Trans Justice Now: Courts, Care and the Politics of Gender
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 | 4:00pm – 5:30pm ET | Virtual on Zoom (Registration Required)
Hosted by the Georgetown University’s Gender+ Justice Initiative and co-sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, OutLaw, LGBTQ+ Resource Center, Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, and Center for Health Equity.
Join us for an in-depth examination of Supreme Court jurisprudence affecting transgender rights in the United States. This panel brings together legal scholars, litigators, journalists, and advocates to examine the current legal and political landscape including recent and current cases addressing transgender athletes, through constitutional and statutory frameworks.
The discussion will assess the implications of these rulings for equal protection, administrative law, and civil rights enforcement, as well as their broader domestic and international legal consequences. Panelists will also explore how legal strategies are being developed to support transgender communities with attention to the real-world impacts and advance long-term structural change. This discussion will be moderated by Coco Tait, Program Director, Gender+ Justice Initiative.
About the Panelists:
Noa Ben-Asher is a Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law. They joined St. John’s in 2023 from the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. Professor Ben-Asher’s scholarly interests include gender, sexuality, and legal theory. Their work has appeared in numerous legal journals and edited collections. Their forthcoming book, Secular-Christian Social Justice, will be published by NYU Press in 2024. Professor Ben-Asher teaches Torts, Family Law, and Law, Gender & Sexuality.
Orion Rummler covers how LGBTQ+ people navigate the American health care system for The 19th News. From gender-affirming care and HIV/AIDS prevention to Medicaid and family planning, his beat is focused on the everyday health needs of LGBTQ+ people — and how politics are shaping those needs. His reporting has won an Excellence in HIV/AIDS Coverage Award from the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists and a national Murrow Award, as part of a team project on pregnancy in post-Roe America. He has also been nominated three times for GLAAD’s Outstanding Online Journalism Award.
Sruti Swaminathan is a Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. Sruti’s work includes impact litigation, as well as legislative advocacy and public education, on behalf of LGBTQ people and people living with HIV across the United States. Among other cases, Sruti is counsel to Plaintiffs in Orr v Trump, a federal class action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s discriminatory passport policy denying transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans accurate passports. Sruti is also counsel in a federal lawsuit challenging West Virginia’s law banning girls and women who are transgender from participating in school sports and is part of the team that litigated West Virginia v. B.P.J. before the Supreme Court. Sruti was counsel to L.W. and other plaintiffs in L.W. v. Skrmetti, a federal lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s total ban on gender affirming care for transgender youth, and part of the team that litigated U.S. v. Skrmetti before the Supreme Court. In 2023, Sruti was named one of the “Best LGBTQ+ Lawyers Under 40” by the National LGBTQ Bar Association. Prior to joining the ACLU, Sruti spent three years at Lambda Legal litigating to advance the rights of LGBTQ youth, and four years of practicing in the Litigation Department of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.
Free and open to all.
RSVP (Registration Required)