Censorship

Online
Essay
A Good Reason to Be Suspicious: The U.S. Legal History of Transgender Discrimination
Pelecanos
Pelecanos is an attorney at Lambda Legal. The authors would like to thank Katie Eyer, Marie-Amélie George, Camilla Taylor, Jenny Pizer, A.D. Lewis, Karen Loewy, Morgan Walker, Paton Moody, and the University of Chicago Law Review Online team.
Kat Reilley Harlow
Kat Reilley Harlow is a legal fellow at Lambda Legal.
Aubrey Owen Shiffner
Aubrey Owen Shiffner is a legal intern at Lambda Legal and a J.D. Candidate at Rutgers Law School.

In the Supreme Court’s recent United States v. Skrmetti (2025) decision, Justice Amy Coney Barrett raised the novel question: Does the United States have a long-standing history of de jure discrimination against transgender people, perpetrated by state actors through the force of law?
This Essay provides the beginnings of an answer to Justice Barrett’s inquiry, demonstrating that throughout the history and geography of the United States, government actors have used the law to discriminate against people who deviate from narrow, essentialist notions of sex and gender.

Censorship Constitutional Law Discrimination Gender Studies Health Law Human Rights
Online
Essay
Uproot or Upgrade? Revisiting Section 230 Immunity in the Digital Age
Michael Daly Hawkins
Michael Daly Hawkins is a Senior Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Western Legal History, a publication of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society (NJCHS).
Matthew J. Stanford
Matthew J. Stanford is an attorney and a senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law, where he received his J.D. in 2017.

We thank the University of Chicago Law Review Online editorial team for their careful and thoughtful edits. The views expressed in this article, as well as any mistakes, are the authors’ alone.

The internet has drastically altered our notion of the press.

Big Tech Censorship Facebook First Amendment Freedom of Speech Google Section 230 Technology Regulation

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