← There Are No Girls on the Internet
There Are No Girls on the Internet
University of Oklahoma Trans Instructor's Attorney Still in the Fight After Appeal Denied
00:47:18
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- [00:00]
A
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-IHeart.
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B
Not a right wing grievance monger. Celebrity stage mom. You know what I mean? Like, like. Nah, nah.
- [00:30]
C
Never any.
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B
Wow. There are no girls on the Internet. It's a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There are no girls on the Internet. Late last year, a graduate student instructor at the University of Oklahoma gave a student a failing grade on an assignment. We talked about it here on the podcast. It was a routine academic decision, the kind of that happens across college campuses every single day. But this particular zero would spark a national firestorm. The instructor was Mel Kurth, a trans woman working as a teaching assistant while pursuing her graduate degree. The student was Samantha Fulnacki, who had turned in an essay for Mel's psychology class that by multiple accounts, did not answer the assignment's question. Instead, Bolecki wrote that the idea of multiple genders was demonic and severely harms American youth. So Mel gave the assignment A0. Another instructor agreed with that assessment. Case closed, right? Not quite, because within days, Folnicki had filed a complaint of religious discrimination, contacted Turning Point usa, the right wing organization that maintains a professor watch list of LGBTQ educators and educators of color, and begun a flashy media tour. Meanwhile, the university placed Mel on administrative leave and eventually removed her from her teaching duties. The grade was thrown out, and Samantha became exactly what some believe she set out to be, a right wing media celebrity. Now, this is a story about one teaching assistant in Oklahoma, but it's also about something much larger. A coordinated effort to push LGBTQ people, and particularly trans people, out of academia and public life entirely. Britney Stewart is Mel's attorney, and Brittany has been fighting these kinds of battles in Oklahoma for decades.
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C
My name is Brittany Stewart. I'm a civil rights attorney licensed in Oklahoma. I currently live in Minnesota, and I'm also co host of a basketball podcast for my favorite team, the Thunder. And my podcast is called the Thunder Gals.
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B
What brought you to this work? How did you get to be somebody in this space?
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C
Well, it kind of happened upon me. I am a woman who happens to be trans, so I. I wanted to initially start my career in Oklahoma as an attorney, keeping that kind of on the DL. So I was quasi stealth right out of the gate. And I didn't want my life to be defined by that. I just wanted to be a lawyer and live my life. But then as I was practicing law, you know, some issues came up where I was like, well, I need to be there for trans people who are getting discriminated against or who are having trouble getting their name changed through, you know, all the various legal aspects that can impact a person's life as they're trying to navigate something like a gender transition. And so I started deciding I needed to be more open about that.
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B
Britney saw that there was real value in sharing her story. So she did an interview on the local news, knowing that some of her religious clients might have concerns about her identity. But the reaction she got was not what she expected.
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C
So in 2009, I started being a little more open and I actually did an interview with my local Fox station in Oklahoma City at the time to kind of do a coming out party of sorts of. And the day after the first part ran, I got, you know, I had my cell phone on and I get a call coming in from this client who I knew to be a conservative Christian who was. I had met this client at their house and like, it was just all Jesus books and videos. So I was like, oh, no, here it comes. Like, I'm about to lose clients over this. And instead he was like, I saw your story on the news. It was so inspirational. I'm so glad to have you as my attorney. And so really said to me, like, oh, like I do need to be out here being more of a leader because I can bring people our way.
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B
What was that moment like for you when you expected this client to have one kind of reaction, but they had a completely different reaction?
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C
You know, it made me feel good that, that there's definitely more good in people out there than we sometimes give them credit for. And you know, I think a lot of us make assumptions about people based on their religious views or based on how they vote. And people are more complicated than that. And, you know, we're all some good and some bad. None of us is perfect. And. And so it really helped remind me and center me as a person to like not jump to those conclusions about people and to do my best to bring people along.
- [05:48]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's a great jumping off point to one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today, which is just the situation at University of Oklahoma. I guess I have to start by asking. I don't think I'm telling tales out of school to say that the moment that we're in right now feels like a hellscape. And I think if you're anybody of any kind of marginalized or, like, minoritized identity, you definitely feel that very much, particularly trans folks, queer folks right now. So I just want to start by asking, how are you? And how is Mel?
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C
You know, I'm okay. I'm. I also live in Minnesota these days.
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B
Britney practices law in Oklahoma, where she lived and worked for years. After Trump's first election, she and her husband moved to Minnesota seeking the safety of a state that was the first in the nation to protect trans people. Now, as we record this, that same state is under siege, occupied by thousands of ICE agents. So that safety that she was seeking feels more fragile than ever.
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C
I am dealing with. You know, I moved to Minnesota to be safe because it's a state that was the very first state to have any protections for trans people well before anyone else did. And my husband is from Minnesota. So after the first Trump election, we moved out of Oklahoma to Minnesota to get to a safer state. And so I'm glad I did that. But now our state is under attack merely because we're that kind of an accepting place. And so it's been hard. I'm luckily not in the Twin Cities. I live way up in the forest, hours from the cities, so our neck of the woods has been pretty quiet, and there has not been a lot of ice activity. But all of my friends in the cities are just going through it right now, and it's, it's just traumatizing on so many levels and, and requiring so much community work to get together and get through this. And I, I feel like a lot of the media even, is still, still missing exactly how horrifying it is for the people living in Minneapolis and St. Paul proper. And just what it's like to have 3,000 paramilitary thugs driving around your city run. They're running stop flights. I've seen Friends multiple times now have reached out to me saying, I almost got hit just going to get groceries, because these guys are just running stop signs and driving like we're in occupied territory. It's. It's really horrifying. Just the, the level that it's impacting everybody's daily lives there. And even though I'm not in the part of Minnesota dealing with that, you know, we're one Minnesota. So an attack on Minneapolis and St. Paul was an attack on all of us.
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B
You know, I, I live in D.C. so I had the feeling of just like what it feels like when your city is under siege by and being treated like you are, you know, a military enemy of some kind or like an enemy of the state. The thing that has made me as horrifying as it is, and you just put it very well, the one thing that has made me heartened is to see the way. Exactly what you were describing, how Minnesotans are standing up and like it's. I, I've, I've never. I, I wish we had more illustration of the way community is coming together to support community and neighbors are coming together to support neighbors, because I've never seen anything like it, even in, even in D.C. i think the reaction was different here than it is there. And it's something that has been in a time of rage and anger and disgust. People, y' all take that very seriously, I guess, is how I'll put it. Like, people in Minnesota really take community and community care seriously. And I wish that was the story that was being told because it's so true.
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C
Oh, absolutely. And it certainly helped that. You know, folks, I, for, for the last couple years, I worked at Gender justice, which is a non profit legal entity based in St. Paul. I worked from home, so I didn't have to be down there all the time. But being in that field and being in the nonprofit environment there in the Twin Cities, I saw up close and personal how all of our groups were already working together even before the November 24 election with laying groundwork and plans for what happens if this election doesn't go the way we want it to and we end up being a place that's under attack from this regime. And because they were already laying that groundwork and those organizers were already talking to each other, it made it easier to kind of get that ball rolling when the time came so people weren't scrambling looking for leaders. We had people trained and ready to start bringing people into the movement and getting them trained up to do the roles that needed to be taken over.
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B
Thank God for the organizers. Thank God for the people who are doing the work before it needs to be done building the, building that infrastructure. I feel like sometimes that's the best stuff that can get missed because maybe it's not super sexy. You know, let me be the person that starts the Google Doc or does the training before the thing happens, and thank God that that person did that work ahead of time.
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C
Absolutely. And what I'd say to folks in other cities around the country, please, really look at what Minnesota is doing, you know, Those, those are lessons you can learn to be ready for when they occupy the next city. Because I know there's ice activity in other cities, but it's not like it is in the cities right now. The twin cities, it's 3,000 plus agents just roaming the cities in a place that has a total of like 600 police officers for that same area. So we're talking a lot of manpower that is just around the city streets constantly. It's truly the kind of stuff that like my grandmother would tell me about from growing up in Occup, like Nazi occupied Holland. And so that's the level of occupation we're seeing in the Twin Cities.
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B
The attacks that Brittany is witnessing in Minnesota, the occupation, the intimidation efforts to push marginalized people out of public life are part of the same project playing out in Oklahoma where her client Mel is fighting for her right to take up space in academia. So let's go from the Twin Cities to Oklahoma. How is your client Mel doing with all of this? Mel has been. We did an episode about the whole situation when it first started, but Mel has really been in my thoughts, like as a person. How's Mel doing?
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C
Mel's doing good. She has a lot of really great support. Despite coming from a conservative Catholic family. Her family has been there for her through this. She was telling me just yesterday about the support she's seeing around Norman, Oklahoma. You know, just being out for brunch and, you know, people coming up to her table and thanking her for being herself and saying, let me buy, let me pay your tab for brunch today. Just random strangers she's never met or, you know, buying her brunch, you know, making sure to come say hi and give her a hug. So she's feeling a lot of love and support from a lot of people in Norman. And so I want to make sure those folks hear that, like there's a lot of good people out there trying to support her. And I also want to say there's a lot of headlines that have come out that have kind of made it seem like she's like basically been like banished from the university or something. And that's not quite true. You know, she was removed from her teaching assignment, but, you know, they, they haven't kicked her out of her program. She's still studying, she's still, her department has actually been very supportive there and trying to find ways to make sure she can still get the requirements she needs to get to, to get her postgraduate degree. And so there's been a lot of people within the university trying to look out for her. And it's just really that, you know, in my opinion, the university leadership itself was in a position of do we take the side of this one teaching assistant who, you know, isn't even a tenured professor, and, you know, potentially risk having the legislature make taking away money from our university their cause du jour this session, or do we just throw the one TA under the bus for this one teaching assignment so that we keep everything calm and keep the legislature from coming after us? And they chose the easy route because that's easier to, to do that than to stand up for what's right.
- [15:36]
B
Mel and Britney filed an appeal against the university's decision. And the day before Britney and I sat down to speak, she got some news.
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C
We did appeal the decision internally through the university's internal process. They then sent that appeal to an outside law firm to have them do so. So they have like a third party rule on the appeal to make it seem like we're not ruling on our own stuff here. And I can't share the actual documents. These are like private documents that we're not allowed to share out. But I can break some news here and tell you they. That the appeal went against us. And a really interesting thing of the appeal, it cites no law. Doesn't really, it doesn't read like what you would think of a legal opinion. And then it's not signed by any single attorney. And in my 20 years of legal practice, I have never seen a law firm send something out that says it's just signed by the firm. There's always like an attorney's name on behalf of the firm.
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B
Right.
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C
Instead it just says McAfee and Taft in the signature block with no. So no attorney even wanted to put their name to this. It was just like the, the firm said this. So I don't even know what attorney reviewed this, like what junior attorney. They maybe said, hey, write us something real quick. It's like a four page document. It's short. It's. It misses the point of things we were trying to bring up in the appeal. It's. It's really, really interesting. But, you know, we had to exhaust our administrative remedies internally before we can even think about any other litigation down the line. And, and so that's where we're at as of yesterday.
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B
I'm very disappointed to hear that. What do you. I mean, I'm no attorney. What explains how atypical that. That that decision is? Like, I've, I've never heard of that. That kind of thing either. What do you think explains that?
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C
I mean, just being somebody from Oklahoma and who's been an Oklahoma licensed attorney for two decades, it really seems just kind of like the old good old boy system of, you know, let's call up some friends at a big firm and have them write what we need to write to give us the COVID to, to stick with this decision. And, you know, it's been not transparent at all. The, the whole, the whole process has just been wildly lacking in transparency. And the old part of the reason I can even talk about this is the degree to which Samantha the student did such a media tour that she talked about so many of the facts of the case that she waived that, you know, all of that privacy related to this. So that's why I feel comfortable now talking a little more about what's going on in the case.
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B
Let's take a quick break.
- [19:06]
A
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- [19:42]
B
And we're back. By now you've probably heard of Samantha Folnacki. She's been on a media blitz. Television interviews, political events, conservative podcasts. She is working hard to turn a failing grade on what multiple instructors agreed was subpar work into right wing celebrity status. That is one of the things that it, I guess infuriated me early on, the way that Mel is bound by these, was bound by these confidentiality rules. Right. Meanwhile, the student is, had media appearances lined up the next day. How did that impact Mel's ability to defend herself publicly?
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C
It did a lot to keep her from being able to talk. I will give, you know, university officials credit. You know, one of the things they did really early on, as soon as Mel's name even got out, is, you know, officials did help her lock down her social media and lock down her private email and do things to get some of the, some of that info off of the Internet so that she would not get as much direct harassment. So I, I do want to give folks credit for, for trying to help her in that way, but it was really troubling to her that, you know, until she got me as an attorney, she couldn't even say anything. And so, you know, she didn't know how to say anything or what she could say. And so finally she, she hired me and we were able to start putting out at least a couple of public statements so that people knew, like, yeah, she's getting railroaded here. You know, we gotta, we gotta at least say something.
- [21:26]
B
Yeah. I'm happy that you mentioned that the university was helpful in helping her lock down her digital footprint. That's something that we talk about a lot on the show. When someone, particularly someone of a marginalized or like minoranized identity becomes the national target in this way, oftentimes institutions are just like, good luck, hope you can handle a million death threats from strangers, like thoughts and prayers. But the very least they can do is offer, like, if, especially if you are representing an institution, the very least they can do is offer some support in terms of digital security and best practices so that it's not just letting this person absorb all, like all of this hate and just hoping that they're able to shoulder that, because oftentimes they're not.
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C
Absolutely. So I guess I do, I do appreciate that and, and want to give credit where it's due on that.
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B
I'm also glad that you mentioned the fact that Mel doesn't have tenure. I got my start in education. I adjuncted a half a dozen places across the District of Columbia. I was a, I'm a PhD school dropout, so I was a TA, you know, graduate instructor and all of that. And I say that to say that when you're a grad student, you just don't have a lot of support all the time. And when I was a grad student, I would, I would make like $1200 a year or something. I didn't have a ton of money. I was really at capacity with like classes and teaching. It just is a lot and it's a lot to expect one person to shoulder when you have strangers, you know, weighing in on whether or not you should keep your job, whether or not that like, you've been good, like, and Mel is someone, it makes me sad that like, Mel is someone who I know is an award winning student, right? Like, has won awards for her ability to teach students. So this idea that you have a million strangers weighing in when you're in a dynamic where you're just a grad student, you don't have tenure, you don't have the protections that some other people might have, it just is a Very unfair situation, I guess, is what I'm saying.
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C
It is. Although I will say Mel did kind of watch the social media firestorm, you know, she couldn't help herself but to go see what people were saying. And it did hearten her and, like, fill her with pride that so many people saw through the story and were like, this is ridiculous. I read that paper. It's terrible. It deserved a zero. And she's like, she did feel vindicated that so many people were posting about it and could see it for what it was.
- [24:13]
B
The fact that Samantha's team released the paper, I, in my opinion, they released it to be like a gotcha, like, see, judge for yourself. And I don't think that they realized that the. Almost the entire Internet was going to be like, wow, what a bad paper, you know?
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C
Well, and then she goes on to give an interview where she admits, like, oh, I forgot I even had this assignment due, despite the fact it had been on the syllabus for months.
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B
Girl, that was clear.
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C
I'm. I'm on my way out to go see a play with my friend. And so I just was like, I'm. I'm just gonna hop on and throw this together. Like, the paper she's supposed to be responding to, that that article was supposed to, that she was supposed to have read, would take 30 minutes to just read, not even to respond to. And so part of the thing we brought up in the appeal was facts that were not brought up, you know, below. And the facts I brought up because I was able to review the file, I was like, nobody's even bringing up this interview that she gave after she filed this complaint. This is new evidence that cuts against her story that this was some really well thought out opinion piece and that in fact, you know, it seems that she's just complaining that she got a bad grade on something she didn't take the time to do. Right. And they tried to turn that in the appeal as to. We're trying to say that, you know, she, she just didn't do enough time, but it was still her opinion. And it, it was just, it's circular logic in the appeal decision, but didn't really take what we were saying at face value and tried to twist it into something else. I'm saying, no, she admitted she did not do the assignment. There's just no way you could have in that short of a time frame.
- [26:15]
B
When Mel gave Samantha that failing grade, she asked for a second opinion from the other graduate student instructor in the course. That instructor, a cisgender white Woman also reviewed Samantha's assignment and agreed that it deserved a zero for all the same reasons that Mel cited. But that instructor faced no complaints, no media firestorm, no removal from teaching. The only difference, well, she's not trans. You have a very specific piece of evidence. That interview that she gave that, I mean, in my opinion, pretty much gives the whole game away. Is there, is there any additional stuff like that that you think investigators should have considered or should have used to make their decision but didn't?
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C
Yeah, there was also evidence that after Mel gave her the zero, Mel actually went to another TA who was. There was two TAs for the class and they had split the class up like A through H or whatever, and, you know, you know, I through Z, you know, whatever work to give them equal students. And so Mel went to the other TA who had the other half of the class and said, hey, I've given this a zero. Can you give it a look too and tell me whether you agree or not that TA is a CIS white female? Said, I agree with your assessment. Like, that looks like a zero to me as well. But she was not brought up into any of this and you know, she's not being punished and, you know, she wasn't complained about. So it seems that this really is all about focusing on the trans person in the scenario and punishing them for giving the same grade that a CIS white person was going to give as well.
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B
I'm so glad that you made that point. I don't know if you can speak to this or not, but to me, just as somebody who's been in the classroom for many years, that's exactly. That's just exactly what's going on, in my opinion. I think that this is so clearly not about this one grade. I think it is so clearly about an attack on a trans person in academia, but also a political moment that's attempting to push queer voices and trans voices and those identities out of academia and out of institutional spaces. That is how I see it. That's my opinion. It is. Based on what you just said. It is hard for me to see this as anything else.
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C
I mean, it's kind of just a fact, because the fact that she even brought Turning Point USA into this and connected them in when she emailed her complaint over is is telling, because Turning Point USA literally has an entire website dedicated to outing queer people in academia and attacking them. It. They have. It's a. It's called the Professor Watch List, and they have. Literally everyone on there is basically either queer or a person of color that teaches things from a perspective that they don't believe we should be allowed to hear. It's all about control. It's about kicking out anyone who's not a white Christian nationalist and shoving them out of academia. And it's all part of this broader ethnic cleansing project of the far right that's being currently headed up by President Stephen Miller and, you know, the rest of this regime. And Turning Point USA is their private, like non profit out there doing the boots on the ground work that government can't do for them.
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B
Also, I, we talked about this after Charlie Kirk's death. Turning Point USA's Professor Watch List, brought to you by Charlie Kirk. And it's so funny to me that people are like, oh, we really loved free speech, girl. Where, you know, like, oh, that's a free speech. Of the professors that are on this watch list that are being threatened and silenced for what they have to say. Certainly not their free speech.
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C
No, not at all. It's, it's the free speech to them means I'm allowed to say hate speech. And anybody who criticizes me needs to be silenced.
- [30:47]
B
The people championing Samantha's cause and attacking Mel, well, most of them have no official or formal connection to the University of Oklahoma. There's folks like Ryan Walters, the former Oklahoma State Superintendent, currently under an ethics investigation for alleged conflicts of interest. And then there's Samantha's mother, an attorney whose client list includes January 6th rioters. These are the voices claiming to defend academic freedom. So I'm curious, and this might be an Oklahoma thing. You talked about how Folnicky immediately was ceasing Turning Points usa. I find that so weird and revealing, as you said. But then you have these people who, as far as I can tell, have, have no real current connection to education in Oklahoma. Like, they're not elected officials like Ryan Walters. What's the, what does it mean when someone loops in all of these people who have, they're not elected officials, they have no real business weighing in on what's happening at this university.
- [31:53]
C
I mean, to me it was, it gave away the game. It said, I, I'm not just doing this because, you know, I want to see justice done. In my case, it's, I want to bring attention to this because I want to become the next Riley Gaines right wing star and do the media tour. If you go to Samantha's Instagram, it is just covered in pictures of all her various media appearances. And you know, I, I don't think she has quite even the charisma of Riley. So I don't know that she's, you know, gonna actually make it, but it dirt definitely seems to me that that was part of the play here. Like I can step on this trans PA to get my face out there and start trying to do the right wing media grift. I don't know how much of that's, you know, the student herself or how much of it's her January 6th defending mom. You know, I, I, I don't know who's behind it, but I can tell you that in some of the raw footage of the interviews that she gave, at least with local stations in Oklahoma, News 9 posted the whole like 30 minute long interview that they ended up only taking clips of for their news program onto their YouTube channel. And it's clear to me from watching the entire interview that her mom is sitting there next to her because the, the interviewer occasionally looks to the person next to her to ask like, well, can I talk to her about this or that? And it's pretty clearly her mom sitting there. So I, I, to the degree I, I do kind of wonder, is mom leading this and pushing her to it? Is this her own thing? It's, it's really hard to tell.
- [33:43]
B
Not a right wing grievance monger, celebrity stage mom. You know what I mean? Like, like.
- [33:53]
C
Never any of those.
- [33:55]
B
Wow. More after a quick break.
- [34:05]
A
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll Hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting culture. 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-iheart.
- [34:41]
B
Let's get right back into it. I believe that Samantha wrote this paper on purpose with the intention of trying to use Mel to, to become this, this right wing celebrity type. Is, is, do you, what do you think about that? That's my take. I don't know if that's something you can weigh in on. I think this was done intentionally to like bait Mel into having a specific reaction so that Samantha could become this celebrity.
- [35:08]
C
That's one hypothesis. I am not deep enough into my investigation at this time to, you know, be able to say with certainty that I'm 100% believe it went this way or that way. There's a lot that, that still needs to be looked into. That certainly seems a possibility. It also seems a possibility that she got a zero for doing a crappy job and then realized, wait, isn't that professor a trans person? And is there a way I can flip this and turn this into something? It's, it's. I'm still trying to figure out when the plan got cooked up. Was it before the zero or after the zero? It was absolutely true that she wanted to use assignments in that class to push her viewpoint because that was not the only time, you know, she had leaned on religion for some things she was trying to say in that class. It was just the first time she got a zero because her work was so poor. She actually had like a 90 something percent average in the class even after the zero. So she was basically mad about an assignment that took her grade down a few points from an A to an A.
- [36:30]
B
If you had told me when I was in college that I could blow off an assignment, get a zero for it, but then have that grade thrown out, not, not weighed against me, and then also become a celebrity in the process, I, I mean I, I wasn't like a massive transphobe, so I probably wouldn't have done what Samantha did. But I guess what I'm saying is doesn't this set a precedent that perhaps we do not want on college campuses that anytime there is a grade complaint you can just say, well the professor who gave it to me, guess what, she's trans. And all of a sudden every national media figures are coming in to take your side.
- [37:08]
C
Absolutely. And that's why I took this case, is because I think it's important that we start pushing back in every legal way that we can. I have my own problems with where our current legal and judicial situation, but it still exists for now. And you know, even in ruby red Oklahoma, I won a one point something million dollar verdict for a trans professor at Southeastern in 2017. And, and let me tell you, that jury we had, it's for the Western District of Oklahoma Federal court. So this is the district of Oklahoma that covers like everything from Oklahoma City and west, like the entire western half of the state basically. And so that meant our jurors were not just from the city. We had jurors who were coming in over an hour drive each way from rural town outside of Oklahoma City. And of course I researched all of our jurors as soon as we had our jury selected. And I, you know, one of them was a pastor himself and another one was the wife of a pastor, and we got a unanimous jury verdict on behalf of our trans professor. So I know that when people actually get the facts in a courtroom setting and can actually divorce it from everything that's going on politically, Oklahomans fundamentally believe in people being treated fairly, regardless of who they are, and do not abide somebody being treated unfairly nearly because of who they are.
- [38:52]
B
Wow, that takes me back to what we opened this conversation with of. I. This is like my own biases. I would not have thought that folks coming in from rural Oklahoma to sit on this jury would have vote, would have, you know, gone that way. But it makes me happy to hear that even in places like Ruby red, Oklahoma, folks still believe that, like, people deserve justice. People deserve. You know, people have civil rights. Like, that's the whole point of our country, or ostensibly should be. That makes me feel good that that's. That. That you're. That you're pushing forward cases that demonstrate that.
- [39:26]
C
Yeah, and it was fun, too, because being the local council on it. Our trial team consisted of a trans man attorney, Ezra Young, who came in from New York, who was lead counsel. I was the Oklahoma on the ground local counsel. And then we brought in a third attorney who was a Latina lesbian woman from Texas. And our team came together, and we were like, we have to talk to this jury in a way that we just meet them where they are. And I. We were. And, you know, the national orgs were telling us, oh, you're gonna have to, you know, teach all these people about trans and this and that. And I was like, no, we don't. I was like, the last thing we want to do is spend hours of testimony on defining transgender. It doesn't matter what they think that means. All they need to know is that this woman, who happens to be trans, was treated differently because of it. And so my co counsel from Texas, she did our voir dire, which is the jury selection process. And instead of using jury selection as, you know, trying to pick just the perfect jurors, we kind of used it as a way to start already framing the case. And she did this really brilliantly. And we had the jurors in there, and she said, how many of you all were in, like, cub scouts, girl scouts, boy scouts? Just hands are going up. Almost the entire jury raises their hand. And she said, now, you know, when you had to get a merit badge, you know, said you had to do a B and C. And once you complete a B and C, you get the badge for doing what you needed to do to earn that Merit badge, Right? Heads are shaken. Well, yeah, of course. Don't you think it would be unfair if after you did A, B and C and you got that merit badge, somebody said to you, well, you can't have it because of who you are? They were all like, oh, that's horrible. Yeah. And so just. We didn't need to know. Everybody was perfectly right on any perfect issue. It was getting it into their heads. The framing of, like, you don't want to be treated unfairly and you don't want others to be treated unfairly.
- [41:52]
B
That is so brilliant. What a brilliant strategy. I do wonder. I don't even really know how to ask this. Does it ever feel like you have to walk this delicate walk of, you know, I agree, like, meeting people where they're at, speaking to them in their own language is very important and very persuasive. Does it ever feel burdensome that you. That that's something that you even need to be working out? Like. Like, how. How am I going to get in front of a jury and have this conversation in a way that's not going to automatically have them be, like, thinking XYZ about me being. Being very mindful of how you present both yourself and these issues and your clients? Does that make sense?
- [42:32]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's. It can be a little bit tiresome, but it's, you know, it's. Unfortunately, it's the work. And, you know, my job is ultimately harm reduction and doing the best I can to put my clients back into a situation that's, you know, somewhat equivalent to where they were before the bad thing happened to them. And, you know, you can't always do that. But we try and, you know, we. We have to make the arguments we have to make to try to bring people along. And, you know, if that means connecting with them on that, then that's what we do. And, you know, it's. It's. Actually, I was. I read Steve Inskeep's book about Abraham Lincoln a couple years back, and, you know, a big theme of that book was how, yeah, Lincoln himself wanted to abolish slavery. But he also knew, like, I'm not going to bring people along just by telling them slavery is immoral. So he had to find arguments of meeting people where they were like, oh, well, as long as there's slavery in the south, you know, they can keep getting away with not paying people good wages, and that's driving your wages down. And, like, it sucks that you have to meet people like that sometimes, but that's just historically where the work gets done and how we move things forward.
- [44:01]
B
Given your work and given where we are in this moment in our country, are you hopeful? Are you, Are you. Do you have optimism or hope for, for where we're headed and what's next?
- [44:14]
C
I do. In spite of everything, I am becoming more optimistic that we can get through this. That said, I do think it will get a lot worse before it gets better. But what we know of authoritarian regimes is that, you know, when they're lashing out in this kind of violence, it's because they know they're losing public popular opinion and they're trying to stifle dissent and get us to think, oh, well, if they're going to shoot me, I better stay inside. And what I love about Minnesotans is, you know, they see two of their neighbors get shot and killed, and instead of saying, well, that means I need to stay in, it meant 30,000 more people signed up to become observers. Right. So these folks here in this state believe in our democratic system. And it's not really a coincidence that this is also the state that typically has the highest voter turnout every election. In the small town where I live, the November 2024 turnout for this town of 2,000 people that I live in was 97% turnout. And so these are people who believe in participating, who believe we have to have a voice. And so when some outside force comes in and tells them you don't get to have a voice, that only makes them buck up harder and say, oh, yeah, oh yeah.
- [45:53]
B
Minnesotans are outside. And they're outside in like negative 10 degree weather.
- [45:59]
C
Yeah, we, we're hearty folks. We're. It doesn't matter. We got the right gear to wear. We know how to stay warm. I bet those, those southern boys and ice don't know how to stay warm in it.
- [46:13]
B
I love it. I love it. Is there anything that folks listening can do to support your work or support Mel in this moment?
- [46:23]
C
You know, I think just right now, just keep an eye on the story. You know, there were. There was a moment. I'm glad we brought this up. There were some people who I think some might have been, well, meaning, some might have been scammers. But in the initial days after this story was getting national attention, there were like four or five different GoFundMes that popped up. None of them were associated with either me or with Mel. So these were people who hadn't reached out to Mel, hadn't talked to any of us, and were saying they were raising money for her. So be. Be on the lookout. We are not trying to raise money on this. Mel's not trying to get a handout. I am working on a contingent fee basis. So there. She's not, you know, going in debt on attorney fees here. So we're okay. What Mel would like people to do who want to help is help in your local area. So whoever your local LGBT organizations are or, you know, whoever around your community is helping people like Mel, donate to those folks. Because we're all going to have to take care of our own backyards in this moment. And, you know, Mel just wants people to support their communities where they're at, so that we can all have each other's back.
- [47:54]
B
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi. You can reach us@helloangodi.com you can also find transcripts for today's episode@tangodi.com there are no girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer, and sound engineer Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [48:39]
A
This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.