“Heightened Scrutiny” (2025) follows ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio as he prepares for his December 4, 2024 argument before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in the United States vs. Skrimetti, which challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors on the basis of sex—cis children can get the same treatment for different reasons. The absorbing documentary also analyzes the pattern of how the news cycle influences lawmaking and courts’ decisions according to the legislators and judges who wrote them. Then the film proves that this legislation is only a step towards eliminating gender affirming care for trans adults to eradicate the autonomy of 1% of the population.
“Heightened Scrutiny” sounds legal and is a reference to one of three ways that judges scrutinize laws to determine if those laws are constitutional, but that is not the message being conveyed in that title. It is a clever use of a legal term to describe the intrusion and microscope that trans people and their loved ones currently endure. The film mostly presents as a human-interest story that focuses on Attorney Strangio in the office, at home, acting as an activist for his community to push back measures in New York City, publicizing the issue and socializing with his friends—the life of the next Ruth Ann Ginsberg (complete with clips from “On the Basis of Sex”) or Pauli Murray. It puts us in the shoes of a transman preparing for his big day in court. It shows him in various media appearances. Raven, his cat, vouches that Attorney Stranglio is awesome because she jumps up to receive her asthma medicine instead of fighting her human! Hillbilly Elegy is somewhere shaking his fist.
“Heightened Scrutiny” is not a tragic trans story despite the circumstances. Attorney Strangio and others acknowledge that if they lose, they will survive. Because of the hostile atmosphere, except for his cat, Attorney Strangio’s family does not appear on screen and are not heard. Still Stranglio’s rhetoric does not offer a ground level way of getting the average person to understand the issue and requires some familiarity with the discourse to comprehend. The most chilling scene is when everyone is passionately engaged in speaking before a school board, and the board appears completely indifferent to anything happening in that room as if they are just phoning it and already decided how to proceed. Also an informal star-studded dinner party descends from bonhomie to sober silence after watching the 2024 Vice President Debate.
While “Heightened Scrutiny” may be a preach to the choir film like “Zurawski v Texas” (2024) because most people who are not already sympathetic to the trans community may be the only ones interested in watching it, if it is possible to get average people to watch the documentary (hell, any documentary), it is more powerful as a breakdown of how the transphobic agenda has developed, which includes The New York Times. This should not be a surprise considering NYT’s gauzy profile stories of Presidon’t’s supporters’ culinary choices. Normally talking heads feel like a seasoning of validity or an unwanted intrusion in a dynamic story, but the reverse is true. The talking heads, who get emotional, are also trans people or allies, so it serves multiple purposes. It depicts trans people as existing and as experts in their fields, which is the most effective argument against transphobic propaganda. No one would look at these people and consider them to be victims of manipulation and brainwashing. God forbid, but this film may serve the same function as “There Was, There Was Not” (2024), a memorial to a time when trans people could live the lives that they wanted. Remember, this film was shot in 2024 before Presidon’t started his second term and the attempt to commit trans genocide kicked into full throttle.
The talking heads are Julie Hollar, Senior Analyst and managing editor Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR); Ari Drennen, the LGBTQ director for Media Matters for America; Gina Chua, executive director of Semafor, a global news company, and board member of the Trans Journalists Association; Kae Petrin, Data and Graphics Reporter of Civic News Company and co-founder of the Trans Journalists Association; Jude Ellison S. Doyle, journalist and author; Morgan D. Givens, audio journalist; Laverne Cox, iconic trans actor; Sabrina Imbler, Staff Writer at Defector and 2022 New York Times Fellow; Evan Urquhart, journalist and founder of Assigned Media; journalist Erin Reed; journalist and author Lewis Raven Wallace; journalist and author Tre’vell Anderson. Their commentary was immediately informative, approachable and standard setting. They are listed here because “Heightened Scrutiny” does not spell it out for the audience, but these journalists are better alternatives to establishment media which has become complicit with empowering their eventual destruction.
Albert Cairo Knight Chair in Infographics & Data Visualization at the University of Miami offers his perspective as a father of a trans child. Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker staff writer and Dean of Columbia School of Journalism, tees up the pattern of how people use children as a means for targeting and harassing groups. Lydia Polgreen, a New York Times Opinion Columnist, brings the lesson home and shows how this general strategy is applicable to our current political landscape and links the rights of trans people’s rights to the general cis population’s self-interest: we need to protect and team up with trans people because we are facing the same enemy, and we are stronger together. If one group loses bodily autonomy, then all will.
Trans director Sam Feder shoots them in a restaurant, mostly in booths. It creates the vibe and inviting atmosphere that they are not lecturing, but having a coffee with you. The walls are a perfect blue. The booth upholstery is a browning yellow. It was also a nice touch for Feder to animate audio recording of the presentations using different monotone-colored backgrounds, the sound waves, date and place of recording and speaker with different colored fonts so the viewer immediately knows what they are listening if they cannot easily read the information on screen. Also in the restaurant setting, Feder is mostly consistent with offering the person’s name, position and workplace even if they appeared earlier. It is a complex subject so it is important to add these notes to not further confuse the audience and offer a certain amount of continuity without needing to show the entire interview in one large chunk so excerpts can be thematically arranged.
The human-interest profile is a superb representation antidote to media’s lack of representation of trans men, which often stops at Brandon Teena. The real story is the exposure of a media campaign pushing an agenda of trans genocide, which most people may sense but not understand and are vulnerable to fall for. “Heightened Scrutiny” needs to be required viewing for every journalist, especially in mainstream media, because no one should feel comfortable with being the twenty-first century Goebbels.
Legal side note: kids need to be decoupled from the standard of parental decision and given their own autonomy. It is ironic when the left uses that argument since the right uses it to keep their children ignorant. Parents are too comfortable treating their children like property and an extension of themselves instead of individuals who have the human right to choose their future.
