On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear two cases about whether federal law protects gay and transgender people from being fired simply for being who they are.
Since in 26 states you can be fired from your job simply for being transgender, the decision could have an immediate impact on the lives of the 1.4 million Americans who identify as transgender. This is arguably the most important LGBTQ Supreme Court case since same-sex marriage.
Over 90 amicus briefs (“friend of the court”) have been filed by everyone from the state of Nebraska to the Southern Poverty Law Center. From the right, many of them seem to emanate from a parallel universe to the one occupied by all the country’s major medical organizations, sociologists, and trans people themselves, repeatedly making the shocking, indefensible claim that people who say they are trans are either mentally ill, nonexistent, or dangerous predators—or, somehow, all three at once.