Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
Yesterday, Greg Abbott completed a favor three years in the making: appointing one of the only Democrats to vote for a gender-affirming care ban to a Texas judgeship. Shawn Thierry, who has since left the Democratic Party, stood for twelve minutes in support of Senate Bill 14 in 2023, the law that banned transition care for trans youth in Texas and strips the license of any doctor who provides it, making her one of the first Democrats in the country to take an anti-trans turn. That session she also broke with her party to back a sports and LGBTQ+ books ban. The votes drew a major backlash that forced her out of office: she lost her primary to a queer woman, Lauren Ashley Simmons, and drew a censure from her local Democratic Party. Now her decision to break ranks and vote to harm transgender people appears to have earned her a prestigious judicial seat in Harris County.
“Governor Greg Abbott appointed Shawn Nicole Thierry as Judge of the 515th Judicial District Court in Harris County, effective September 1, 2026, for a term set to expire December 31, 2028, or until her successor shall be duly elected and qualified,” reads the press release from Abbott’s office. The 515th District Court, under the law that created it, “shall give preference to civil cases,” meaning she will preside over civil lawsuits in the Houston area. “Thank you, Governor @GregAbbott_TX for the honor of this judicial appointment and the opportunity to serve the people of Texas once again. I look forward to serving on the bench with integrity, fairness, and respect for the rule of law,” Thierry wrote on Twitter in response to the appointment, adding a verse from Galatians, “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not,” and the words, “To God be the glory.”
Thierry first gained notoriety in 2023, in the early days of the nationwide anti-trans panic, as a wave of anti-trans bills moved toward passage in Texas. Her district, the 146th District of the Texas House, is not a swing district. It covers predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Houston that vote heavily Democratic; Thierry had beaten a Libertarian 87-13 in her last contested race. That is why her decision to stand up in favor of the anti-trans bills stunned nearly everyone. She then delivered a twelve-minute floor speech calling transgender girls “biological males,” and compared the medical care they receive to tattoos and tanning beds. She closed by casting the vote as a religious duty: “For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind, so it remains my legislative duty and my moral obligation to vote the conscience and core values of my constituency.” Immediately afterward, she began liking tweets from Gays Against Groomers, Moms for Liberty, and other anti-trans accounts, completing her turn.
The response to her anti-trans vote was swift. The Meyerland Area Democrats, in the heart of her district, voted to censure her, saying she had betrayed her voters. A movement to find a challenger began almost immediately. Thierry responded by calling gender-affirming care “Black genocide,” and her supporters put up yard signs across the district reading “Stop the Genocide of Black Children,” which she declined to denounce. Ultimately, Lauren Ashley Simmons, a queer Black union organizer, stepped forward to primary Thierry, and Simmons won in a 65-35 rout in the seat Thierry had held for eight years, the first of several anti-trans Democrats to lose a primary following an anti-trans vote.
Thierry did not accept defeat gracefully. Instead, she abandoned many of the principles she had professed. Three months after her loss, she joined Genspect as director of political strategy for its U.S. wing, an international anti-trans organization the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a hate group, which campaigns against transition care for anyone under 25 and which has partnered with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Days later, she switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, announcing her turn at a Moms for Liberty event in Washington, D.C… She also began reposting content from Libs of TikTok. She has since become something of a celebrity among anti-trans forces, who had been trying unsuccessfully, and remain largely unsuccessful, at peeling away the Democratic Party’s support for transgender people.
Thierry’s trajectory follows a path worn smooth by other anti-trans careerists: Riley Gaines, a swimmer who became famous for tying for fifth place with a trans woman; Graham Linehan, a sitcom writer whose comedy career collapsed as he devoted himself to denouncing trans people; Jesse Singal, a magazine writer who turned a single 2018 story scaremongering over trans kids into a career. Each discovered what Thierry discovered: that in the far-right movement, the only qualification required is a willingness to launder pseudoscience and moralize against transgender people, and the rewards are real. And now, Thierry becomes the latest to reap those rewards for personal gain and power over the constituents who already rejected her.
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
From Erin In The Morning via This RSS Feed.