By Michael Blanding
features
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winter 2025
A pioneer for racial and transgender rights, Skailer Qvistgaard, JD ’18, works as an attorney in the Holyoke office of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the public defender agency in Massachusetts. Former co-chair of the Committee on Transgender Inclusion of the Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association, Qvistgaard has conducted trainings on transgender competency for judges and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Public defense has a reputation for being challenging work. What has the experience been like for you?
The biggest challenges of public defense work have to do with the logistics—for example, the availability of experts or whether the court will make time for us to get something done for a client’s defense. The individual culture of a court can also make or break your experience.
The clients, on the other hand, are almost universally thankful for the support they receive and happy to have someone who cares. There can also be an emotional toll when you try so hard and do everything you can, but you still lose. My clients aren’t just another number to me—there’s not a single client who’s gone to jail that I’ve forgotten about.
Tell me about the trainings you’ve done on legal issues for trans people.
Recently I’ve done trainings for judges and for the U.S. Department of Labor, and over the next year I’m going to be conducting trainings at every CPCS office across the state on representing trans clients.
Transgender folks as a community are not a monolith, and it’s important not to make assumptions about people, and ask appropriate questions such as, “What can I do to support you?” On an interpersonal level, when you hear someone misgender a person you know, you can correct them, or when you hear people saying things that are hateful, you can make it clear it offends you as an ally.
You won an important racially based case recently. What kind of criminal issues do trans people face?
Trans folks are often involved in crimes having to do with poverty. They are much more likely to struggle finding stable housing and employment due to levels of discrimination, which can compound with other factors such as racism and sexism. They are also more likely to be involved in domestic violence and more likely to be charged than their cisgender partner, even when they are the victim.You won an important racially based case recently.
Can you tell me more about it?
I was one of the first people to have won a race-based motion to suppress in Massachusetts based on the Commonwealth v. Long standard, where I was able to prove to the court that a traffic stop was racially biased and that the unlawful items found in a vehicle needed to be suppressed, meaning ultimately the case will go away.
Commonwealth v. Long set a new standard for these kinds of motions that focused on the racial motivations of an individual stop, rather than having to prove they were treated differently from people in other stops. It was the first Long motion granted by a court other than the original decision. Litigating motions like these is difficult, as most courts haven’t seen them before, but attorneys need to stick their necks out there and litigate the discrimination we sometimes see coming from law enforcement against our clients who are people of color, as well as people who are trans and queer.
In what ways did Suffolk prepare you for your current job?
I spent a year in the Suffolk Defender’s Clinic with Chris Dearborn, and it gave me a lot of real-world experience and really inspired me to keep doing this. One of the things that stuck with me was the gravity of what we were doing. Even though we were still learning how to become attorneys, we really had people’s lives in our hands.
Photograph by Michael J. Clarke
