Trudy Ring

Vivian Smotherman is out to not only make history for transgender Coloradans but flip a district from Republican to Democratic. Smotherman is running for the state’s Senate in District 6. It’s located in southwestern Colorado, a region that has traditionally been red or at least purple, and is the largest Senate district by area in the state. She’s facing Republican Cleave Simpson Jr., a first-term incumbent who was elected before the district was redrawn last year. She would be Colorado’s first out trans state senator; Rep. Brianna Titone, running for a fourth term this year, was the first out trans person in the Colorado House. She’s a Navy […]

Fatal violence against transgender, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary Americans continues at an alarming rate. While the number of reported deaths has come down somewhat since 2021’s record of 57, it should be noted that this number is almost always an undercount. In any given year, the majority of those who’ve died by violence are trans women of color, Black women in particular.  Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative at the Human Rights Campaign, previously told The Advocate that media outlets and authorities aren’t always the best at covering and handling cases involving LGBTQ+ people, specifically trans and nonbinary people. “There have been times when we have […]

Jessica Norton, a Florida school employee and mother of a transgenderdaughter, is suing the Broward County schools and the Florida State Department of Education, saying they violated her rights by investigating and ultimately disciplining her in retaliation for filing an earlier lawsuit challenging the state’s trans-exclusionary sports law. Norton had been an employee at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek since 2017; the school is part of the Broward County School District. She was hired as a library media clerk and was promoted to information specialist in 2022, and she received positive reviews along the way, according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court […]

Honee Walker, a 37-year-old Black transgender woman, was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Rochester, N.Y., last Wednesday. Walker has been misgendered and deadnamed in local media reports. The accident occurred just before midnight. Walker was a pedestrian, and the driver who hit her left the scene, TV station WHAM reports. She was pronounced dead soon afterward. The driver and vehicle have since been identified, but no arrests have been made, and the accident remains under investigation. After the incident, Walker’s family gave her name to media outlets, but some have not corrected their reporting. The latest WHAM story, however, states her correct name and refers to her as a […]

The controversy over gender-affirming care for trans minors is coming to the U.S. Supreme Court in its new term, which begins Monday — the first Monday in October. A hearing date has not been set, but the case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, over a Tennessee ban on such care, will surely attract much attention when it comes to the court. The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups representing the Tennesseans who sued over the law, predicts the hearing will be scheduled for December. Here’s what you need to know about the case, which is the high court’s first opportunity to rule on the issue. What is the U.S. […]

Daniel Trujillo first spoke at a hearing at the Arizona legislature when he was nine years old. The now-17-year-old has spent years telling lawmakers that as a trans boy he exists, he is loved, and he’s thriving.  In fact, at one drive home after a hearing, Daniel told his mother Lizette that the only time he felt discriminated against was when he would go to those meetings. Outside of facing down anti-trans lawmakers, he lived a normal teenage life. He skateboarded. He hung out with friends. He was happy.  Daniel is content to share his story. It’s kind of his way of […]

The American Bar Association has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors. “Equal protection forbids differential treatment in the exercise of important constitutional rights absent the strongest justification, and Tennessee’s [Senate Bill 1] cannot withstand scrutiny under that standard,” says the ABA brief, filed Tuesday. It adds, “The ABA has recognized in its past policy statements, state policy denying any individual access to needed medical care for reasons wholly unrelated to any medical justification — as SB1 does — is inimical to equality and equal dignity before the law.” “The right […]