On Wednesday, the first transgender lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court will say that hormone therapy and puberty blockers should be prescribed to minors.

Chase Strangio will take to the floor, representing families who say Tennessee’s ban on treatments for transgender children is unconstitutional.

In what liberal media outlets have claimed will be the most important trans rights case the court has ever heard, Mr Strangio will have 15 minutes to challenge the law which bans the treatments for transgender minors and imposes civil penalties on doctors who violate the prohibitions.

The case, US v. Skrmetti, could have profound consequences for US policy on transgender rights going forward.

A ruling in Mr Strangio’s favour could give LGBT+ campaigners a tool in repealing laws on transgender access to gendered bathrooms, school sports and inclusive pronouns across the country.

A ruling in Tennessee’s favour could pave the way for states to pass restrictions on transgender therapies, at a time when 26 states have enacted laws curtailing gender dysphoria treatments in children amid concerns over their life-changing impact.

‘I am not a miserable person’

The significance of the moment is not lost on Mr Strangio. “I am able to do my job because I have had this health care that transformed and, frankly, saved my life,” he said. “I am a testament to the fact that we live among everyone.”

The tattooed and moustached lawyer has a 12-year-old son, a father he has previously called a “die-hard Fox News-watching Trump voter”, and an Army-veteran brother he has a close relationship with.

He is acutely aware of not arguing from a position of victimhood, telling CNN: “I am distinctly not a miserable person, and I do not approach this work from a place of being downtrodden.”

Having grown up outside of Boston, Mr Strangio came out as trans when he was in law school and has gone on to act for campaign group the American Civil Liberties Union on some of the most high-profile cases to do with LGBT+ rights in recent years.

He represented former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who came out as trans while in military custody, challenged Donald Trump’s first-term ban on transgender people serving in the military and helped to legalise gay marriage in the United States in 2015.

Mr Strangio was criticised over his stance on issues around female-only spaces after he said trans women should be allowed to use women’s restrooms.

In 2016, he successfully argued against North Carolina’s bathroom ban, which said people have to use the bathroom matching the sex on their birth certificate.

“If you can’t go to the bathroom, you can’t go to school or have a job,” he previously said.

“You can’t go to the movies or a restaurant. This is really a question of whether or not as a society we’re going to let trans people participate and be part of our social fabric.”

Calls to cancel gender-critical literature

The outspoken lawyer has also landed himself in hot water with calls to cancel gender-critical literature.

In November 2020, he wrote on Twitter, now X, that “stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100 per cent a hill I will die on,” in response to a work called Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, by Abigail Shrier.

He later deleted his social media post, claiming “there were relentless calls to have me fired, which I found exhausting as I was navigating work and childcare”.

The New York Times reported at the time that the posts had “startled traditional backers [of the American Civil Liberties Union], who remembered its many fights against book censorship and banning”.

Described by his supporters as “our nation’s leading legal expert on the rights of transgender people”, Mr Strangio has spoken publicly about how his personal experience of gender dysphoria has shaped his understanding of the law.

“Every aspect of gender-affirming care that has transformed my life,” he told CNN. “I’m keenly aware that I want to preserve the ability for other people to access that care.”

Biden administration supports challenge to law

In Wednesday’s case, the Court’s justices will decide whether Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for children and adolescents violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, a question that could allow a majority of the court to hold that laws targeting transgender people are unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Tennessee, meanwhile, will argue before the Supreme Court that treatments like puberty blockers and hormones carry risks for young people and its law protects them from making treatment decisions prematurely – a view which mirrors guidance in the UK and other European countries.

“Tennessee, like many other states, acted to ensure that minors do not receive these treatments until they can fully understand the life-long consequences or until the science is developed to the point that Tennessee might take a different view of their efficacy,” state attorneys wrote in court filings.

Major US medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have said hormone therapy for children is safe when administered properly.

The Biden administration is also supporting the challenge to Tennessee’s law, but the federal government’s position is expected to shift dramatically after Mr Trump takes office in January.

“Many of us think about our childhood and young adulthood as lost years, when we were just simply disembodied from our core,” Mr Strangio said.

He has also claimed there are medical interventions, such as gastric bypass surgeries for weight loss, that minors have access to with parental consent, despite the risks involved.

He argues it makes sense to inform families about the risks of hormone treatments and let them choose, rather than leaving the decision in the hands of the state.

“There is harm that is compounded when we are forcing young people to be denied care that their doctors and their parents and they themselves all agree they need,” he said.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide the case by the summer.

Trans rights

It comes at a time when trans rights have been thrust into the centre of the US political debate.

The issue was seized upon during the election campaign by Mr Trump, who successfully appealed to voters with a targeted advertising campaign pledging to “keep men out of women’s sports”.

After Congress returned to session, tensions over trans rights flared when Nancy Mace, a Republican representative, sought to have the first transgender senator, Sarah McBride, banned from accessing women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill.

The resolution was loudly backed by Trump loyalists such as Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who said she would not shy from a “physical altercation” with Ms McBride if it came to it.

Meanwhile among Democrats, the party’s stance on trans rights has been dredged up by some as evidence of them being out of touch with voters.

“[Trans issues were] one of the many issues where Democrats were out of touch with the American people, we need to do more listening and less teaching,” Seth Moulton, the Massachusetts congressman, told The Telegraph.