Mother at Center of Trans Case Is Worried About What's Next

Wednesday's landmark Supreme Court decision banning transgender-related health care for minors struck unusually close to home for Samantha Williams. In a New York Times essay, Williams explains the "incredibly surreal" twist that her family is at the center of the case: Her child came out as a transgender girl a few years ago at age 12, a move supported by Williams and her husband. But their home state of Tennessee then blocked treatment, and Williams writes that they have been scrambling ever since. "We are now on our fourth state." She doesn't specify what kind of treatment, but Tennessee's law bans hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and gender transition surgery.

Williams writes that she and her husband have been stripped of their "fundamental rights" to care for their child, and she had hoped the Supreme Court would agree. Now she's worried about what comes next.

• "I'm not being hyperbolic when I say youth without gender-affirming medical support could die by suicide. Young people could be harmed by self-medicating with black-market hormones without medical supervision."
• "I pray this ruling is not the sea wall that the modern wave of L.G.B.T.Q. rights expansion breaks on." (Read the full essay.)