A New Dawn In Transgender Civil Rights Litigation

By: Rook Elizabeth Ringer, Esquire

At 8:30 AM, on the morning of June 15, 2020, I was in a hearing to determine whether a Transgender woman, denied time-sharing/visitation of her children for the last 1.5 years….solely because she is Transgender…would be able to finally see her children. The woman in question is a former US Army combat infantry veteran who was one of the first “boots-on-the-ground” in Afghanistan, mere weeks after 9/11. There were no allegations of child abuse, drug use, criminal activity, or anything else like that. She is a working professional who always tries to do the right thing. But she is also Transgender, and that was “enough” for the Court to have taken away her right to even be in the same room with her own children.

I fought hard. I pointed out the other side’s Transphobia and deliberate misgendering. I quoted the law and the case-law. But just like all the other times before, the judge ruled against us, and the hearing ended around 10:00 AM.

I was angry, hurt, and disappointed that…even with a wealth of case-law (and common decency) on my side, none of it mattered. All that mattered was that my client was Transgender. When I got out of the hearing, I saw the news of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clay County, upholding LGBTQ rights under the definition of “sex discrimination”, but it was bittersweet to me, since the morning’s hearing had gone so badly.

However, at 12:01 PM that day, the judge’s assistant contacted me and stated the following:

Judge [REDACTED] has just advised that upon further consideration after the hearing this morning that he has changed his decision in regards to the unsupervised timesharing. He is going to grant the Motion for Unsupervised Timesharing. He has indicated that Ms. Ringer will not need to prepare a proposed order as he will enter his own order. He has also advised that because of his change in ruling, the hearing we were going to schedule is no longer needed.

I can only assume that the judge had also seen the news, but had more importantly….read the writing on the wall. I can only assume the he saw that now, even the Supreme Court would not stand against us. Even the two conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, who penned the decision, would not stand against us. We won that day. My client won that day. All LGBTQ people won that day. America and Liberty and Freedom won that day.

 I will leave you with these words of wisdom from…“Captain America”:

Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world – “No, YOU move.” (*)

We can do this. I believe in you. Here’s to the future. Let us take it while we can.