NEWS: Lawyers for “Trans Kids” Face Sanctions in Alabama
Spastic attempts to game the system lead to disgrace … and a peek behind the scenes of LGBTQ advocacy
Update: As of June 2024, some of these lawyers are under investigation for their conduct during the investigation discussed here.
A humiliating report by three federal judges concluded that trans rights lawyers engaged in “judge shopping.” Some worked for nonprofits like the ACLU and Lambda Legal; others practiced at the major commercial law firms King & Spalding and Cooley. The report was filed under seal in October 2023 and made public on March 19.
When these lawyers sued in 2022 to block Alabama’s new state law protecting kids from gender medicine, they tried to thwart the federal court system’s process of randomly assigning cases to judges. Their goal was to avoid landing in the courtroom of Judge Liles C. Burke, a Trump appointee.
The eleven attorneys in leadership roles may be fined and suspended from practicing in two districts of Alabama. One stands accused of perjury.
The report exposes the lawyers’ bitter internal divisions, self-destructive paranoia about conservatives, and sleaziness. In this post I’ll provide an overview, zero in on the most interesting points, and contextualize this faceplant in the broader scheme of US “trans rights” litigation.
I’ve written about several of these people before. Links to those pieces are at the end.
The Plot
Lawyers shouldn’t get to choose their judge and judges shouldn’t choose their cases. To that end, the federal courts assign cases to judges within a district randomly.
A caveat – if a newly-filed case is related to an older case, it might be assigned to the same judge as that older case.
The Players
In 2020, no state in America had yet banned gender medicine for minors. But Republicans were starting to talk about it, so trans rights lawyers got organized in the most conservative states. In Alabama, they connected with local trans activists to identify people who might serve as named plaintiffs in a class action.
The first state to ban gender medicine for minors was Arkansas in 2021. The ACLU sued, following a battle plan it would use again: it partnered with a giant commercial law firm, a local Arkansas firm, and its own ACLU affiliate in Little Rock. Its clients were four “trans kids,” the kids’ parents (who claimed the law violated their right to make decisions about their children’s healthcare), and a local gender doctor whose business would be harmed by the law. Those individuals were stand-ins for entire classes of kids, parents, and doctors.
In the spring of 2022, Alabama banned gender medicine for minors. The law was set to take effect on May 8 of that year. Trans rights lawyers were raring to sue. Thirty-nine trans rights lawyers, to be precise. They worked for eleven different organizations and law firms. By 2022, they’d formed two teams.
These two teams raced each other to the courthouse as soon as the governor signed the law. They both wanted to file lawsuits and emergency motions to block the law from going into effect.
The first lawyers to file represented a doctor named Morissa Ladinsky, among others (the “Ladinsky team”). They worked for the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC), King & Spalding, and a Birmingham firm, Lightfoot.
The stragglers represented someone named Walker, among others. The Walker team worked for the ACLU (national and local affiliate), Lambda Legal, Transgender Law Center, and Cooley.
The Maneuvers
The Ladinsky team and Walker team were not working together even though they sought to represent the same classes of plaintiffs. They’d have to collaborate eventually, with one team taking the lead in terms of decision-making. But immediately after filing, they were still focused on driving forward their own cases.
Then, despite sketchy maneuvering to get in front of judges they liked (particularly by the Walker team), they both ended up with their cases assigned to Judge Liles Burke. He was a Trump appointee who’d displayed a portrait of Jefferson Davis on the walls of his old office. Panicked, the two rival teams made a pact to dismiss both of their cases and re-file a fresh new one in a different federal district of Alabama.
The new case was called Eknes-Tucker. Its lawyers were the Ladinsky team, but the named plaintiffs were all new. Since Eknes-Tucker seemed to be related to Ladinsky, the court assigned it to Burke (this turned out to be an option even though Burke was based in a different district).
Burke granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction to block the ban from going into effect while the lawsuit proceeded. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his order. The upshot: right now gender doctors can’t touch minors in Alabama. The lawsuit is pending. The old Ladinsky team is running the show in that state.
All the lawyers’ sly moves (some of which I’ll elaborate on below) were for nothing – they ended up with the judge they didn’t want, he ruled in their favor, but then they lost on appeal.
The Findings
When the Ladinsky team dismissed its case, one of the lawyers told the media they planned to immediately re-file. Judge Burke smelled a rat. He referred the matter to the three-judge panel. The panel held five days of hearings to interview the lawyers, who’d also submitted affidavits. The proceedings stretched over the remainder of 2022.
The panel divided the lawyers into three categories: those who had no input, those who had input but didn’t make decisions for the team, and “leaders and decision-makers.” Only the third group is now facing sanctions.
The ACLU’s Chase Strangio fell into the second group (I knew you were wondering).
As to the eleven leaders, the panel found they “purposefully attempted to circumvent the random case assignment procedures” of two federal districts of Alabama.
Those facing sanctions include James Esseks (ACLU), Shannon Minter (NCLR), Jennifer Levi (GLAD), and Carl Charles (Lambda).
The Spin
According to The 19th:
“[I]mpacted attorneys claim they are being targeted with regressive and harsh tactics that recall those used against Black civil rights litigators battling racist laws in the 1950s and 60s.”
The ACLU’s press statement:
“We are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this order may have on future attempts to litigate civil rights claims in Alabama and beyond.”
What’s Next
The sanctions are up to Judge Burke. He delivered a blistering order that laid out all the court rules and ethical standards the lawyers may have breached. Among other points, it commanded each of them to address all the ways in which their testimony to the panel didn’t match their co-counsels’. A hearing will be held on May 22.
Takeaways
These Guys Drank Their Own Kool-Aid
The lawyers on both teams believed Burke had not been randomly assigned their files, but in fact had “reached out for the case” or “snagged this case because he want[ed] it.”
That seems unlikely to me, even setting aside the fact that it would break the rules. Judges in cases about youth gender medicine are guaranteed scrutiny by appellate judges and the public, they have to wade through a ton of “medical” evidence, and they’re accused of destroying kids’ lives whichever way they rule. Only someone with very strong convictions about gender medicine would thirst for that assignment – a TERF, in other words, not a klansman.
The lawyers’ paranoia about Burke “snagging” their precious lawsuit suggests they actually believe the hysterical accusations they pump out in press releases: conservatives are on a mission to torment trans-identified kids.
They Think the Judges They Like Are Corrupt?
The Walker team’s original plan was to get their case assigned to Myron Thompson, a judge they liked because he’d ruled for a trans plaintiff several years earlier. Their first gambit was to mark the case as “related” to that previous case, even though it wasn’t. This was a foolish play that stood no chance.
They also called Thompson’s chambers. The ostensible reason was to warn him they’d be filing an emergency motion soon. This might add up — except the case hadn’t been assigned to him (despite the Walker team’s “related” marking) and they didn’t call the judge to whom their case had been assigned. To understand this call to Thompson’s chambers, look at what else the Walker team was up to.
The Walker team pumped their networks for connections to Thompson’s chambers, asking friends of friends how to get their case assigned to him. This provoked gently remedial text messages like (typos corrected):
“Cases are assigned randomly by the clerk’s office. Once in a while judges will trade cases because of external issues (i.e., not subject matter but other things). But it is otherwise luck of the draw whether a case is assigned to him.”
The Ladinsky team thought the idea of Walker ending up in front of Thompson was a “fantasy.”
The panel found that “[b]ehind the scenes, counsel took surreptitious steps calculated to steer Walker to Judge Thompson[.]” It appears these lawyers were hoping Thompson would snag their case once they lobbed it on his radar. Again, this is ridiculous because snagging is unethical and their lawsuit was a nightmare.
Perjuring Upwards
The lawyer who called Thompson’s chambers was Carl Charles of Lambda Legal. She insisted to the panel that she had not made the call. At one point she hesitated, then continued: “My pause is only because I am endeavoring to be as candid as possible.”
The panel recounts (pronouns changed to sex-based):
“But, shortly after the Panel read her cell phone number to her, Charles asked if she could correct her earlier answers and admitted that she did call Judge Thompson’s chambers.”
Charles is one of the lawyers who might be sanctioned for circumventing the judge assignment system. Burke has also ordered Charles “to show cause why she should not be sanctioned for deliberately misleading the three-judge panel in violation of [federal perjury law] and the rules of professional conduct … and her sworn oath[.]” (Pronouns changed.)
Charles now works for the US Department of Justice.
Don’t Forget Your Clients
The Walker team should have secured their clients’ consent before dismissing their lawsuit. But they didn’t even tell the clients what they were doing until after it was done. Rude! And unethical.
Seeing Brandt in a New Light
The decision in Brandt, the 2021 Arkansas lawsuit, was strikingly biased toward the plaintiffs. For example, Judge Jay Moody wrote off most of the state’s witnesses as religious zealots, including a sexologist named Stephen Levine whose faith (or lack of one) had never come up at trial.
Did the ACLU shop for Moody? Did Moody “snag” the case?
Clash of Egos
The Walker team – particularly Esseks at the ACLU – didn’t respect the Ladinsky team. The panel reports:
“[S]ome (and, to be clear, not all) counsel now claim that it would have been very difficult for the two teams to work together. It is primarily the Walker counsel who contend there were issues with coordination and collaboration. They claim the two teams did not have a unified front as to legal theories or a hierarchy of command and control. … [There was] clear discord between certain lawyers.”
This went way back:
“Esseks testified that the difficulties of working together were apparent as early as 2020.”
He also testified that “Levi and Minter were particularly difficult to work with because of their personalities and strong opinions.”
Esseks is a gay man, Levi is a lesbian, and Minter is an FTM. I’m tempted to suspect Esseks of sexism but, well, Minter did publish an essay querying whether gayness should be thought of as a subculture of transgenderism.
The Ladinsky team “did not share these concerns to the same degree” but was laser focused on maintaining their case’s status as the lead.
Though their terror of Burke united the teams for long enough to make the disastrous decision of dismissing Ladinsky and Walker, co-counseling Eknes-Tucker was a nonstarter:
“The call [to discuss co-counseling] was fruitless and acrimonious. For example, Esseks testified, ‘Early in the call, it became apparent to me that due to the complicated relationship dynamics among team members … it would be extremely challenging for the ACLU to move forward in partnership …’ He also testified that Levi and Minter were particularly difficult on the call.”
Another lawyer heard, in the panel's words, “that within moments ‘the call’ disintegrated into shouting and other unpleasantries.”
The 19th spoke to one of the attorneys recently:
“There is no universe where all of us could have worked together. We can barely get through a phone call together.”
This Is Black Eye #2
A similar lawsuit is proceeding in Missouri state court. It was brought by Lambda, the ACLU of Missouri, and the law firm Bryan Cave. A few weeks ago they subpoenaed a whistleblower’s communications with journalists, including “Jessie Singal” (a misspelling). This was a PR blunder because the ACLU historically stood for freedom of the press.
After Singal contacted the legal team, one of its lawyers called him, apologized, and explained “it’s a big team.” They withdrew the demands to the whistleblower that referred to journalists.
This was embarrassing. I’m not just talking about the “freedom of the press” angle, but the shame of admitting on the national stage that you sent dodgy discovery demands because your team is a clown car. Also: the misspelling.
Over the last several years, major commercial law firms have flocked to co-counsel with the ACLU and Lambda because they associate trans rights with the gay marriage movement. They loved gay litigation because it was squeaky clean and low drama. At least a few firms must now be waking up to the fact that trans rights is not like gay marriage.
Just to drive that home, here’s the Alabama panel addressing a plea from the Birmingham law firm ensnared in its inquisition, Lightfoot Franklin:
“[The law partner] indicated that the Panel’s inquiry had been discussed among the Birmingham bar and was even heard by summer law clerks at Lightfoot Franklin. He also indicated that the inquiry was weighing heavily over lawyers at his firm.”
You don’t mess with a law office’s summer program.
Well Done, Red State Republicans
Some gender-critical liberals (my people) are uneasy about the youth gender medicine bans enacted by red state republicans.
“A very blunt approach! The language, so crude. I wouldn’t have phrased it that way. And should we really be regulating physicians?”
By my count, 21 states have passed bans. Only a fraction are currently blocked (Arkansas’ thanks to the Brandt judgment; Texas and Idaho’s by preliminary injunctions). Where the bans are in place, mentally ill, autistic, gay, and gender-nonconforming kids are growing up naturally. They’re becoming themselves.
And so are the lawyers fighting against the bans.
This post was lightly edited on Sept. 29, 2024.
Learn more about these delightful characters
The major commercial law firms that partner with trans rights lawyers
The ACLU’s corruption, 2001-23 (discusses James Esseks)
The ACLU’s deception in a 2005 trans lawsuit (discusses James Esseks)
How FTMs hijacked the gay legal agenda (discusses Shannon Minter)
Judge Jay Moody’s crooked decision in Brandt
In other news, the ACLU is accusing its former employee of racism because she made negative comments about her bosses, who were black (NYTimes)
Outstanding work. Five stars. Let's hope you are right and the biglaw firms get leery of defending the child-sterilizing cult.
Banning medical intervention with such severe lifelong consequences on people clearly unable to give informed consent would seem to be a simple matter.
Clearly it isn't.
But then, "gender therapy" is a huge business. And not all of us opposed to it are conservatives.