A few days before this year’s Sundance Film Festival began, the President declared in his inaugural address that “it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female”. As Sundance 2025 takes place, five anti-trans bills continue to advance in the legislature of the festival’s home state of Utah. These are among the 245 anti-LGBTQ bills that have been introduced in states across the nation that are currently being tracked by the ACLU. On a federal level, this week alone has seen a torrent of executive orders (EO) targeting trans lives, including wording in the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” EO that maligns the character of trans people and their fitness to serve their country.
Given this context, Disclosure filmmaker Sam Feder’s latest documentary Heightened Scrutiny, which just world premiered at the festival, could not be more timely and urgent in its investigation of how we got here. At the centre of the film is attorney Chase Strangio, co-director of ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project. In the opening frames of the film we accompany him on his car journey to the Supreme Court on December 4th, 2024, moments before he made history as the first out trans lawyer to argue a case before the highest court in the land. As we see him make his way into the building, the sequence has all the tension of a thriller, enhanced by the blend of uncertainty and possibility evoked in Jonathan Sanford’s score.
The high stakes case, United States v. Skrmetti, challenges a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical care for trans youth as unconstitutional, with Strangio calling for the legal standard of “heightened scrutiny” to be applied to evaluate it, arguing that it discriminates “on the basis of sex and trans status”. An onscreen caption emphasizes the enormity of this responsibility, stating: “The outcome of this case will affect the constitutional rights of everyone in America.”
Feder then shifts back five months and we go on to follow Strangio in the lead-up to oral arguments in this landmark case. Strangio shares that unlike many of his colleagues, appearing at the Supreme Court had not been an ambition of his, “more of nightmare”, but that he was driven to accept the responsibility due to his belief that “trans sensibility should be driving these cases”. Ahead of the Supreme Court date, we witness him argue at the Ninth Circuit court of appeals and it is striking, and powerful, to see a trans lawyer speak in a room full of cis voices making decisions about trans lives.
As we follow Strangio to work at the ACLU, an organization that already opened up its doors to a documentary crew on 2020’s The Fight, his dedication is unmistakable. We get a fascinating insight into his preparation for arguing in court, including rehearsal sessions, known as moots. It is a process which Strangio says reminds him of a sequence in the RBG biopic On the Basis of Sex that rings true to him. We also see him at home continually practising what he will say on December 4th, something he jokes that his child is tired of hearing him do.
As well as an engaging portrait of a man committed to his work, we also get an insight into the off-duty Strangio at home in Queens, walking around his Flushing neighourhood, and being a loving cat daddy to the very cute, asthmatic Raven. While Strangio’s work has put him in the media spotlight—leading to a barrage of social media hate and threats—he is keen to protect the privacy of those closet to him, so neither his child nor his partner are featured in the film. However there is some intimate verité footage of him alone, including some raw, off-guard moments, like when he stares at the camera on the morning of November 6th, 2024, still in the midst of processing the enormity of what Triump’s win might mean. He admits that he momentary had defeatist thoughts, before steeling himself and saying, “fuck it, we fight”. A phrase that would make a great slogan for a t-shirt.
In spite of the gravity of the task at hand, and being looked to as a community leader, Strangio retains an easy sense of humour. He’s quick to laugh, modest, and not afraid to let his vulnerability show along with his confidence in his expertise and ability. Feder includes some lighter moments, even some trans joy, as we see Strangio come together with friends and fellow trans-activists like Elliot Page and Peppermint for a dinner party to share the stress of watching the Vice Presidential debate together.
Living in a large liberal city like New York, it is easy to think that anti-LGBTQ policymaking is something that only happens elsewhere, but as Strangio points out, some of the very same things that he is fighting across the country are happening in his “own backyard”. He does not have to look to far for an example. The board of the Manhattan school that his child attends recently voted 8-3 in support of “an anti-trans resolution”. We accompany Strangio to a fraught school meeting which he helped to arrange to counter the board’s decision. It is there where we meet Mila, a trans girl on the cusp of heading to high school, who speaks passionately and articulately as she reminds the school board that there is a human cost to their decisions. Trans youth are rarely given a voice when it comes to discussions about issues that directly affect them and Feder’s decision to include Mila more broadly in the film, along with her close-knit immediate family, proves to be a potent reminder of what is at stake in the very case that Strangio is preparing for.
Given that public opinion can be a key factor in helping to shape the law, a major element of Strangio’s work is media-facing. His aims are to inform the public about the facts, how anti-LGBTQ legislation connects to other bodily-autonomy issues like abortion, and to help dismantle misinformation and destigmatize trans folks. In surveying how trans people have become such a legislative target, Strangio reflects on how it fits into the familiar political playbook of taking a “misunderstood, maligned, small minority of people and placing the larger population’s anxiety of a changed world onto them”.
Ahead of the 2024 election, his work involved raising the alarm about Project 2025. In an interview with Democracy Now! Strangio is asked about the then ongoing Republication presidential campaign. “They are playing into people’s misunderstanding about trans people and our bodies”, he warns, adding that their approach to “gender is regressive and dangerous for everyone.”
One of the most compelling strands of the film, brilliantly edited by Emelie Mahdavian and assistant editor Nancy Nguyen, persuasively tracks the direct correlation between media discourse about trans lives and legislation. How did we get from the apparent promise of TIME’s “Transgender Tipping Point” in 2014 to where we are today? As Strangio points out, as recently as 2021 there were no states with laws banning gender-affirming care for adolescents, but by the time this film was being made in 2024 there were 23 states with bans in place. This follows “tens and tens of thousands of words questioning the legitimacy of our healthcare”, Strangio points out, and he is not just talking about Fox News, right-wing podcasters and bloggers, but left-leaning publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic. Strangio argues that “the coverage of trans people by the centre-left morphs into far-right policy in a matter of a few years.” Much of that media focus has been around distorting gender-affirming care as a potential “mistake” by overemphasizing proportionately rare cases of trans people who have come to regret medically transitioning, as well as the notion that children are being endangered by their parents’ decisions and doctors’ treatment rather than cared for.
A montage incorporating a barrage of anti-trans opinion gives way to trans people speaking for themselves in the film, including Laverne Cox who highlights how framing access to lifesaving medical care as something that is up for debate is “deeply dehumanizing”. We also hear from media analysts like Julie Hollar, managing editor of FAIR, who shares her own research into front-page coverage by The New York Times of trans issues over a 12-month period. She found that there were more stories that positioned “the trans movement as a threat” than articles about trans folks “being threatened” by the political movement against them. While Journalist and activist Erin Reed calls out the way “both-sides journalism” is “laundering disinformation”, going to express her concern that legislative attacks on healthcare for trans adolescents are only the beginning. “They’re starting to turn their guns towards adult care”, she warns.
Not only is this click-bait culture media discourse damaging in itself in shaping public opinion, but outlets like The New York Times are frequently used as references to legitimize bans of gender-affirming care by state legislators and attorney generals. Quotes are pulled from op-eds by the likes of Pamela Paul to bolster arguments, rather than relying on expert opinion from medical professionals. As Strangio points out, there is also a direct link—not just between media coverage and legislation—but in how it is upheld in court with those same opinion-based references being drawn upon. Hopefully this rigorous but accessible and powerfully moving film will encourage both journalists and consumers of media to consider more carefully and critically how and why trans rights have become framed as a debate and why trans people just living their lives has become viewed as ideological.
Although cameras are not allowed inside the Supreme Court, audio of the proceedings are made available to the public. Feder makes astute use of several exchanges between Strangio and the justices from key moments of the United States v. Skrmetti oral arguments throughout the film to illustrate various themes. Rather than a hindrance, not having the distraction of visual footage actually makes us focus all the more intently on what is being said. For instance, we hear Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s comparison between United States v. Skrmetti and the 1967’s Loving v. Virginia civil rights case, expressing her concern for the “undermining the foundations of some of our bedrock equal protection cases”. Later, we hear Associate Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor counter the argument that trans rights should be left to the democratic process: “When you’re one percent of the population or less, it’s very hard to see how the democratic process is going to protect you”.
As Strangio takes in the enormity of the task ahead of him, he reflects on those who have been in the fight before him like his hero and source of inspiration, human rights activist, legal scholar, and writer Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, whom he describes as “an extraordinary thinker”. We accompany Strangio, who is already well-inked, as he gets some lines from one of Murray’s poems, Prophecy, tattooed on his back. It is a quote that begins, “I have been cast aside but I sparkle in the darkness” and, touchingly, we hear Murray’s own voice read it as those words bolster Strangio in his work.
When the film returns to December 4th, it is affecting and empowering to see those gathered outside the Supreme Court as a show of support for Strangio, including Elliot Page, Peppermint, Annette Benning, and Mila who we see speak to the crowd. In its incorporation of a wealth of trans voices, and allies, and in its celebration of community, Heightened Scrutiny manages to leave things on a pragmatic but hopeful note. A sense that we are in this together and, win or lose, we have people out their like Strangio who are fighting for LGBTQ rights in this perilous moment.
By James Kleinmann
Following its world premiere at Sundance and New York premiere at NewFest Pride, Heightened Scrutiny opens in theaters on Friday, July 18th in New York, continuing in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Select screenings with Q&As featuring film participants, journalists, and film festival programmers.
