Meet two lawyers leading the fight for trans people's lives against Trump's anti-trans attacks

Chase Strangio and Shannon Minter talk with Law Dork. "How this story comes out does depend to a great degree on what we do right now."

The first two weeks of the Trump administration included President Donald Trump signing four executive orders targeting transgender people and their ability to live full, public lives.

Law Dork has covered those orders, as well as the litigation already resulting from them, but I wanted to talk with the lawyers bringing the lawsuits — and get a view of this moment from their perspective.

So, on Monday, I sat down with Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project, and Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, to talk about it all. Two of the leading lawyers in the LGBTQ legal movement, both are also transgender themselves.

Strangio was at the U.S. Supreme Court in December, arguing for the trans plaintiffs and their parents who sued Tennessee over that state’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for trans minors, the latest of several arguments by Strangio in courts across the nation challenging various states’ anti-trans medical care and sports bans.

Minter is already part of teams litigating three lawsuits filed against the new Trump administration — two lawsuits challenging the anti-trans prison-related restrictions in Trump’s January 20 order purporting to define “sex” for the federal government and a lawsuit challenging Trump’s new ban on trans military service.

In short, they’re exactly who one would want to talk with about the current legal picture — and the bigger picture — in this moment.

At one point, Minter really summed up the discussion: “We're under attack in a very terrifying way, but we do still have a lot of power, and how this story comes out does depend to a great degree on what we do right now.”

It was such an insightful, helpful discussion, and I am so glad for everyone to be able to watch and read it.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

LAW DORK: Thank you so much for joining us today to talk about the current state of trans rights in America and the attack on trans people's lives by the Trump administration in its first 15 days of existence, I am really lucky to have with me two of the leading litigators who are addressing these issues, Shannon Minter and Chase Strangio, from the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the ACLU. We originally intended to have a third person here today, but they are off litigating, because that is what this reality looks like today.

Just before we start, I know that most people who are watching are going to have been following what's happened, but basically what we've had is a series of executive orders in the first two weeks of the Trump administration that started right from January 20 with the executive order defining — purporting to define — sex for the federal government, but, as we'll discuss, that also contained several other provisions that led to fallout across agencies.

Following that, there were additional executive orders, including an executive order that purported to restrict gender-affirming medical care in the federal government on certain instances over time, and to try to restrict funding to private entities who perform gender affirming medical care for transgender minors, although there's actually a question that we'll get into about that, because it goes up to those under the age of 19, so it includes 18 year olds, under its terms.

There also was an executive order relating to transgender people in the military that echoed an earlier order from Trump, but, as I'm sure we'll discuss, was in some ways much worse than the executive order that he issued in his first administration.

And then finally, there was an executive order relating to education and purporting to restrict the way that "gender ideology," which is the scare term that the Trump administration has created, to essentially attack any understanding of transgender people's existence in the federal government.

Those were also followed by an order, a directive from OPM, that got a lot of attention on Friday, that essentially ordered a government wide censorship campaign, presenting a reality that at like 5pm last Friday, several websites across the government, entire swaths of data and information disappeared from the public that got a lot of attention, but was just one small aspect of the fallout.

There has already been significant litigation and even some court orders pulling back on some of this. And we're really lucky to have Shannon and Chase here today to talk about what's going on, how it affects the ongoing cases that were in existence before this, and where we're going from here. So, with that, I'd like to start with you, Shannon, to talk about what has happened thus far in terms of litigation.

SHANNON MINTER: Well, thank you, Chris, and I just want to real quick say that, you know, this is an attempt to brutalize, humiliate and crush a tiny minority group as to desensitize everyone. And I'll just say, if they can do this to transgender people, they can do it to you or to anyone, and they're already doing that. They're already coming after many other groups. So just to say that. It is critical, I don't think people really appreciate just how fully devastating the totality of effect of all these EOs targeting transgender people are. I mean, they really mean transgender and people will not be able to work, not be able to go to school, not be able to travel, not be able to get ID, not be able to access homeless shelters, not be able to access other types of social services, either from the government or from any private agency that gets federal funding, can't serve in the military.

It is seriously catastrophic for the transgender community. So, we're in the moment of slight calm before the storm, because things cannot be actualized or implemented instantaneously, although they are moving very quickly to do that.

So it is so critical that we fight back immediately, aggressively. We have got to get into court and try to stop or slow these things down.

So we, with GLAD Law, NCLR and GLAD Law have partnered on three cases now. We have filed three challenges to Trump EOs. The first one was on behalf of a transgender woman, an incarcerated woman who was being moved from a women's facility to a men's facility and her care was being cut off. We filed in federal district court in Massachusetts, and we did get a TRO. We filed a second case on behalf of three other transgender women who were incarcerated in federal prison. Same thing, they've been in women's facilities. They're about to be moved to men's facilities, and their care is going to be cut off. We have a motion for emergency relief, a TRO, pending. We may have a hearing tonight or tomorrow on that case.

And then we have also filed a challenge in federal court in DC to the new ban on transgender people serving in the military, which is much more sweeping than the last time around. Last time they allowed people who are already serving to continue. They just said, we're not going to let any new people join. This time, it's everybody. They're prepared to kick all transgender people who are serving in the military out and not let any new ones join. So yep, we have got those three cases in the works.

LAW DORK: First of all, just for listening purposes, since things are moving so quickly, we are recording this on Monday afternoon, February 3.

“We're in the moment of slight calm before the storm, because things cannot be actualized or implemented instantaneously, although they are moving very quickly to do that.” - Shannon Minter

LAW DORK: Chase, obviously, a lot of people last saw you, although we don't have video in the courtroom, I saw you as a reporter covering the case, but many people saw you outside afterwards, talking about arguing at the Supreme Court in Skrmetti, the case challenging Tennessee's gender affirming care ban. Can you talk to us about — litigation was already hot and heavy before this administration started. You all were, were fully employed, very busy. What has happened now that the Trump administration has started and taken these dramatic actions already.

CHASE STRANGIO: Thank you, Chris, and I do want to sort of pick up and just say that I'm in full agreement with Shannon, which is, we should all be very concerned about what's happening here and the scope of these attacks, and not just with respect to the individual attacks on people's rights and ability to live, but also on the President's proclaimed authority to act as a unitary executive, and completely ignore the mandates of of Congress, purport to be able to single handedly cut off federal funding, which has a huge implication for people, not just who are employed by the federal government, not just in federal programs, but in people's everyday life in the States.

As we saw in the immediate aftermath of the healthcare EO, clinics in New York and Illinois and Virginia and Colorado started to preemptively shut down care for transgender individuals under 19. And so when we think about how this connects to Skrmetti, I sort of, in fitting with former solicitor general [Elizabeth] Preloger's rebuttal, in which she said, Look, if you adopt Tennessee's arguments here about the idea that banning healthcare for transgender adolescents is not sex discrimination, is not trans status discrimination, and only warrants rational basis, then what's going to happen when someone comes in and purports to enact a federal ban, whether through some sort of unauthorized use of executive power or through Congress, or bans on care for adults. And so she left the court with that reminder.

And when we think about what's going on in the courts, what's been percolating and what's at the Supreme Court, the stakes are incredibly high, because we're seeing both the federal government — and the states, mind you. States are also in legislative sessions. Kansas is moving a bill right now that would not only ban medical care for transgender adolescents, but would ban facilitation of social transition. So we're fighting this on the front of the states and the federal government, with huge implications for individual constitutional rights protected under the Reconstruction amendments, but also what the separation of powers will continue to look like.

Skrmetti remains pending before the Supreme Court. Somewhat surprisingly, the Trump administration has not taken any action in that case. I expect this week, they will file something before the court, but, for now, it just remains pending, and those of us that are trying to hold the line for just even baseline protections for trans people are fighting against state incursions, federal incursions, and then just holding the realities of what this means for trans people in their everyday life.

LAW DORK: Now, obviously, there are some aspects of these things that, like, when we did see some of the hospitals quickly move on, sort of applying the EO before they even got guidance that they had to do so, that has raised a lot of concern out there in the world. And just on Monday, President Trump's press team basically sent out a press release bragging about the hospitals that did preemptively take action. How are you all dealing, in advocacy organizations, with trying to talk with organizations and entities that have been providing care — not just in the medical care context, but anybody. As the education EO ripples out, as these funding questions ripple out, how are how are you talking with people about what they should be doing, what they can be doing, what they need to be doing right now?

STRANGIO: So, I would say sort of two main things: Trying to remind people that these executive orders are not self executing. President Trump on his own did not change the law. It did not become illegal to treat transgender people under the age of 19 when he signed that order on January 28 and, especially with the education EO, it's very important for people to understand, these are directives to federal agencies that in no way change people's legal obligations, and, in fact, as the California Department of Education rightfully came out and said, does nothing — the President doesn't have that have that authority. So we're trying to remind institutions and individuals of that fact.

Now we are seeing people and institutions complying in advance over our, you know, cautions and objections to that. But we are hoping that, through litigation, and we are trying to move as quickly as possible — the ACLU and Lambda Legal will be imminently filing a lawsuit over the healthcare EO — that once those hopefully are enjoined, as they should be both because they exceed the President's authority and because they violate people's individual, substantive constitutional rights, that the hospitals will not cut off care with the protection of some sort of injunction blocking those EOs. I'm curious, Shannon, as well, how you're helping people understand the difference between an executive order and what their legal obligations actually are.

“It did not become illegal to treat transgender people under the age of 19 when he signed that order on January 28.” - Chase Strangio

MINTER: That's so important. I mean, you've captured it beautifully. And I think we should remember, most hospitals and clinics are continuing to provide care, but some, as you said, are complying in advance out based on fear and intimidation. I think it's just very important that we recognize, they're not the bad guys here. We've got to remember to keep the focus on where the trouble is coming from him. This is the president. Gosh, as you said, Chase, this is really about — the targeting of transgender people is exemplary. I mean, he's doing it to — just because he can get away with that, because transgender people are such a vulnerable minority.

But the real goal is to just do away with all checks and balances, to take power away from Congress, take power away from the Supreme Court, make Trump and Musk just be the unchecked rulers of our universe. I mean, he's even given Musk access to everyone's personal and financial data now. These are the things that we're trying to get people to connect these dots. Because, you know, yes, people do care about transgender people, but we're a very small group, a lot of people are not familiar with our issues, and we need to make people understand this is part of a bigger picture, and that, if people don't, to use an overused word, resist this unlawful exercise of power now, we're really going to be in a pickle, and it's going to affect far more than the transgender community.

LAW DORK: I've already written some about, I know you all certainly have spoken about, that there are multiple circles going outward, that specifically — when it comes to diversity and civil rights. There has been this melding, sometimes specifically in orders, between civil rights protections and transgender protections specifically, and the idea this sort of shorthand of "DEI" or "DEIA," that's just a this year's version of "woke," which is, for those of us who are older, the 90s version of "political correct." It's always been a different version of the same thing that just means "We don't like the these efforts to actually enforce civil rights laws and enforce equality and make diversity possible."

When you see things like Executive Order 11246, which both of you know is close to my heart, and so the overturning of that was particularly stark, which was the federal contractor executive order that was originally signed by President Johnson. I mean, there clearly is a larger attack on all civil rights that are being advanced by this administration, and sort of the tip of the spear has been to attack trans people.

MINTER: They're saying they're not going to have any events celebrating MLK Day, and look at what's going on with the CDC where they're removing massive amounts of public health information from the website, everything about transgender people, but a lot of stuff just about women. At this point, acknowledging the existence of women as half the population in this country has been labeled as an unlawful DEI activity. So, yeah, this is escalating very rapidly.

STRANGIO: To that, you can see how there's this very strategic move to cast human beings as ideologies. You see transgender people become gender ideology, and then that ideology can be attacked and eradicated in their mind. Of course, we as transgender people are going to continue to exist, in the same way they talk about individuals as DEI hires, as if they're not just using that as some code word for people of color or for women or for disabled people, and then weaponizing all of this language with very serious, material consequences.

And to Shannon's point, I was talking to doctors all weekend who were struck by the fact they took down the entire adolescent health pages of the CDC. So the idea that transness is infecting whole areas of medicine is also resulting in the denial of of best practice medicine to all adolescents, to all women. And that is the reality, going back to Shannon's other point of what we need to be mindful of, if they can use people's general willingness to let attacks on trans people go to open the door to these wholesale assaults on people's not just rights, but their survival, we have a big problem. And so I don't want people to wake up three months from now and realize, "Wow, we should have stood up right on the first two weeks when they were attacking trans people, because now all of a sudden, I can't get my birth control, or my doctor doesn't know how to advise my child on adolescent health," and that's really where we're headed.

“If they can use people's general willingness to let attacks on trans people go to open the door to these wholesale assaults on people's not just rights, but their survival, we have a big problem.” - Chase Strangio

MINTER: And Chase, you're making me think, like Chris, I can't remember if you wrote about this or not, but I think one of the biggest, you know, significance is of the Skrmetti case is the way that the Sixth Circuit dealt with the equal protection issues is very bad for transgender people. It's horrific for women, and I feel like that that case and the attack on transgender people generally, especially in the courts, and the legal arguments that are being put forward and the legal conclusions that some of the more conservative judges are issuing are — they're part of another agenda, which is to undo equal rights protections for women. I don't know, Chase, if you want to talk about the specifics of that. I think it's important for people to hear that.

STRANGIO: And this is something that Justice Jackson repeatedly kept saying at arguments, which is also that this sounds a lot like the arguments that were used to legitimize race discrimination against Black people. So how far are the erosions going to go? But in essence, what the Sixth Circuit suggested, what Tennessee has argued, is that if the state can just assert something like biological differences, then that means none of the constitutional protections that have been built over 50 years will apply. And the way in which they talk about the equal protection clause in general would seem to suggest that much of what we have come to understand as bedrock constitutional principles is really under threat.

And over the course of the oral arguments in Skrmetti, Justice Jackson kept coming back to this, which is, Are there really these threshold points you can just raise as the government, and then you can bypass all of the doctrine that has been developed over the last 100 years? And I think if you look at some of the people defending erosions on civil rights, they would say, yeah, that's exactly what they're trying to do.

MINTER: I really just, Chris, I think this is so important, especially for your audience who's following along. Because I think maybe some people thought Justice Jackson's just like, “Oh, she's, you know, preoccupied with race discrimination law, so that's why she's raising it.” No. The government literally argued and worse, the Sixth Circuit held, that if a law discriminates, quote, unquote, equally against both sexes, that's not discrimination. There's no discrimination, and such a law is not subject to any level of heightened scrutiny. And the reason that Justice Jackson was asking about the Loving v. Virginia case is because that's the case where the Supreme Court held unequivocally that you can't defend a discriminatory law by saying it equally discriminates against both groups. In that case, it was black people and white people and went to marry and that was the Commonwealth of Virginia's argument. They're like, “Oh, there's no discrimination. It applies equally. White people can't marry Black people, and Black people can't marry white people, where's the discrimination here?” It's shocking. I mean, it's just been assumed for decades now that that is not a viable equal protection argument, much less something that a federal appellate court would hold in an opinion.

So that was where she was coming from, and she was spot on. This is like a core equal protection issue that's going to, Lord help us, maybe be decided in this case and the implications, yes, bad for trans people if it goes the wrong way, bad for everybody if it goes the wrong way, like, really bad.

STRANGIO: Yeah, and especially when you overlay that on top of everything we see the federal government trying to do. And just to add one more thing onto Shannon's point with respect to the oral arguments in Skrmetti and the way in which Tennessee defended its law is that they said at the outset that, because there's a biological basis for the discrimination, that it can be justified at the outset. And not only was that the entire way in which discrimination against women was justified over the course of centuries, that was also the same set of arguments that were raised in Loving v. Virginia, to claim that the states had a valid basis to criminalize marriages between Black people and white people based on pseudo-scientific claims about the quote, unquote, mixing of the races.

So we should be very concerned about all of these arguments and their implications for civil rights generally, especially when we see what is going on at the federal executive right now.

LAW DORK: And when you're looking at the fact that there's both this question of how much attention people have to things at different times, but, but also, like I said, the fact that we are only 15 days into this. I mean, how? Yeah, well, there's the answer, both of your visual reactions. How are you personally addressing how to deal with this moment and how to continue moving forward and pushing forward in the way that that, I know both of you, and know both of you do, and I'm sure that that would be helpful to other people to hear how you do that.

MINTER: It's a massive power grab. Like nothing that we have experienced, not in my lifetime. It is so threatening, not just to me as a transgender person and my community and people I love, but to everything I love about this country is under attack. So, I feel focused like a laser. I want to go down fighting. I want to bring every case we can possibly bring.

And I will just say one thing, usually, lawyers will be like, “Look, people calm down. Let's just wait and see how this is all going to play out.” No, that is not the message right now. I think, in a way, the panic that it's intended to induce is almost preventing people in our community from fully taking in just how bad it is. When this stuff begins to be implemented, which, to some degree, it already is, you won't be able to be transgender — you won't be able to go to school, you won't be able to work, you won't be able to get an ID.

It's talking about trying to crush a group of people into the tiniest box that is not really livable. So we've got to take that in, and then respond appropriately, which is to fight back.

That's what Chase and I can do as lawyers and other lawyers listening this can do. People who are not lawyers, we need you. You need to be foot soldiers. You are our fact finders on the ground. Anything you're seeing or hearing about how these EOs and actions are being implemented, you've got to tell us. We need to pull information, come together, and fight back against this.

“I feel focused like a laser. I want to go down fighting. I want to bring every case we can possibly bring.” - Shannon Minter

STRANGIO: Yeah, I will say, too, I was, from the morning after the election, on some level, worried that there was going to be a sense of just exhaustion from the people that have been fighting for so long. But all I have seen from election night, through inauguration, through now, is just this resolve to keep fighting, because what else are we supposed to do?

These are fundamental assaults on our ability to survive, take care of the people that we love, and also to protect even just a base notion of a separation of powers, which we absolutely need to protect everything else that we care about. And so, we fight on.

We've been able to file these lawsuits because people have been telling us right away of every single consequence of these executive actions, and we need that to move the litigation forward. And we also need to understand what's going on in your state legislatures. Are the school boards also passing resolutions to attempt to comply with these executive actions? Are they sort of adopting an independent authority? We want to know about what's happening, and everyone has a power to mobilize in each of those spaces, which we desperately need to do.

LAW DORK: Sometimes I've been fighting back against, it's one of my refrains online is this response to, “Well, they're not going to listen to the courts.” Or the other one is, “Well, the Supreme Court isn't going to side with us.” I know you both have an answer. I mean, my answer has basically been, one, we have responsibilities to actually take the steps to hold people accountable. And two, if the courts aren't going to uphold constitutional rights, they should be forced to actually justify taking that step. And then three, if the Trump administration doesn't want to adhere to a court order, then they should be forced to do that, so that we can then take the next steps.

I sort of find the alternative path to be sort of this nihilism that doesn't help anybody. And I'm sort of out there with that position aggressively. So, I don't mind saying it. To those people who do sort of say that the system is rigged against them, so why are we fighting in these bad courts anyway?

MINTER: Go ahead, Chief.

STRANGIO: I guess I am just of the view that the fight itself is critical. It's empowering. And I don't proclaim to know the outcome of anything at the outset of the fight. And I've watched — even just over the course of the weekend — equipping people with the idea of a resistance plan, the possibility of litigation, even if we can't be successful 100% of the time, which nothing is successful 100% of the time, we need to be able to show people that that we're trying in all sorts of different ways. So I am certainly not of the view that everything is going to turn out great in the courts, but I am of the view that we are absolutely going to put our best case forward every single time.

We are right on the law, and people deserve to feel that their rights are being defended in every possible way. That is how I continue — I mean, it feels absolutely worth it every single day to me.

MINTER: Oh, hell yeah. Excuse my profanity, but, hell yeah. There are still plenty of good judges, plenty of good courts that are fair, will listen to us. We will win a lot. We will not win all the time. We will slow this down. We will stop some of it. Every single one of those things is a huge victory. And we, even in the middle of this hell storm, we are holding our own and changing the very — I don't know, you know, the — whatever our history is going to be is, in part, what we make it and having Chase stand up there in the Supreme Court as the first transgender person to argue in front of that court. That was awesome. That changes things. They cannot stop the change that that brings about.

So we're under attack in a very terrifying way, but we do still have a lot of power, and how this story comes out does depend to a great degree on what we do right now.

LAW DORK: Well, thank you both so much for your time. I know that you both have briefs to write and filings to prepare. Thank you so much for your time. Do you have any final thing that that you want to say that we haven't talked about?

STRANGIO: I guess, just to build off of Shannon's point, in our fight, we are modeling what can be done to the generation that comes after us. And I wouldn't be here without Shannon, and I'd like to think that there would be — not that you're that much older than me, Shannon, just a few years — but, when I was a paralegal in 2004, I met Shannon. That was transformative to me, and if Shannon wasn't out there fighting then, at a time when we didn't have a lot of the things that we've had for the last five years, then what would each next generation do?

And so whatever these outcomes are in court, the fight is in and of itself, part of the history that allows us to continue to imagine a different future.

MINTER: Right. People plant seeds for us, and we're planting seeds for others now. Just don't give up. Fight back.

LAW DORK: Thank you so much, and I'm sure we will all be in touch soon.

MINTER: Thank you so much, Chris. We appreciate you.

STRANGIO: Yeah, thanks, Chris. We're here if you need us.