A trans teen takes her case to the Supreme Court
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
The case the Supreme Court will hear Wednesday is brought by a doctor and three transgender teens with their families – including L.W. and her parents, Brian and Samantha Williams. Their suit challenges a law in Tennessee, but nearly half of states have banned certain treatments for minors with gender dysphoria, so the implications of the Supreme Court case could be wide-ranging.
When the Williams family first sought out hormone treatment for their daughter, it wasn’t illegal in any state, but over the past few years, trans kids have increasingly become a talking point for Republican lawmakers.
Elahe Izadi speaks with reporter Casey Parks about what the law in Tennessee has meant for L.W. and her family – and what a ruling in this case could mean for the tens of thousands of kids who live in states where gender transition care is restricted.
Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff and Ariel Plotnick with help from Bishop Sand. It was edited by Maggie Penman with help from Reena Flores. It was mixed by Justin Gerrish.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Over the weekend, the Williams family came to Washington, D.C. from Tennessee. |
| 0:09.0 | And like so many other tourists, the Smithsonian Museums were at the top of their to-do list. |
| 0:15.1 | I've never seen a fighter jet in real life. That is massive. |
| 0:20.1 | That included visiting a branch of the Air and Space Museum in Virginia. |
| 0:24.7 | It has a huge collection of jets on display and a massive hangar-like space. |
| 0:30.7 | The Williams' daughter, 16-year-old LW, wants to become a commercial pilot when she grows up. |
| 0:37.1 | It's an S-R71A, I guess, is what this says. |
| 0:42.1 | It's a giant jet. |
| 0:44.1 | It is designed from my knowledge to just be able to fly so high and fast that you cannot shoot it down. |
| 0:54.2 | I don't know if it has any... |
| 0:55.8 | She told producer Ariel Plotnick what she loves about flying, |
| 0:59.8 | that moment of weightlessness at liftoff. |
| 1:03.0 | Can I ask you, like, why you're interested in flames and being a pilot? |
| 1:08.0 | Well, it's mostly just the fact that there's just the, like, taking off on a plane is so much fun. |
| 1:16.9 | Like, just the kind of feeling of it. |
| 1:19.1 | I don't know. It's interesting. |
| 1:21.5 | But the Williams family also came to D.C. for another reason. |
| 1:27.5 | Tomorrow, the Supreme Court, we'll hear oral arguments for the very first time on bans that |
| 1:33.1 | roughly half the country has passed on what's called gender transition care. |
| 1:37.7 | So these are essentially medications that might help transgender adolescents transition genders. |
| 1:44.4 | Casey Parks covers LGBTQ issues for the post. |
| 1:47.8 | She'll be at the court Wednesday when the justice is here arguments in the United States v. Scermetti, |
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