They know the law, they know the topic, they know the system, and they can offer guidance in a legal fight if you need it.
In a Substack post last year, the then-newly formed Gender-Critical Law Society (GCLS) announced its intention to change the legal environment around transgender identitfication. “Our work includes persuading the judiciary to allow lawyers, parties, and witnesses to use sex-based pronouns in their courtrooms,” wrote New York consumer protection lawyer and GCLS co-founder Glenna Goldis.
Their argument: The law should recognize reality. You should be able to walk into a courtroom and say the word “he” if you find yourself looking at a man who declares that he’s a woman, without a judge chastising you or compelling you to use supposed gender pronouns that don’t match a person’s sex.
In an email discussion, Goldis told The Federalist that the GCLS intends to be a resource for people who are trapped in legal battles over trans identity, like small businesses being sued for so-called gender identity discrimination or “parents who are fighting to stop a co-parent from transitioning their child.” But the organization isn’t a law firm, and it isn’t planning to represent clients. Instead, Goldis says, the plan is to provide topic-specific legal advice for other lawyers, drawing from a coalition of experienced experts who have dealt with a type of dispute many lawyers haven’t seen.
“GCLS’s main goal right now is to offer legal consulting to lawyers who are handling transgender-related cases,” Goldis told The Federalist. “The area of highest need is family law,” as in those appalling court battles between a parent who wants to transition a child and a parent who doesn’t. “Often their attorneys don’t understand the gender piece and are surprised by how the case unfolds,” Goldis says.
It is, in short, “a professional network that pools knowledge.”
“Counseling lawyers is more efficient than representing clients directly,” Goldis told The Federalist. “There’s also more freedom to work across state lines (to advise a client directly, you need to be a member of the bar of their state). We can save attorneys from reinventing the wheel and guide them through this odd and rapidly evolving area of law/culture.”
You can read a partial list of GCLS lawyers in their announcement post, linked above. Opposition to trans ideology is bridging ordinary partisan divides, and here’s another example. As they write about the lawyers who’ve joined, “Three are ACLU alums; four are gays who reject the forced teaming of sexual orientation with gender identity. We hold diverse political views but agree on one principle: gender identity does not belong in law.”
The large group of lawyers includes people like Kara Dansky, a longtime attorney who writes an influential gender-critical Substack page and publishes important books about the politics of transgender ideology, and Erin Friday, the president of the anti-child-transitioning parents’ group Our Duty.
Friday, a lawyer in the absurdly pro-trans cultural madhouse of California, has long experience outside the GCLS as an advocate and legal expert. Read deeper into the thread that starts in this post to see a discussion of her recent amicus briefs in a court battle over a supposedly transgender child:
This is the kind of lawyer the GCLS is built around, experienced in hard-fought transgender controversies. If you’re a parent, a business owner, or someone else in a professional or family setting who may get into a legal fight over transgender ideology, or a lawyer who might represent a client in a fight over transgender ideology, you should remember the name. You can find contact information on their website.
