I became a law student to fight for LGBTQ people, but I need the legal profession at my side
Say It Louder
Zane McNeill is a student at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
On December 4, 2024, Chase Strangio became the first openly transgender person to orally argue a case before the Supreme Court. Strangio, a co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, appeared on behalf of the parents of a 16-year-old daughter challenging a law in Tennessee that banned puberty blockers, hormone therapies and gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth. While the presence of Strangio in the country’s highest court is so important, many trans law students like myself worry we may not have the same opportunity in the future with the way things are headed.
I came into this profession to fight for my community, but by the time I graduate, I fear that legal protections for trans people will have been dismantled and that practicing law as a trans person will be unsafe.
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Reparations are more than money
More Of This
Congratulations to Equal Justice Society President Lisa Holder for being named one of Time Magazine’s 25 Closers Of the Year! ChangeLawyers is proud to support Equal Justice Society as a grantee partner.
In 2021, a Black homeowner in Marin County shared a chilling story with the California reparations task force. He and his wife had renovated their home, adding value through upgrades and improvements. But when an appraiser assessed the property, the value came in shockingly low—hundreds of thousands of dollars below expectations. The couple, suspecting racial bias, decided to test the system. They enlisted a white friend to pose as the homeowner, removed family photos and artwork, and had the house reappraised. This time, the valuation soared by nearly another half a million dollars.
The story underscored the relevance of the first-of-its-kind bodyestablished in 2020 to investigate the lasting effects of systemic racism in the state and to develop proposals to address the harm done to Black Californians. It was also a defining moment for one of the task force’s members, Lisa Holder, the president of the Equal Justice Society (EJS), who sees such anecdotes not as outliers but as part of an entrenched pattern. “The narrative is that we’re a post-racial, colorblind society,” she says. “But this is contrary to all of the data that shows that Black and brown people, especially African American and Indigenous people, continue to be at the bottom in so many social indicators because of centuries and generations of inequality.”
Read on Time Magazine >
Former federal judge just beat MAGA in Court. Here is her advice.
Listen To This
DOGE is running wild in the District of Columbia. Chaos reigns supreme. Trump 2.0 has been frightening and it’s all been happening so fast. But there are lots of people fighting back, as they try to slow the damage. And the courts are exactly where the pushback has been most fierce. One of the teams of people leading the charge includes former Judge Nancy Gertner, one of the many legal professionals suing the Trump administration. Judge Gertner’s case is about the list of rank and file FBI agents threatened with retribution and the public disclosure of their names, because they did their jobs and prosecuted January 6th cases. Gertner is involved with a slew of cases from the State Democracy Defenders Fund.
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Refugee advocates have entered the fight against asylum suspensions
Speaking Of...
ChangeLawyers is proud to support the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Law San Francisco as a grantee partner.
The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Law San Francisco and other legal service providers are challenging an executive order by President Donald Trump that suspends entry to the United States for asylum seekers, claiming that it violates immigration protections put in place by Congress.
The center joined a federal lawsuit Monday opposing Trump’s proclamation that there was an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border. The suit claims that the order is in violation of federal law, which requires the U.S. to allow people to enter the country to apply for asylum and prohibits the government from returning people to a country where they face the threat of persecution or torture.
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