The day after the 2024 election, I stopped watching the news. Sure, I’ll still read articles from various outlets and follow along online, but after years spent tuning into journalists who’d become personalities and pundits only interested in getting their sound bite, I could no longer escape the feeling that these people rarely knew what they were talking about — or worse, were straight up lying.
In an age where information is weaponized and fact debatable to the point of meaninglessness, media has served as both an indispensable tool and a rallying cry for whichever side you choose to support, a fact that allows journalism to become more about pushing a specific message than actually seeking out the truth. This conflict is at the crux of Sam Feder‘s legal documentary “Heightened Scrutiny,” which captures ACLU attorney and transgender rights activist Chase Strangio as he prepares to argue in front of the Supreme Court in the case of the United States v. Skrmetti.
The Skrmetti case originated as a challenge to a Tennessee law prohibiting transgender minors from accessing certain forms of gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, but Strangio makes clear throughout the film: If this law is upheld by the Supreme Court, it will lead to a full-out attack on trans identity in America. Not just for children, but adults too who would have to face a legal system that effectively would be giving states the right to take away gender-affirming care based on information that is largely not grounded in fact. Where does this information come from? As “Heightened Scrutiny” takes care to lay out, a great deal of anti-trans bias is circulated through mainstream media, and not just from right-wing sources like Fox News, but in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and many more supposedly liberal publications.
Strangio’s preparations for the case are juxtaposed against audio of his oral arguments before the Supreme Court on December 4, 2024, and the questions posed by various justices at that time, as well as direct-to-camera asides from trans and cisgendered journalists and experts. From Jelani Cobb, writer and current dean of Columbia School of Journalism, to Gina Chua, executive editor of Semafor and board member of the Trans Journalist Association, “Heightened Scrutiny” calls on perspectives who are not only directly affected by the kind of propaganda mainstream media is spewing out, but who have spent their lives and careers collecting information to dispel these lies. Considering Skrmetti’s potential impact on trans youth, the documentary starts by confronting the question at the heart of this case: What about the children?
For ages, this question has been used as a dog-whistle against parents fearful of losing control over their children, but moreover, it’s been a tool of authoritarian regimes in factionalizing populations. In the lead up to 1967’s Loving v. Virginia case, which deemed laws that ban interracial marriage to be unconstitutional, many tried to pose the same question, as if to say children would be worse off having parents of differing races than they would be with parents who were the same color. Just as there was no factual basis for this assertion in 1967, “Heightened Scrutiny” so too argues that this claim holds no water in regards to the choices made by the parents of transgendered youth today. In fact, taking away the right of parents to raise children in a way that honors their growth and well-being spits in the face of all the American freedoms we claim to hold so dear and speaks to government as the kind of overly obstructive force so many conservative politicians may publicly work against, but privately support.
In watching Strangio’s everyday life, we get a sense for what it must feel like to be a transgender citizen in America today, not just in terms of the pressure he’s under to prove his worth, but in the constant battle to be viewed as a human being rather than some mistake in need of protection from people who aren’t even willing to engage with them. In one scene that involves the school board in Manhattan responsible for the education of Strangio’s child, board members faced with pleas from the community to support trans youth don’t even look at the speakers they’re supposed to be representing, instead choosing to ignore them and focus on their phones. It’s a blood-boiling image that points to society’s overall apathy towards minority groups, but one that fuels Strangio’s fight even further.
Bringing it back to how media creates an environment for society to feel threatened by the trans community, Strangio and other contributors also share their frustration over how the mainstream press are more likely to stoke a flame than defend those getting burned. Transgender lives are under threat everyday, not just in the sense of outright violence, but also as enemies of a legal system seemingly intent on eradicating their very being. This is not hyperbole, as Feder cuts in clips from CPAC conventions that feature politicians explicitly utilizing this type of language. Meanwhile, actual parents of trans children like Alberto Cairo, Knight Chair in Infographics & Data Visualization at the University of Miami, are shown breaking down in tears as he defends not only his child’s right to live and be seen as they want to be seen, but also his own responsibility to support them as he sees fit.
In Feder’s 2020 documentary “Disclosure” — a film that should be required viewing for all those working in entertainment — the filmmaker tracks the evolution of how trans life is represented on screen, from harmful portrayals in movies like “The Crying Game” to more rounded depictions in the FX series “Pose.” With “Heightened Scrutiny” — which also includes trans actress and activist Laverne Cox as an executive producer and on-screen contributor as she was with “Disclosure” — Feder forms another compelling argument against trans bias, albeit one that’s immediacy proves far more dire. Having only wrapped the film less than two months ago, releasing it in the interim between when Strangio delivered his arguments to the Supreme Court and when the justices will ultimately decide on the matter (likely June 2025) seems like a choice that could have only been made with the intent of changing perceptions and building a coalition that sways public opinion.
Outside of including jump-scare clips that feature the work of Armie Hammer and right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh and hard-to-swallow flashbacks to the all-too-recent 2024 election, “Heightened Scrutiny” succeeds in its mission of educating a public whose minds have been corrupted by the weaving of fictions presented as truth. Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the Democrat-appointed members of bench, references figures during Skrmetti from articles that have no basis in fact and which are easily disputed by Strangio, once again pointing to media as a permeating part of our culture that is in desperate need of readjustment. Towards the conclusion of the film, however, all of that anger and disappointment built up from being constantly presented as a danger gives way to renewed determination as Strangio is seen getting a tattoo of the poem “Prophecy” by civil rights activist and legal scholar Pauli Murray. The poem reads…
“I sing of a new American
Separate from all others,
Yet enlarged and diminished by all others.
I am the child of kings and serfs, freemen and slaves,
Having neither superiors nor inferiors,
Progeny of all colors, all cultures, all systems, all beliefs.
I have been enslaved, yet my spirit is unbound.
I have been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness.
I have been slain but live on in the river of history.
I seek no conquest, no wealth, no power, no revenge:
I seek only discovery
Of the illimitable heights and depths of my own being.”
For a long time, I sought hope in watching the news, believing that one day, something good would finally happen that would turn our modern terrors around and lead us towards a brighter future. What “Heightened Scrutiny” reminded me is that the hope is inside of us, and that only through coalition building and helping others who need it the most will it truly be fulfilled.
Grade: A-
“Heightened Scrutiny” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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