Supreme Court Ruling Puts Spotlight on Transgender Pronouns

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of a Guatemalan native seeking refuge in the United States on Thursday in a decision that also subtly recognizes the use of a transgender person's preferred pronouns.

The Supreme Court overruled a lower court's decision against a noncitizen on Thursday in an opinion issued by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Samuel Alito filed an opinion concurring with the judgment, which Justice Clarence Thomas joined.

The ruling makes it slightly easier for migrants to appeal a denial of protection from removal from the U.S. by finding that a noncitizen does not need to request certain forms for administrative review to meet the needs to satisfy the requirements for challenging a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling. The ruling comes amid the end of Title 42, but many people on Twitter are pointing out something subtle in the ruling: the use of the noncitizen's preferred pronouns.

Estrella Santos-Zacaria sought protection from removal from the U.S. after being apprehended for the second time in 2018. Santos-Zacaria was removed from the U.S. for the first time in 2008, when she fled Guatemala after facing physical harm and death threats for being a transgender woman attracted to men. Santos-Zacaria challenged her removal order based on the likelihood that she would be persecuted in Guatemala as evidenced by her prior experience.

In its ruling, an opinion written by Jackson, the Supreme Court immediately references Santos-Zacaria's preferred name and refers to her using her preferred pronouns throughout the opinion. The subtle language has ignited a debate on Twitter, with some people congratulatory of the Republican-dominated court for combatting far-right ideologies and respecting the transgender woman's preferences.

"A very smart friend, Professor Lisa Bressman at Vanderbilt Law, flagged two important things about this decision for me. First, SCOTUS refers to a transgender woman as 'she' throughout the opinion. And it's unanimous. All of the Justices signed on," former federal prosecutor Joyce Alene tweeted.

"In a major immigrants rights decision from SCOTUS today, the court ruled in favor of a trans female asylum seeker on a procedural question. They used her preferred name and correct pronouns," Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic, tweeted.

Others were critical of SCOTUS' inadvertently entering a woke war traversing the nation by using preferred pronouns in an opinion.

"This is not a good thing, though! The highest court in the land should not be using pronouns that are at odds with reality! I'm a whole lot more interested in the Supreme Court getting basic truths right than supposedly countering a narrative of right-wing dominance, actually," one person tweeted.

Newsweek reached out to several legal experts by email for comment.

Update, 05/12/2023, 10:40 a.m. ET: This story was updated with Estrella Santos-Zacaria's preferred name.