Mariah Lopez Is Suing New York, Over and Over, for Transgender Rights

Mariah Lopez has been suing New York City for transgender rights since she was a child.

In 1999, at age 13, she was the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit charging that gay and lesbian children in foster care were subject to routine violence and psychological abuse.

At 17, she won the right to wear skirts and dresses in an all-male group home. At 20, she sued to force the city to pay for her gender affirmation surgery; though she ultimately lost, the city soon began covering such operations.

Ms. Lopez’s most recently resolved case against the city resulted in a sweeping settlement for transgender New Yorkers who are homeless, and who have long complained of harassment, discrimination, and sexual and physical violence in city homeless shelters.

By the end of this year, the city must open at least four dedicated shelters, or units within shelters, for transgender people. It must also put in place a host of anti-discrimination measures, including mandating anti-discrimination training for workers and overhauling how it responds to abuse complaints.

Ms. Lopez, who dropped out of high school, wrote out filings in longhand, without a lawyer, while crashing on friends’ floors and turning tricks to survive.

“Let me just paint this picture,” Ms. Lopez, 37, said of the homeless shelter case, which included proceedings in both federal court and the State Supreme Court and ended last November. “With my little clicky pen, and a dog, and barely any sleep because I was stressed, and a phone barely working to look up the law, I filed a chicken-scratch petition and it got me in front of a Supreme Court judge.”

The settlement comes amid a sharp increase in young people identifying as transgender and a growing awareness of the hurdles transgender people face. National studies have found that transgender people are much more likely to be homeless or unstably housed.

Ronald E. Richter, who was a deputy commissioner of the city’s Administration for Children’s Services while Ms. Lopez was suing the agency, said that when she first came on the scene, “Our system had absolutely no understanding of young people who were struggling with being transgendered and no appreciation of what being born misgendered meant.”

He said Ms. Lopez had always understood “that making people uncomfortable was a critical part of moving the dial.”

“She made a difference for young people who came after her,” he added.

Ms. Lopez’s life and voluminous court docket — she has filed at least 14 lawsuits against governmental agencies — reads like a history of a group’s struggle for acceptance.

She has also been arrested more times than she can count, often for sex work or for violating the vaguely worded and now-repealed anti-loitering law sometimes referred to as “walking while trans.” Along the way, she has alienated a fair number of fellow activists.

“I will not work with her,” said Ceyenne Doroshow, the founder of GLITS — Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society. “I find her problematic, disrespectful and not becoming of a Black trans leader in the community.”

David France, a filmmaker whom Ms. Lopez…