Anti-LGBT+ hate group tries to remove judge because he wouldn’t let them repeatedly misgender trans kids in court
Robert N. Chatigny, Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.
An anti-LGBT+ hate group is attempting to get a judge disqualified from hearing their case because he has refused to permit them to misgender trans people in the courtroom.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a hardline evangelical group which has filed countless lawsuits seeking to undermine and roll back LGBT+ rights, had launched action against the state of Connecticut in February over trans-inclusive rules for high school sports.
However, the case being heard before US district judge Robert N Chatigny has turned extremely ugly – after ADF’s lawyers insisted on repeatedly misgendering transgender children.
The judge had requested that the lawyers use correct terminology after they referred to trans students intervening the suit as “boys” and “males”, with Chatingy urging them to avoid “needlessly provocative” language and maintain “respectful, humane, intelligent, civil discourse”.
Hate group claims judge is biased because he asked them to use the correct gender for trans kids.
ADF responded by calling for the judge, who has served on the court for 26 years, to be disqualified over supposed “bias”.
The group claimed that the request not to repeatedly misgender kids has “destroyed the appearance of impartiality in this proceeding” and “would leave an impartial observer gravely concerned that the Court has prejudged the matter”.
In the complaint, the group appears to suggest that being a decent human being to transgender people in conversation “obscures and rejects the binary of reproductive biology”.
Stock image (Pexels)
ADF also resorted to the old tried-and-tested staple of claiming that literally everything they say is actually constitutionally-protected freedom of speech.
The group claimed: “The order deprives the plaintiffs of due process rights to present their case fully and fairly through zealous representation, as well as First Amendment rights.”
The group has called for the judge to be moved off of the case and to permit it “to be heard by a different tribunal”.
Alliance Defending Freedom has a long anti-LGBT+ record.
Alliance Defending Freedom previously lobbied to retain the criminalisation of homosexuality in Belize, while its have leaders linked homosexuality and paedophilia.
The group has also filed legal challenges across the US seeking to strike down laws banning gay cure therapy, and most notably represented anti-LGBT+ baker Jack Phillips, to advance the argument that religious freedom gives Christian business owners the right to discriminate against gay customers.
Despite its status as a hate group, ADF has cultivated closed ties with anti-transgender activists who self-identify as ‘radical feminists’.
