Becky Pepper-Jackson just wants to run. “It’s something I love, and it makes me feel like I’m part of something,” she told the Supreme Court. But in 2021, her home state of West Virginia banned transgender girls like her from participating on girls’ athletic teams.
Becky and her mother sued the state, and next month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in their case. In November, A4TE submitted an amicus brief urging the Court to consider these bans in the context of America’s long history of discrimination against our community.
“I was terrified to be who I was because I knew how many relationships I would lose,” said Mx. Cairn Journey Yakey, a nonbinary licensed professional counselor and survivor of conversion therapy. “Conversion therapy left me afraid and ashamed to be who I truly was.”
Mx. Cairn Journey Yakey is one of the many brave voices we featured in our August amicus brief on behalf of transgender, nonbinary, and cisgender survivors of conversion therapy as the case Chiles v. Salazar heads to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“You should be listening to young trans people, their families, and their doctors. The evidence is clear: the medical care you seek to ban saves lives and we want trans kids to live." This is what Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) and 88 of her Democratic colleagues said in a February letter to Trump. The next month, Rep. Balint introduced the A4TE-endorsed Transgender Health Care Access Act to the House of Representatives. In the 2026 midterms, we have the opportunity to elect champions of trans rights like Rep. Balint across the country.
“Trans people are sacred,” we shared in our 2025 Remembrance Report. “We come from a long lineage of healers, truth tellers, and visionaries. Our people hold a mirror to the world and open a window to a new one.” Every day, we fight to preserve this lineage. To hold up this mirror. To open the window. Today, we ask you to join us in this fight.
