By Gretchen Feil
In 2012, our late founder Robina Asti, 92 at the time, googled “LGBT rights” online when she faced discrimination from the Social Security Administration. Asti had been in the closet for 30 years, but promptly “marched” into the Lambda Legal offices in New York City to seek legal counsel in order to “come out to fight for herself, and for a larger community,” Dru Levasseur told us in a recent interview.
We met with Dru Levasseur to discuss his experiences as a renowned transgender activist and lawyer, and he recounted this unforgettable introduction to Robina. Despite being treated as “suspect” and being denied her rights to survivor benefits from the Social Security Administration when her husband Norwood Patton passed away, Levasseur said that Robina acted as a “powerful activist.” Asti was denied her survivor benefits on the basis that her and Patton’s marriage was invalid because the Social Security Administration claimed that she wasn’t legally a woman at the time of her marriage, even though Asti had “taken every step possible” to change her identity documents, and had lived in the world as a woman for decades before her marriage.
With the help of individuals like Dru Levasseur at Lambda Legal, Asti was able to make an appeal for her case, and won. On Valentine’s Day the following year, Asti’s survivor benefits finally appeared in her bank account. Asti said that “I felt like it was my husband’s Valentine’s Day gift to me.” Levassuer explained that this wasn’t just a victory for Robina, it was an “impact litigation. . .it was the kind of impact case where it affected every trans person who would be applying for survivor benefits with Social Security. They had to adjust their policy.”
In a over two decades as activist, Dru Levasseur has worked on countless other legal cases and transgender rights campaigns that have made important strides for for the transgender and greater LGBTQ+ community. We spoke with Levasseur about his experiences working with trans plaintiffs, and he said that it was “meaningful” both for him and his plaintiffs to be able to connect on the basis of their gender identities, especially considering the circumstances that many clients were forced to go through when going public with their cases.
Prior to going public with a case, Levasseur explains to plaintiffs that it is unlikely that they will ever be able to fully go back into the closet, that they could face extreme amounts of backlash due to a lack of understanding and blatant prejudice that members of the transgender community face. Despite this, Levasseur told us that he is also able to reassure individuals that he would do his best to keep them “safe and anonymous.” Moreover, as a trans attorney, being able to tell “another trans person: what you’re going to do is so important, it would be such a gift, to tell your story, to put yourself out there in court papers,” was extremely impactful. Levasseur continued “we have to keep the power where the pain is. . .We are the experts on our own lives, and I firmly believe that with any marginalized population,” those are “the people who need to be leading the work, and that’s not easy.” However, “I never had somebody say ‘well then I don’t want to do it.’ They always said yes.”
In addition to supporting plaintiffs throughout their court cases, Levasseur makes a point to mentor the next generation of activists. He told us “I’ve done public interest my whole career. That was what I aimed to do, and that’s what I’ve done, so I’m very passionate about mentoring the next generation of people. As I shared, my own path was very challenging, and I felt very alone, it was very difficult for me to find mentorship.”
For that reason, Levasseur vowed to always make himself available, “to always invest in other people, particularly trans people of color, who are not represented, particularly in the legal profession.” Levasseur’s work and values “have been around making that space [for mentorship], and then also moving out of the way, which I think not a lot of people talk about,” because, “at some point, you have to say that you’re taking up this space, and you have to move on.”
Currently, Levasseur works at the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association, where he is the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. There, he says, “I get to do coaching and mentorship for associates, attorneys, firms, people in workplaces, and law students. So that’s already embedded in part of the work that I’m doing.” Additionally, for the 2021 – 2022 school year, Levasseur will serve as the Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School, which is an important step for transgender representation at such an influential institution. There, he will meet with and mentor law students, hoping to inspire the next generation of legal professionals.
When asked who Dru looks to when he needs motivation, he said he seeks out “family members, partners, people who were there at critical moments when I felt like I had nobody else rooting for me and who really saw me. . .I think [something] shared by a lot of trans people is the need to feel seen. I think all human beings need to feel seen, but especially trans people, when you are aware of who you are, but the world isn’t seeing you that way yet, or maybe they never will. . .It’s so incredibly painful, because you feel invisible. . .So the people who have seen me, and reminded me when I forgot who I was in those moments, that’s who I think I lean on when I have those moments of ‘Can I do it?’”
Levasseur also told us that “one of the things I didn’t see coming with this career and path was that I was going to have to bury a lot of people, especially in the trans community. . .So I think about that, when you ask me ‘Who keeps me going?’ I try to bring [them into] the room, when I’m afraid to speak, or when I have to say something that’s not going to be popular with the cis people in the room. What gives me the courage is that I try to channel, almost like an army of all of the lost people. . .That gives me courage – they’re not here to say this, but. . .those are the people I still have to be fighting for.”
Looking towards the future, Levasseur told us that “my hope is that it gets easier for people to come out, and to accept themselves. . .My hope is that there’s going to be deeper community connections and opportunities.” Levasseur believes he shares similar fears with other trans people: “to be in the hands of a world that doesn’t understand you and thinks there’s something wrong with you.” For this reason, Levasseur explains that “it’s really important to feel safe in oneself, and to feel lovable, so that you are open to allowing people’s love in. I think that is something that’s really critical for people to believe: that they deserve love. I want to be a force for trans people particularly, where they feel like they are worthy and deserving of love in their life, and whether they are alone or not, they are going to be okay.”