"Tennessee Will Not Be Able To Defend This," ACLU's Chase Strangio Testifies Against Anti-Trans Bill

Tennessee is attempting to rush through one of the worst anti-trans bills in the United States. Chase Strangio, who has personally helped defeat similar bills, made a surprise appearance to testify.

There are over 260 anti-trans bills moving across the United States right now, but very few of them are as dangerous as the bills progressing in Tennessee. HB1/SB1 - literally the first named bills of the legislative cycle - target the trans community in new and cruel ways. As I reported on January 30th, Tennessee’s Health Subcommittee planned to take an already bad bill - one that bans gender affirming care for trans youth - and amend it to target the parents of trans youth with child abuse as well as to make it illegal to obtain out of state care. This move was the most significant escalations of an anti-trans bill being heard anywhere. It was in that Republican-stacked committee on Tuesday afternoon that ACLU’s heavy-hitter trans lawyer, Chase Strangio, showed up to deliver a warning: "It will be the government’s burden to defend it in court, and Tennessee, like Alabama, like Texas, like Arkanasas, will not be able to do so.”

The subcommittee considering this horrifying bill was unswayable from the start. Tennessee’s Health Subcommittee has only two Democrats. The bill is sponsored by Representative William Lamberth, the House Majority Leader. The likelihood of a mostly Republican committee opposing their leader’s bill, the first bill introduced in the Tennessee legislature, was nonexistent. Though the room was packed with people ready to testify, the subcommittee took only three witnesses for testimony. Strangio stepped up to the podium under these circumstances and delivered a home run that in some ways was not directed at the committee but the entire legislative body itself.

Strangio started with a warning and stated that these anti-trans bills have been stopped everywhere they have been heard in court. He listed off dollar figures in the millions that the litigation has cost Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas. He tore apart the bill’s preamble, a long section common to these forced medical detransition bills, and stated that specific lines have been found untrue in court. He even preempted political detransitioner Chloe Cole, a Matt Walsh lackey who travels from hearing to hearing, by pointing out even she did not blame her parents for her detransition. He finished with an appeal to their stated values on parental rights: “I hear a lot about parent’s rights. What about the rights of parents that are trying to help their suffering children?”

Watch his full testimony here:

Strangio is correct - these laws have racked up large costs to the states that push them. Arkansas was the first to pass a gender affirming care ban in 2021 and it has been consistently defeated in court. Alabama’s gender affirming care ban was similarly quickly blocked in court. Even Texas’ use of child abuse laws to target the parents of transgender youth with child abuse has been blocked by the Supreme Court of Texas itself - hardly a liberal bastion that is typically friendly towards transgender rights. The laws are flatly discriminatory towards transgender people, and none of the policies enjoined by the aforementioned court cases go nearly as far as this Tennessee bill.

Nevertheless, we have seen gender affirming care bans proposed in 24 states. Some of these bans have child abuse enforcement mechanisms like this bill. Some, which have yet to be heard, would extend the age of those bans to 21 or even, in the case of Oklahoma and South Carolina, 26 years old. These bans are being written and pushed by far-right organizations that seek to force the mass withdrawal of gender affirming care for trans youth and even trans adults. The political anti-trans movement saw both Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump make these bills major centerpieces of their campaigning on the same day this bill was heard.

Their willingness to scapegoat trans youth and target them with withdrawal of care is objectively cruel. We know the effect of withdrawing people from their gender affirming care. A recent study in Pediatrics showed a 73% reduction in suicidality among trans youth on such care. Another study in the Journal of Adolescent Health showed a 40% reduction in suicide attempts with a huge sample size of over 9,000 people. Contrast that to the use of Child Protective Services to strip trans youth from their parents, which can increase their suicide rates by 3-500%. It is hard to view this bill as anything but intentional violence on the trans community.

This cruelty has not earned the Republican Party many victories. In fact in the last election, anti-trans campaigns seemed to hurt most Republicans. Places like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, and Michigan saw heavy anti-trans advertising and campaigning. In Michigan, after watching Democrats capture a trifecta, the chief of staff of the Republican Party Paul Cordes stated that “there were more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices, and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters.”

The anti-trans strategy failed to produce political winners.

In the reddest of red states like Tennessee, though, Republicans seem perfectly content to dial in their cruelty and target transgender youth. It was under these circumstances that Strangio delivered his knock-out testimony that was never going to convince the subcommittee, but that may help convince the public on the futility and cruelty of the proposal. As Strangio finished his testimony, the entire room clapped, causing the chair of the committee to gavel and yell for the room to quiet. The room was filled with people who would have been all to glad to testify had the subcommittee chair let them. The subcommittee then voted the bill through nearly unanimously, with only Democratic Representative Bo Mitchell voting against it.

Republicans may have gotten the bill through to the next level, but in doing so, they could cost their state millions. They did this for one reason: a frantic attempt to push back the tide of a cultural change that they have lost control over. Legislation like this is not proposed because of a moral high ground - Republicans ceded that the moment they set out to take medical care from kids. Instead, legislation like this is pushed out of desperation because the sponsors fear a world where LGBTQ+ people are allowed to express their identities openly and freely. Residents of Tennessee can hope that Strangio’s message is headed by their elected representatives. If the bill cannot be beaten in the legislature, they will have their day in court.