Pronouns matter, and the entire Supreme Court just proved it

The U.S. Supreme Court made history this week by using the proper pronouns for a transgender woman who fled Guatemala after being assaulted and persecuted on the basis of her gender identity and sexual orientation. She/her pronouns were used—and the woman’s deadname was not—in the decision

The court ruled Wednesday in unanimous favor of Estrella Santos-Zacaria, who is fighting deportation, giving her another chance to argue that immigration officials were wrong to reject her asylum claim.

The opinion of the court written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to sit on the high court, uses Santos-Zacaria’s preferred she/her pronouns throughout. It also uses her chosen name instead of her deadname (the name given at birth).

Jackson’s opinion was signed by the court’s two other liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, as well as four of the six conservative justices: Chief Justice John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Comey Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch.

The very brief concurring opinion contained zero pronouns, nor any mention of the plaintiff’s name (or deadname). It was signed by the court’s two most conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

But there’s more.