There is something incredibly surreal about finding your family at the center of a landmark Supreme Court decision, from the robes and the formality to the long, red velvet curtains behind the justices. No mother imagines that her everyday fight to do right by her child would land her there.
My daughter, L.W., came out as transgender late in 2020. She was just shy of 13. Four and a half years later, she is thriving, healthy and happy after pursuing evidence-based gender-affirming care. But the very care that is improving her life became a primary political target of the Republican supermajority in our home state, Tennessee. When the legislature banned my daughter’s care in 2023, we fought back by suing the state. Today, we found out that we lost that case when the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, to uphold Tennessee’s ban on such care.
I am beside myself. Our heartfelt plea was not enough. The compelling, expert legal arguments by our lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal were not enough. I had to face my daughter and tell her that our last hope is gone. She’s angry, scared and hurt that the American system of democracy that we so put on a pedestal didn’t work to protect her.
My family did not start this journey to land in Washington in front of that white marble hall of justice. We ended up there through parental and civic duty. My and my husband’s demands in our lawsuit against the ban felt quite basic: Let us do our job as parents. Let us love and care for our daughter in the best way we and our doctors know how. Don’t let our child’s very existence be a political wedge issue. Being a teenager is hard enough. Being a parent of a teenager is hard enough.
Raising a transgender kid in Tennessee, we know that not everyone understands people like her or her health care — and that’s OK. We don’t need to agree on everything. But we do need our fundamental rights respected.
I have devoted myself to finding our daughter consistent care in one state after another. The nightmare of our disrupted life pales in comparison to the nightmare of losing access to the health care that has allowed our daughter to thrive. After Tennessee passed its ban, we traveled to another provider in a different state. After that state passed a ban, we moved on to another one. We are now on our fourth state. The five-hour drive each way, taking time off work and school, is hard, but thankfully, we found a clinic and pharmacy that take our insurance.
Despite the court’s ruling, we will find a way to keep L.W. healthy, no matter what — just as we will find a way to celebrate getting her braces off and focus on picking outfits for senior class pictures. But state-sponsored discrimination makes this exhausting.
I had hoped that these justices, who had the ability and the responsibility to protect us from the capricious, narrow-minded attacks of our own state government, would rise to the occasion. I had hoped they would acknowledge we are being denied medical care based on our child’s sex.
And some of them did: In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the court was “retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most,” and in doing so, abandoning families like mine to “political whims.”
I am deeply afraid for what this decision will unleash — politically and socially. Now that the Supreme Court has denied the rights of young people like my daughter and families like ours, what’s next? Will she be protected as an adult? A public college in Tennessee told us recently that she wouldn’t be allowed in the women’s dorm. She is looking for a job; will co-workers or customers at her workplace feel emboldened to harass her?
Especially since the election, the fear of discrimination against trans people has been pervasive. In early April, we were on a college tour for L.W. In between sessions I was checking my phone when my blood ran cold. I texted my husband, “Don’t say anything that will freak out L.W., but check your email.” I didn’t want to ruin the special day for her.
In the annual announcement about April being Child Abuse Prevention Month, President Trump released a proclamation that referred to gender-affirming care as “gender ideology” and called it “one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse facing our country today.” In doing so, he all but accused parents of transgender kids who, like us, affirm their child’s gender, of abuse. While only a statement and not legally binding, this sent me spiraling. Could they really take away our child? Our children? Does this mean jail?
For a few weeks after the president’s announcement, I actively feared for our safety. At one point, my chest ached so badly I thought I was having a heart attack. I booked consultations with a financial adviser, a family-law attorney and a global relocation specialist. I stayed up late, scrolling on my phone, researching countries we could flee to, developing a detailed escape plan.
And then I realized, this is exactly what our state legislature wanted. Fear. Spectacle. Submission. I had testified before a committee that was considering the ban on gender-affirming care, and its members seemed to barely acknowledge my existence, let alone take my concerns about the measure seriously. The legislators could have focused on any number of other urgent problems: school shootings, families struggling to put food on the table. Instead, they singled out young people who are just trying to be themselves and the parents and doctors who support them. What happened to all their rhetoric about parental rights? As a parent, I know my child better than any government official ever will.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday will make it even harder for our daughter to get lifesaving health care. It will harm the lawsuit’s unnamed families and those that come after us, with younger kids just starting to understand and express themselves. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say youth without gender-affirming medical support could die by suicide. Young people could be harmed by self-medicating with black-market hormones without medical supervision.
I pray this ruling is not the sea wall that the modern wave of L.G.B.T.Q. rights expansion breaks on. If one thing gives me hope, it’s my daughter. Even after all the emotions of today, L.W. has been texting me all day about her plans for how to continue the fight for young people like her.
Samantha Williams is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors. She wrote from Nashville.
Source photograph by Jonno Rattman for The New York Times.
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