WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has granted a request for split argument time between the United States and attorneys representing transgender youth and their families challenging a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. Chase Strangio, co-director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, will present argument on behalf of the private plaintiffs at oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti on Dec. 4.
Strangio has been a leader in developing the legal strategy of the ACLU against waves of anti-transgender laws passed in state legislatures since 2016, including 12 legal challenges against state laws like Tennessee’s banning transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming medical care. In June 2023, Strangio was part of the team that won the first trial on the merits against such a ban in Brandt v. Rutledge, a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of four families with transgender youth.
“Chase Strangio is our nation’s leading legal expert on the rights of transgender people, bar none,” said Cecillia Wang, ACLU legal director. “He brings to the lectern not only brilliant constitutional lawyering, but also the tenacity and heart of a civil rights champion. Our clients couldn’t have a better advocate in this case.”
“There is no attorney in the country better suited for this landmark moment in LGBTQ history than Chase Strangio,” said James Esseks, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “He has argued the issues before the court in Skrmetti four times before federal appeals courts, more than any attorney in the country. Anyone who has worked with Chase knows the intelligence, compassion, and courage he brings to every fight for the rights and well-being of his plaintiffs. It remains one of the great honors of my career to work alongside Chase and I have no doubt the court will be likewise impressed by the depth of his knowledge, the strength of his arguments, and the power of his empathy.”
Strangio first joined the ACLU as a staff attorney in 2013. Prior to joining the ACLU, Strangio was an Equal Justice Works fellow and the director of Prisoner Justice Initiatives at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, where he represented transgender and gender non-conforming individuals in confinement settings. In 2012, Strangio co-founded the Lorena Borjas Community Fund, an organization that provides direct bail/bond assistance to LGBTQ immigrants in criminal and immigration cases. Chase is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and Grinnell College.
Chase served as counsel in the landmark 2015 case affirming the right of same-sex couples to marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges), the ACLU and Lambda Legal’s challenge to North Carolina’s notorious HB 2 (Carcaño, et al. v. Cooper, et al.), the ACLU’s challenge to former President Donald Trump’s trans military ban (Stone v. Trump), and Bostock v. Clayton County, a landmark 2020 Supreme Court ruling affirming the rights of LGBTQ workers under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In April 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal, and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP sued the state of Tennessee to block the state’s ban on medically necessary gender-affirming care for Tennessee’s transgender youth on behalf of three transgender adolescents, their families, and a medical provider. The court granted cert in US v. Skrmetti in June 2024 and will hear oral arguments on Dec. 4.
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