Panelists: Christy Hall (she/her) from Gender Justice, Jacki Trelawney (she/her) from Family Tree Clinic, Phil Duran (he/him) from Rainbow Health, and Dr. T. Anansi Wilson (they/them) from the Center for the Study of Black Life and the Law at Mitchell Hamline
Moderator: Nicole Schladt (she/her) from Nichols Kaster, PLLP
Moderator Nicole Schladt will facilitate a discussion with panelists Christy Hall, Jacki Trelawney, Phil Duran, and Dr. T. Anansi Wilson about triumphs and challenges related to trans healthcare across the country, particularly in Minnesota.
In this session, panel participants will contemplate questions such as:
- What are the biggest challenges that trans people face today in accessing healthcare? Can we fill these gaps using the law?
- What protections do trans people have with respect to healthcare in Minnesota?
- What victories have we won this year in the trans healthcare space?
- What opportunities are you excited about for expanding access?
- Why are state legislatures particularly interested in policing trans youth and their medical needs?
- How can advocates, healthcare providers, and employers broaden pathways for trans people to receive gender-affirming healthcare?
- Are there model states or policies for healthcare access that we should be looking to?
Participants will walk away with a better understanding of how to advocate for their trans clients in the healthcare arena, as well as more confidence in pushing for healthcare equity.
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Christy Hall (she/her)
Christy Hall is Senior Staff Attorney at Gender Justice, where she represents clients challenging gender discrimination. She practices in both state and federal court and has argued before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Christy litigates cases involving discrimination in employment, housing, health care and education. She is proud of her ground-breaking work on transgender rights in the Affordable Care Act and the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
]She has a particular interest in representing clients who have experienced trauma. Minnesota Lawyer honored both Jess Braverman and Christy Hall as 2021 Attorneys of the Year, alongside our co-counsel ACLU of Minnesota and Stinson LLC, for their transformative victory in N.H. v. Anoka-Hennepin School District. Christy has also been named a Power 30 employment lawyer by Minnesota Lawyer Magazine in 2021 and 2022—the only non-profit lawyer to do so. Christy graduated magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School and joined Gender Justice in 2011 as a Robina Public Interest Scholars Fellow. Prior to becoming an attorney, Christy worked as a computer programmer.
Jacki Trelawney (she/her)
Jacki Trelawny believes sex-positive sex education and health access resources will save the world. Focusing on racial justice and community organizing, Jacki is passionate about intersectional sexual health and sees it as a way to make not only individuals healthier and confident, but whole communities as well.
The work of Community Engagement supports and holds Family Tree accountable to its vision of eliminating health disparities. She believes in people; the community knows what they need.
Jacki holds a Bachelors Degree in Africana and African American Studies from the University of Minnesota.
When Jacki is not at work she is off being a superhero or hanging at the dog park without a dog.
Phil Duran (he/him)
Phil Duran is the Senior Advocate for Aging and Gender Care Access at Rainbow Health. He is a 2000 graduate of the University of Minnesota law school, past co-chair the MLBA, and was the first out president of the Minnesota State Bar Association. In January, he offered a J-term course at Mitchell Hamline on LGBTQ Health Law, Policy, and Advocacy. Ensuring access to coverage for gender affirming care has been an important part of his work for over a decade, and in 2022, he was one of two lawyers cited for providing legal input on the WPATH Standards, version 8.
Dr. T. Anansi Wilson (they/them)
Dr. T. Anansi Wilson is an award-winning scholar of law, literary and cultural studies, a racial-justice strategist, and an author of creative nonfiction. Their legal research is situated in legal philosophy, critical theory, political economy, and constitutional law. Their writing and scholarship primarily focuses on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination crafted in response to, and resistance against, the social, political, and legal realities of domination in the West. They seek to understand the processes of retrenchment after moments of social progress, and how freedom dreams are nevertheless sustained. Wilson’s work analyzes the ever changing relationships between race, law, sexuality, power, and citizenship; both in the construction of law and policy and the maintenance of the way we live our lives. They are particularly concerned with Fourth, 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment questions. Their teaching interests include criminal law, criminal procedure, constitutional law, federal criminal civil rights, Fourth, 13th and 14th amendment law, Reconstruction, political and civil rights, critical race studies, LGBTQ issues, and all areas pertaining to race, law, and society.
T. Anansi Wilson employs Critical Race, Black Feminist, Performance and Women & Gender Studies and legal methodologies to examine how instances and (extra) legal precedents of anti-Black violence and racial-sexual terror continue to frame and impact notions of Black being and citizenship. Professor Wilson employs a multidisciplinary gaze to engage the creative, the legal, and the literary to uncover an emerging approach to encountering, understanding, and extrapolating anti-Blackness as a jurisprudential logic, underpinning, and precedent embedded in the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and decisions they inform.
Dr. Wilson was inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College in October 2022.
