Jaelyn Scott // JPS10000 // Wikimedia Commons
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Jaelynn Scott is paving the way for Black, transgender women and girls in Washington.
Scott secured the Democratic nomination for Washington’s 37th legislative district, located in Seattle, earlier this month. She faces Evon McCorkle, a college student running as an independent in the general election. But Scott is widely regarded as the projected winner of the race this November, which would make her the first openly trans Black woman to be elected to a state legislature in the country.
It’s a welcome reprieve from the current tenor of trans politics in the state. Conservative groups have poured millions of dollars and countless hours into anti-trans statewide ballot initiatives this year, including two in Washington; one to ban trans girls from most women’s sports teams in schools, and another that would forcibly out trans students.
“The engineers of Project 2025 have hand-picked millionaires and billionaires to move ballot measures that promote this Administration’s agenda in blue states,” Scott told the crowd at a No Kings rally last year. “We will not let authoritarians dictate how we legislate in this state.”
Despite some mainline Democratic handwringing, positioning trans rights as too much of a “fringe” issue, Scott enjoys a vast and diverse roster of endorsements from across the left: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the state branches of both the Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party, and the district and county Democrats to name a few.
Even more, Scott unabashedly told the Washington State Standard, she believes an “incrementalist approach” to equal rights is “one that is too moderate.”
“This urgency of this moment actually kind of demanded that I try at least to go in to be a voice for the community,” she said.
Scott grew up in a Black Christian tradition in Mississippi, and her religion remains important in her work. She received her Master of Divinity from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She was ordained as a Buddhist minister and practiced ministry with the Unitarian Universalist Church for years before entering politics.
She currently works as the executive director of the Lavender Rights Project, which supports the state’s Black trans community through “policy and legal advocacy, movement lawyering, community organizing, and wraparound supportive housing,” as per the LRP’s website.
These experiences have informed her goals as a candidate. “We have to take seriously the threat of the federal administration on our bodies,” Scott said in an interview with The Urbanist at the start of her campaign.
“They’re literally ripping families apart,” she said, “threatening trans folks, right, and threatening anyone who comes here seeking abortion services and gender-affirming care services.”
Scott follows Mo Turner, a Black and nonbinary lawmaker, who was elected to Oklahoma’s legislature in 2020—making them the first out, Black trans person to hold such a position. They left office in 2024 and did not seek re-election.
Michigan is also expected to elect Joanna Whaley, a progressive, to its state legislature this November. If she wins, she will be the first out trans woman ever elected in her state, joining Whaley join Rep. Emily Dievendorf, who is nonbinary, in the state’s legislature.
Like Scott, Whaley is a woman of faith; a seminary-trained hospital chaplain.
“As a Black trans woman, I’ve faced many of the same challenges others in QT2BIPOC and marginalized communities face—unstable housing, barriers to employment, addiction, and ideologically motivated violence and threats to our civil liberties,” Scott said on her campaign website.
“Guided by my faith and informed by my lived experiences, I have dedicated my life to building a community where all can live in freedom, dignity, and belonging.”
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