. And I think that what Tennessee’s Solicitor General really showed us was the extent to which this, this implicates reproductive justice, because if people are raising this CIS, sexist reproductive right, fertility argument against gender affirming care, we really in the reproductive justice movement have to have a real conversation about this, that gender affirming care is reproductive justice, that we cannot divorce what we’re advocating for from those advocating for people to create the families that they want to create and the ways they want to create it and have choice. This is about abortion, and they know, and that’s why good old dick and Dobbs were on the table, right? We are in the same realm in the law as abortion rights when we’re talking about substantive due process, equal protection, all of these things. That’s right. And so I think that they were trying to tease the court to care about that, to distract them from the intermediate scrutiny analysis that they are bound to right now, right? And some of those arguments might be relevant at the evidentiary level, when you’re doing the harm means end analysis, but it’s so irrelevant to whether or not. This is a sex treatment story.

Yeah, in the coddling case, that was about pregnancy and so again, like this obsession with bodies. Okay, so in the last feisty moment before we, like, talk about what’s next was justice, Jackson came prepared for this argument where she basically was like, this reminds me of the Levin case and around the issue, specifically, of interracial marriage. And that’s what this case was. Y’all heard this thing. The Levin case decided that interracial marriage was legal in the United States. Believe it or not, I think that happened in the late 50s or early 60s, like not that long ago. And she basically said they made sort of scientific and characteristic arguments. Then two, about why people shouldn’t intermarry, and they made arguments that the ban applies equally to all, but then in the way that it’s actually carried out is discriminatory, and so tell me why. One, this isn’t like loving. And two, tell me if we like rule along the lines that you want us to that essentially, this doesn’t begin to endanger and cancel out to use like simple terms, cases like loving, like, can’t we just start asserting like, different biological characteristics around race, and as a back door begin to undermine those and she came prepared. She quoted from the law. She came to that question at least three times. Talk about how that struck you and what stood out to you as a lawyer.

Yes, I just double checked so Loving versus Virginia actually overturned the anti miscegenation statute. So it the Court struck down laws that banned interracial marriage, and so Justice Jackson was talking about the arguments from those who were supporting those bans on interracial marriage that looked to science, that’s right. And so she used loving in multiple ways. I think the most important way she used loving goes to the first two years of scrutiny question, because one argument from those who supported the ban on interracial marriages was that, well, the ban applies to the white person and the black person in this interracial marriage. It applies to white people and black people in the world. So it’s not actually discriminating based on race. It’s applying to everyone, regardless of their race, because no two races can come together. And so since it applies to whites and black people equally, there’s no racial discrimination. And that was just thrown out. That was wrong. The court did not agree with that. There was a strict scrutiny tear met. There was a racial classification, even though it applied to everyone. And so her point, the first main point she used loving to argue, was even if trans boys and trans girls are equally affected by this law. And you could frame that, as you know, Tennessee and the court did, of even if just boys or girls, but I think whether they’re CIS boys or trans boys, right, boys and girls are affected by this law equally. And so they’re saying, because that’s the case, there’s no sex discrimination possible. And she’s saying, no, no. The point is, if you’re a trans boy or a cis Boy, that dictates whether you can get the care right. And so that’s that’s discrimination. And loving helps show that even though it applies, quote, unquote, equally to everyone, the actual scrutiny you have to bring to it is. How is it applying, who is actually being affected, and what is the designation, the classification you’ve created? And it’s so clear to her and to anyone who reads the statute that they’re really trying to say, if you’re seeking this care, and this is a quote for the purpose of treating your purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor sex and asserted identity, which is to say, if you’re a trans person who is seeking care to help with your distress from gender dysphoria, then you can’t get it right. But if you’re seeking the exact same care for another reason, you can because you’re not trans and you’re getting it for your own you know development as in a non transitioning way. And so loving is helpful for making that argument. I think loving is also helpful, as you pointed out, for refuting this idea that because some quack science exists that can support the conservative rights argument here, that there is no possibility of success for the for the petitioners, but simply having a scientific argument in support of whatever discrimination you want to set forth loving says is not enough to prevail. Here, let’s

talk about what’s next. So essentially, after the case, they go back at a room and they basically take each other’s temperature, and then they essentially assign the clerks, start writing, and then they essentially start negotiating until June, and they put out the their decision in June, which is going to be pivotal, because it’s Pride Month. So hearing what you heard, where you sit all the experience that you had. What was your instinct about where you think they’re going to come out? Yeah,

so I thought going into the argument before hearing it, that it was going to follow what the Sixth Circuit did and distract the issue and focus on age. But I think we’re going to get a quite sweeping decision. You think it’s going to be sweeping? I think it’s gonna be something about sex and not age. I think they’re gonna look to the purpose and sex and decide if this purpose of medical procedure difference is actually sex discrimination. And I think on that ground, they’re gonna affirm or vacate, because there’s no way they can vacate if they don’t reach that question, they have to say that sex was involved or not, and that will affect not just minors, but adults too. That’s right, and they and they have that conversation. And so it’s going to affect everything we can do under equal protection. And to me, it just means we need to be highly aware of what our other arguments are in case equal protection is taken off the table.

And this is also where the Solicitor General for Tennessee really kind of stepped in at some point, because they were saying, well, is the implication here that this would also potentially open the door to banning the care for trans adults? And he was like, yeah. And then, like, because, and there was some reticence from Amy Coney Barrett of going to that direction, right? Like, and then when he just kind of undermined that as a potential, you know, thing that she could stand on to support this, I think that, like, I mean, I definitely, I’m not a lawyer, but I was like, Oh, that was an error. Like, that was an unforced error. Like, there were two votes for you, you know, on the on the kids thing, yeah, and then these two people were like, well, adults, and then you kind of undermined your own argument with them. So that was that seemed to me to be a pivotal moment.

And that, again, goes back to Chief Judge Sutton Sixth Circuit decision, because he made a big point about, like, where do you set the line? Why can court set the line? Not the legislature? 1817, 1614, what age are we saying minors can or cannot receive this care? And that misses the whole point, that the whole point of the argument is that it’s a sex discrimination statute. Doesn’t matter what the age is. And so if he successfully, you know, sunk his teeth into age and the minor status, I think Justice Barrett and justice Kavanaugh probably would have as well. Well.

Thank you so much for taking the time to unpack this. This is exciting to have this conversation with you right afterwards, and I think really important for us to be able to look at this from all angles. I thought that it was going to be cut and dry today, kind of like you, and I thought that I was going to be able to predict what was going to happen. And I, like you, went in thinking, like, Oh, this is, this is probably leaning, not in the direction of affirming this. And then I left there, and I was like, I don’t see how they don’t, kind of like they would have to destroy precedent. And one of the things that they were really, kind of deeply aware of is that any way that they tried to go to undermine this, it was going to potentially undermine precedents that they cared about or overturn and have a lot of unintended consequences. And they weren’t in the mood to do that, probably because it’s been a rough couple of years for them in that regard. Hard. And so I left like you thinking, like, I don’t see how they can after their arguments that they had today. Yeah, I think whatever happens in June, this was a historic day. It wasn’t and I think chased an excellent job. He was amazing. And you know, if every trans attorney to come after him before that court is as good as he was today, we will just continue to show our trans excellence. He was great. He was absolutely great. And I think, showed himself to be worthy to the task and equal to the task. And also, I think, just by his presence and his arguments, I think, and by being kind of a fully realized trans person, I think that, in and of itself, in a way that you can’t quantify and that you can’t capture, I think that that also undermined a lot of the arguments around harm.

Definitely.

Thank you so much. Thank you. It was so great to meet you. It was great to meet you, and thank you for everything that you do, and all the best as you move forward to your professorship,

thank you, likewise.

Thank you. I’m a professor, but thank you so much. That was lawyer extraordinaire. D dangoran. You I’m glad to be joined today by the director of impact and Innovation at the campaign for southern equality Allison Scott. Allison is a fifth generation Southerner based in western North Carolina, where she’s dedicated herself to fostering inclusivity and bringing direct financial resources into the region. She draws on a wide breadth of experience, from grassroots community activism to corporate IT. She’s also been part of working sessions around LGBTQ issues at the regional and national levels, collaborating with the US Department of Justice, the Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, and her expertise hasn’t gone unnoticed. She’s been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, the AP, NBC and more. Allison, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

I want to start out with you kind of level setting where the South is on gender affirming care, because there is a lot of fear about, of course, committee and its impact on gender affirming care. You know, if the court goes against gender affirming care, depending on how widely they write the decision, you know, it could have a pretty broad impact. But I think the reality that people need to understand is that for the South, many people are already living under some very severe gender affirming care restrictions. So can you just talk to us about that landscape and what it’s looking like?

Yeah, I’m really appreciative of you bringing that up that it’s not just this one case. There is a lot going on, obviously, with the election and us facing a Trump presidency, I think there’s a lot of fear in our community nationwide. And when we look at the problems of gender affirming care, we can’t just say it’s a southern problem. There are 26 states that have bans on gender affirming care for minors. Now there’s not just 26 states in the South, so that means that the states with the bands actually go throughout the Midwest. They go up to the north and to the west. So when we talk about these issues and we talk about the environment of what’s going on, it’s not a southern problem. I always like to remind people of that the laws may have started here, but we told everyone that this is just like every single social justice issue in America, we are the canary in the coal mine. If it starts here, it’s going to be in your state before long, and that’s really what we’re seeing. So when we look at the states with gender affirming care, we have to remember that these are people who have either been in care with their medical providers, sometimes for years, and some of these youth are aging into care, and now they all having to go and find that care out of their state. And that may mean a drive, but usually it means a flight. So there’s already tremendous barriers to accessing that health care right now. Socan you talk about some of the places like Tennessee, which has won the highest number of anti trans laws other books than any other state in the Union you know, which is banned gender affirming care for minors, and which has a lot of restrictions around, you know, the ability of medical care providers to go in and out of the state regarding that care.

Yeah, Tennessee. Now I live in the mountains of western North Carolina. We are right on the Tennessee border. And oftentimes when people come here, you know, it feels like Tennessee and North Carolina, like we’re kind of all the same. And I bring that up because when we look at a state like Tennessee, what you’re seeing is that this is a lot of rural providers. So that’s medical clinics. That means there’s not a lot of access. Historic before any of these bands went into effect, in Tennessee, like many states, especially in the south Midwest, many of these states where there’s just not a lot of access. So what we are finding, and what these families are now facing, is if they had a provider that they could even find medical care with, now that provider has been legally obligated to stop providing care in their state, so now all those families have to go find a new doctor in another state.

Talk a little bit about the people that you all serve, and what the concerns are that community is already again experiencing. You know, there are parents who wonder whether or not they should move. There are people who are wondering whether or not they should not reveal the gender identity of their children. You know, there are people who want are wondering what doctors or medical providers are safe like these are real things that people are facing right now. I know that you all have kind of a youth healthcare navigator role and that service that you provide. So can you just talk a little bit about what you’re hearing from parents who are living under these types of restrictions right now?

Yeah, unfortunately, what we’re seeing right now is it’s really difficult with the barriers and obstacles these families are having to overcome. Our patient navigators are currently, we’ve been in contact with more than 1000 families throughout the south, and, you know, Midwest, any state that has these bands, and we keep hearing a couple of different stories. You know, one is, obviously, you know, the the parents, if they reaching out to us, that probably means already that they may have job insecurity or even housing insecurity, you know, and different things. So the privilege to even think about moving is not accessible to them. Or, you know, they maybe they have a job, but also they have family, and moving is just a tremendous barrier to face. So when parents reach out to us, we’re definitely seeing just a huge amount of people who are in that position. And we’re also seeing people in the position of, you know, some people are like, keeping moving on the table, but it’s kind of a last resort, kind of, you know, this is Plan B, if they have to. And now definitely with a, you know, facing a Trump presidency going into next year. I know as as people have been reaching out to us, they have been talking about this difficulty of, you know, trying to figure out if they could even possibly move, like, how would I get a job, you know, and then you talk about trying to support a whole family and find housing in another state. It’s, it’s a massive, massive thing. So moving isn’t something that comes up all the time. It definitely is talked about with several families. But what we’re seeing is that these laws are spreading state to state to state. So when we talk about moving, you know how far is far enough? Nobody knows. Because you know, as we’ve seen, especially with this Tennessee law going to Supreme Court, we just don’t know what we’re going to be facing after this case is decided, or what any new laws may come up. And that means, you know, with a federal ban, or just kicking it down to every state, so every family is definitely in different situations, which is why our patient navigators have such a difficult job, but they’re incredible and how they have to work with each family to assess all of their needs. When you look at the case, what is your greatest concern for the people that you serve, in terms of what’s possible or out of the Supreme Court?

Well, I think obviously you know we we are afraid that the case will go against our community and against these families, and it will keep the ban enacted. You know, for the pieces that are up in front of the Supreme Court, that is, that is a huge concern for us, and we are trying to work with all the families. But, you know, even adults, because this doesn’t just affect youth. We’re talking about an environment bans and laws, and what’s this mean to these kids when they go to school, when they’re in their communities? You know, there’s a lot going on. So really for us, we take that and we go, all right, what are the outcomes? And you know, if it goes against us. Yes, then how do we prepare these families? So helping them like, you know, making sure they’re already getting connected with providers out of state, making sure that maybe they’ve already got identity documents changed, either passports or birth certificates or whatever, making sure they remember to get, you know, a couple of months of extra medication. So a lot of it is the basics that we’re going over with, with each family. But it’s really kind of an unknown, because if we lose this case, basically, it could open up a host of different things. And I think that’s the biggest problem our community, is there’s so many what ifs, and that fear is it’s just terrible and watching it just chip away at our community’s resilience and the gains that we’ve been able to find over the years. One of the things that you said earlier is that you know, when these bills started to pass, that you and your colleagues and other people across the south warned other parts of our community and national organizations that these bills would be on the march. I’m wondering, how does it feel to have your prediction come true, and do you believe that if you had been listened to earlier on, that there was a way to stop this issue from becoming nationals.

That’s a great question. Honestly, it feels terrible to be right about it. And as a multi generational Southerner, lifelong I’ve never moved, I’ve traveled, obviously, but this is my home. You know, it’s kind of like, of course it’s going to pass. You know, of course these bills are going to pass because people who don’t live in the south and live in states where historically, there’s always been a struggle for civil rights, they don’t understand that this isn’t a one issue fight. These are generational fights that have been going on for people of color, for women, there’s immigrants. I mean, it’s been happening since this country was founded, and we know that it’s gonna happen. When you even hear rumblings of a law going into effect that invokes going against civil rights, it’s probably, you know, it’s got a good chance of passing oftentimes. So it feels terrible, and it kind of feels like I can’t believe people are surprised that it passed. I, you know, but again, that’s, you know, my experience of living here, as far as what we could have done, I worked with, you know, practically every national group. We partner up with a lot of them. Campaign for southern quality. We we are a regional organization, which is makes it a little bit different. We fit in this different little nook than most state groups or national groups. So we partner with the national groups all the time. And you know, all these groups have been tremendous partners and have been pulling together to try and help and assist, as far as what we could have done. You know, I think really trying to get ahead of this was always extremely difficult, because it just, it takes a lot of money. At the end of the day, a lot of it comes down to finances. I mean, we’ve given out to these, just these families that I was telling you about, the more than 1000 families we’ve helped. We’ve given out over $600,000 just to those families. We’ve paid for almost $100,000 of medical care. You know, once a family gets to a state that’s safe, we have patient care funds in states that are safe, that help pay for that care, you know. So when we start adding up, like, what’s the bill? It’s money. And I think that’s, that’s the hardest thing to tell people is like, hey, there’s something really horrible coming, and we need millions of dollars to one, you know, get ready to help everybody, to get the legal teams and everyone fighting it as hard as they can. Fight it at every single level, not just showing up at, you know, the last stop on the bus. You know, we needed everybody there at the first stop. And I don’t know if it would have prevented it, but I think historically, if sooner people get on the bus, it does help in the long run. I mean, well, now imagine what the bill is going to be to try to deal with whatever is coming down the pike, both from the administration and possibly the court. Like it’s always easier right to deal with things on the front end than on the back end. Have you had to turn families away because of a lack of resources. And have you found there to be a dramatic increase over the last six months? Let’s say no, we have not turned away single family. We have again, we really at CSE campaigning for southern equality. We knew this was coming. So you know, two. Years ago, we started fundraising for this, and we were going to foundation partners and organizations and going, Hey, we need money because this is coming, and this is what we’re going to build. We’re going to build this patient navigator system. It’s mirrored very much on reproductive rights that we were going to build this. So we have been very fortunate that a lot of foundations and groups have shown up, and they keep showing up. But we, there’s always a concern like, how long are we gonna have to do this, you know, and we are planning on for at least a couple of years. I mean, you know, that’s, that’s kind of what we’re thinking, that this is not going to be over in six months. This is not going to be over in, you know, eight months, maybe, you know, a year would be early. So we’ve been trying to get out ahead and keep fundraising. And we always need more to make sure that that pot is there, because we do have getting into your second part of that question, we have seen a dramatic increase as the election, after a winner was announced, the presidential election, really kind of up that fear for people. So they started reaching out and saying, okay, where, where is a doctor I could go to if I lose my doctor. Or, Hey, we, you know, we’re just really worried what, what can y’all do for us? You know, we need help. We’ve been needing help, but we haven’t reached out yet. And we’ve seen a lot of that. There’s, there has been a dramatic increase in families reaching out to us

in a state like North Carolina, right which has now, for the second time, a Democratic governor and a state legislature which is Republican, right? Do you ever hear from Republican sponsors of these bills who reach out to you and say, you know, I really want to know what your take is. I want to talk to some of these families. I want to know what people who are going through this process, have to say directly. And the reason why is because, as you know, when it comes to gender affirming care, even for minors, that most of what these bills do is that they are a solution in search of a problem, slash, crime, right? That like the things that they say that they’re solving for, like surgeries for seven year olds just don’t exist. You know, just doesn’t happen. The anecdote of Trump saying, you know, Johnny going off to school and coming back the same day Jane, also doesn’t happen. Like it’s just utterly ridiculous. It’s so funny. A friend of mine, who has decided to go on HRT lamented, as an adult the number of other adults they’ve had to get sign off on just to get hormones for them. So I’m wondering, within that backdrop of MIS and disinformation, like, do the people in a state like North Carolina or any other places you know across the region, do they come to y’all first and ever say, you know, this is what I’m concerned about. So let’s talk about it.

Oh, Laura, bless your heart. No, no, they never do, you know? And I laugh. I mean, it’s, it’s horrible. So I’m not laughing at the pain, the, you know, state legislations and these political electeds who are passing laws. I’m

laughing that. No, you’re laughing at the absurdity.

At some point we have crossed the line of there is no bipartisanship when it comes to trans people. There is no bipartisanship when it comes to reproductive rights, and there’s no bipartisanship when it comes to gender affirming care. So when you talk about like North Carolina, but really any of these states, you get some really interesting makeups here. Like North Carolina, we have had a very Republican GOP super majority with a Democratic governor. And when our gender affirming care ban passed earlier, you know, everybody was like, Yeah, okay, well, of course, you know it’s it’s another state, it’s another gender affirming care ban for youth. We knew it was coming, and now with the recent election, are actually the super majority has been broken. It’s still majority Republican, but at least they can’t just ram through any legislation they want and override our Democratic governor, which is good news, but the chances of our returning it are slim because it goes back to that bipartisanship. And I went to our state legislation. I mean, I’ve went to other states, you know, I’ve been at the courthouses. I’ve been in the state legislative rooms when these laws are being, you know, basically announced. I won’t say debated, because that’s a it’s kind of a fallacy. You know, laws don’t get debated. They just nowadays, it seems like they just get announced, and then they get passed without anybody actually speaking up, being heard. I’ve went with family. These I’ve set beside families with their youth, you know, trans kids approach these GOP legislators who push for these bills or vote for these bills, they are incredibly nice to their face, and then they walk in the room and say that this is horrible and it shouldn’t be happening, even though they just talk to a kid, you know, a teenager, they’ve talked to their supportive family and heard the stories of like how much they’ve gotten out of life and how maybe they’ve come out of a funk that they were in for years, and how their grades have improved, or their socialization has improved, all of these different things. And they just seem to, you know, ignore it. And I’m not going to say they don’t care. I don’t think they ever did care. And I think that’s the real problem. Is because these bills, they’re all written very similar. Oh, yeah, you know, I don’t think it’s a big secret that there’s a couple of very large right extreme organizations who write these bills. They send them to these legislators, and they pretty much vote them through. That’s why they’re so cookie cutter from state to state. They just vote them through. They don’t actually investigate it themselves. They don’t. I’m gonna say they don’t do their job as those legislator and say, What are my constituents seeing? What are they doing? And what’s the medical community say? They just take the word of some right wing extreme group with, you know, scientifically unfounded, unsound and not backed credential paper that they put in front of them, and they take that over overwhelming majority of kids showing up, families showing up, medical providers showing up. You know, there’s no, there’s no lack of evidence. There’s just a lack of empathy from the people voting for these laws. Yeah,

I think that’s right. And I think, you know, people can actually go and listen to the anti trans hate machine seasons one and two, and you can hear exactly how that process works and how it came into being in 2019 as a person who has lived their entire life as a as a Southerner, you are a trans woman. You work on behalf of trans people. You work in an organization that is focused on the region where you grew up and on your forebears, but now facing the possibility of who you are being argued before the Supreme Court and the country, not just a region or a state, becoming openly hostile to us, getting the care that we needed to become ourselves, I’m wondering how you as a person, day to day, how you’re processing that, because I think that there’s so many people listening who are doing that and trying to figure out how to do that. And so what’s your way of walking through all of this difficulty when, on top of everything, it’s your job.

Wow, yeah, it’s, this is something, you know, at my job, more than half of us at CSE are trans or non binary. You know, I personally have, I hate to use the word transition. It’s just not my language. But I did this. You know, well over a decade ago, I tried coming out as a younger when I was a child and not supportive parents. So you know, I’ve been fighting for my identity my entire life. My fight started at home. My fight, you know, it just it never stopped. And it’s a lifetime of it never stopping. So when I hear so many people in my community when you say, Hey, how are you doing, people often go on tired, and of course, they’re tired. You know, many of us have been fighting our entire lives as adults, and we see this going on. And you know, the bills may be, you know, trying to prevent you from getting gender affirming care, but what it really says is that none of us should have it, and that’s the climate it puts into place. You know, I I’ve been saying this since HB two, the bathroom bill North Carolina. I’ve been saying this for years that these laws, they don’t just stop the thing that they say. They try to stop us from existing. They try to create a culture that is not affirming, not welcome. It wants us to erase our existence from public life, or at least try to make it so difficult, we we never come out. And so when we people say, you know, they’re tired, and I know I get that. I get those days where I’m just like, oh my god, you know it’s, it’s another day of this. And I actually left. Corporate world. I grew up in Appalachian poverty, you know, trailer parks and homeless a few times in my life and and I’ve had such a rich, full life that I consider myself to be extremely lucky that my experiences range from incredibly traumatic childhood to a being, a, you know, a happy, healthy trans woman, adult. But it took a lot of fight to get here. And I guess I’m a fighter. I know I’m not going to stop. I always joke around with everybody. I’ll be leading the trans resistance underground. If it comes to that, I’m not going anywhere. There is no plan B for me. This is my home, and I’m not gonna stop being who I am. I’m not gonna stop fighting for the kids, but also for the adults, because this has been my fight my whole life, just like all of our community. But I do get tired, and that’s where I try to find my joy and hang out with my people and have moments where we can just be in community and, you know, just have human moments, and not even talk about trans issues, talk about health care, nothing, it’s just enjoying each other’s company of people who are fully authentic and living their truth. So that’s where I find my joy, and it’s where I find my resilience.

Lastly, I’m wondering if we fast forward, and let’s say the ruling comes out in June, when it’s estimated to do and the Supreme Court has ruled against trans youth, maybe even more, and the next day, you have to talk to the parents of trans kids. What do you think would be the first thing you’d say that we’re here for you. We’ve been here for you. We’re gonna be here for you. This is not going to stop us from helping your kid to get care, helping your family find that care. We’re going to keep finding it. It doesn’t matter what it takes if we have to fly people and, you know, boat tickets to other countries, you know, north and south of us, we’re going to do it. We are going to help these families keep their kids in care. We don’t stop we were here before the fight showed up. We’ve been here the whole time, and we’re going to be here when we win it. But we’re here for you. We’re here for those families, and we’re here for those kids, because all of us, like I said, more than half our staff, is trans or non binary. We’re fighting for ourselves. We’re fighting for some of us, the childhoods we never have. We’re not gonna give up.

Allison, thank you so much, and thank you so much for this vital work in the lives of over 1000 families. So appreciative to you and everyone at campaign for southern equality and sending you all the best. Thank you, and thank you for taking the time to do this. And you know, it’s so important to keep these issues out and talking about them in this day where we’re just flooded with information all the time. So really appreciate you.

Thank you so much. That was Allison Scott with the campaign for southern equality. Thank you for joining me on the translash podcast. Now listen all the way through to the end of the show for something extra. If you like what you heard, please go to Apple podcast to rate and review us. You can also listen to translash wherever you get your podcast. Check us out on the web@translash.org to sign up for our weekly newsletter. Follow us on Tiktok threads, blue sky X and Instagram at translash media, like us on Facebook and tell your friends. The translash podcast is produced by translash Media. The translash team includes Oliver ash Klein and Aubrey Calloway. Sandra Adams is our senior sound engineer and contributing producer. This episode was engineered with help from Lucy little. The music you heard was composed by Van Draghi and also courtesy of zzk records. The translash podcast is made possible by the support of foundations and listeners like you. This week. What am I looking forward to? Well, the possibility of going to see wicked again. That’s because wicked, I thought, was just an incredible cinematic feat. The story of it’s being centered on actually rising authoritarianism and what people do in the face of that the personal choices that they make, given their own personal backgrounds, is extremely relevant and on point right now. And also, I just think that Elphaba is a trans allegory. I’m just saying So for all those reasons, don’t be surprised if I end up going to wicked again. And also, you can go to my in. Instagram page to see my wicked, inspired nails, which I got after seeing the show. I was super, super, super stoked afterwards you.