Attorney Mark Trammell serves as the CEO of the Center for American Liberty—founded by Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Trammell joined Liz Collin on her podcast and spoke about how civil rights and constitutional rights have been under attack. He explained how suing governors who abuse their power is a “favorite pastime” and how his organization has been pushing back and winning more than a few high-profile cases in court.
“Suing Gavin Newsom is our favorite pastime,” Trammell joked, as he explained how the Center for American Liberty has taken on all kinds of cases, including filing lawsuits against school districts to protect parental rights and taking on politicians to protect citizens’ rights to free speech.
Trammell said the organization began at the onset of the COVID pandemic: “We found ourselves in, I think, the most significant civil liberties crisis, certainly of my lifetime.”
“We all remember it, where the government was shutting down your business, your small business. Of course, the big box stores could stay open, but mom and pop had to shut down. We saw the government step in and shut down your house of worship. We saw them actually prohibit your ability to protest the very law that was shutting down your liberties,” he said.
Minnesota’s fight for civil liberties
Trammell and Collin also talked about the situation in Minnesota and the fight for civil liberties with the ongoing protests outside Cities Church in St. Paul, along with the carnival-like protesting that’s been going on outside ICE headquarters for months now.
Trammell explained that, “This is absolutely the product of, I would say, socialist-loving politicians, politicians who are not putting the well-being of its citizens first, but putting this ideological bent before people.”
“We’re seeing it play out day in and day out. Regarding the gathering, the disrupting of churches, I’m really encouraged to see that our founder, Harmeet Dhillon, has really led the charge at the DOJ to actually charge people who entered into a church, intimidated worshipers, and in doing so violated federal law, the FACE Act,” Trammell said.
He also pointed out how “The FACE Act doesn’t just protect … ingress and egress into an abortion clinic, but also houses of worship. We haven’t really seen it used in this way, but it certainly applies in this circumstance. I’m very encouraged to see that.”
“But again, this is a situation that’s been fostered by politicians who find a microphone and stir the pot and call on people to go out and to protest and at times do more than protest,” Trammell said.
“I obviously support the First Amendment protecting your right to peacefully protest. It doesn’t protect your right to damage public property. It doesn’t give you the right to intrude into a house of worship and disrupt Americans in their sincerely held religious beliefs and expression,” he added.
In talking about these and other events in Minnesota, Trammell said that “the government has to step in and we would expect that an attorney general would file lawsuits to protect its citizens and to uphold the rule of law.”
“In Minnesota, you have zero chance of that happening. Keith Ellison is as bad of an attorney general as you will find in the United States. This is a guy who I think, it wasn’t that long ago, was holding up a book very publicly supporting Antifa, socialism. This is not a good attorney general in Minnesota. And so that leaves everyday citizens with the responsibility to file lawsuits when they have been injured,” Trammell explained.
The Chloe Cole case
Trammell and Collin discussed the case of Chloe Cole, which is perhaps the most high-profile case the Center for American Liberty is working on at the moment.
Trammell explained how his organization has been representing Chloe “for over three years now.”
“Chloe was 13 when she was put on puberty blockers. I should say, these are off-label use of drugs, right? They’re giving these kids Lupron, which is a drug designed for prostate cancer patients. They’re giving it to kids as young as 12, 13 years old, sometimes younger, to stunt puberty, to block it from happening. Then they put her on off-label, cross-sex hormones as well,” Trammell explained.
“At 15, she had a double mastectomy. And really the crux of her lawsuit is that there’s no informed consent here,” he continued. “At 16, she realized she’d been lied to. She realized the injuries that she had suffered and decided she was going to detransition and decided to shortly thereafter to file a lawsuit.”
“For three years, we’ve fought the defendants in this case, Kaiser and the individual doctors who we’re suing. We’ve fought them over just the threshold question as to whether this case is going to trial or whether this case is going to arbitration,” Trammell said.
“There’s a reason that Kaiser wants this to go to arbitration. And that’s because it doesn’t want you reporting on it. It doesn’t want anyone else reporting on it,” he added.
Trammell also discussed how Chloe’s case fits into the bigger picture of civil liberties infringement: “She represents not just herself, but a lot of other similarly situated young women who’ve been lied to, who’ve been told that they can change their gender, who have been, you know, their parents have been told the same lie. You have a choice between a dead daughter and a live son.”
“So this is a monumentally important case. All of these kids deserve justice. They’ve been lied to for profit and it is unjust. It is horrific what’s happening in states across the country,” Trammell said.
Despite changes in law across the country, Trammell highlighted how Minnesota and other states provide a loophole.
While state residents may not be able to “get a transition in Florida or in Tennessee … you can go to Minnesota. You can get a transition for a child in Minnesota. You can go to California. In certain circumstances, taxpayers will pay for it if the child is young enough. So it’s a horrific, horrific situation. We have to protect kids,” Trammell said.
To fix the problem and eliminate such loopholes, Trammell said that fighting back may be a matter of money: “I think when you hit them in their wallets, that cash is the universal language. And if we’re ever going to have a permanent solution to this problem, it’s going to be largely a financial solution.”
Liz Collin
Liz Collin is a multi-Emmy-Award-winning investigative reporter, news anchor, and producer who cares about Minnesota. She is the producer of The Fall of Minneapolis and Minnesota v We the People documentary films, and author of the Amazon best-selling book, They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and The Death of George Floyd. Her work has prompted important state laws. Yet perhaps most of all, Liz has been giving a voice to the truth—and helping others tell their stories—for more than 20 years.
Dr. JC Chaix
Dr. JC Chaix is an editor, educator, and an expert in media studies. He wrote and directed the Alpha News documentary "The Fall of Minneapolis" and "Minnesota v We the People."
