Experts Available for Key 2025 Supreme Court Rulings
The Supreme Court is deciding on a number of high-profile cases this June. These include: U.S. v. Skrmetti, which centers on whether the federal government can sue Tennessee over its ban on gender-affirming care for minors; Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, focused on "reverse discrimination" claims in employment law; and Mahmoud v. Taylor, which deals with parents' religious rights to opt their children out of public school readings on LGBTQ+ topics.
For reporters covering these cases and their broader implications, the following experts are available for commentary and analysis:
U.S. v. Skrmetti
TJ Billard is an expert on transgender issues, with research focusing on media, strategic communications, and the U.S. transgender rights movement. They are the founding executive director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, an organization dedicated to scholarship on the social, cultural, and political conditions of transgender life. Billard is the author of Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Coston specializes in criminology, gender and sexuality, and race and ethnicity. Their research examines how the intersections of race, class, and gender create differing experiences of marginalization and oppression for people who are LGBTQ+. Much of their work focuses on how policy change impacts LGBTQ+ people.
Kirkland is an interdisciplinary scholar of law and politics in the US with a focus on rights claiming, health, and discrimination. She studies how ordinary people mobilize law and rights claims to make political claims about what they deserve and what harms should be officially recognized. Kirkland’s third book is Health Care Civil Rights: How Discrimination Law Fails Patients.
Marhoefer is a historian of transgender people and politics in the 19th and 20th centuries, currently writing a book under contract with Penguin Random House on trans people and 1920s Berlin. He co-authored, with Jules-Gill Peterson and Kara Ingelhart, a historian's brief for the SCOTUS case on behalf of the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians (OAH).
Miller has published extensively on the nature and consequences of prejudice and discrimination against LGBTQ+ populations, with a focus on the aging, health, and healthcare experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals. She has also partnered with leading physicians in the United States to better train medical practitioners on how to provide more culturally competent care to transgender individuals.
Murib specializes in transgender politics, race, and sexuality in the U.S. Murib is the author of Terms of Exclusion (Oxford, 2023) and Hormones and the Body Politic, which explores how public discourse about hormones reveals ideas about race, gender, and class in U.S. politics. Murib’s work has appeared in Politics & Gender, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and The Washington Post, among others.
Purvis has taught and written about LGBTQ rights for 15 years. Her most recent research focuses on the constitutional rights of transgender children, both to access gender affirming care and using the First Amendment to protect transgender students. She also uses masculinities theories to explain ways that gender stereotypes are underscored by the law, from transgender military bans to police sexual violence committed against members of the public.
Siegel's scholarly work addresses race, class, and gender inequalities with a focus on 1) trans people’s experiences of family and parenting, and 2) their experiences in other social contexts (i.e., healthcare, employment, and the law).
Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services
Kirkland is an interdisciplinary scholar of law and politics in the US with a focus on rights claiming, health, and discrimination. She studies how ordinary people mobilize law and rights claims to make political claims about what they deserve and what harms should be officially recognized. Kirkland’s third book is Health Care Civil Rights: How Discrimination Law Fails Patients. She is also available to comment on U.S. v. Skrmetti.
Mahmoud v. Taylor
Gaddini's research focuses on religion, gender and politics in America. She is writing a book on the role of right-wing Christian women in American politics from 1970-present based on eight years of in-depth, on-the-ground research. Her expertise includes American politics broadly; gender, religion and politics; Christian Nationalism; and right-wing women globally.
MacGregor's research focuses on Catholic K-12 education, religious non-affiliation and religion and civic engagement.