Texas State Rep. Shawn Thierry during a campaign event alongside over 50 African American pastors at Sunnyside Park on Saturday, May 11, 2024, in Houston.
Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspap/Houston Chronicle via Getty Imag
After a whirlwind few years that saw her anger Democrats, switch parties, get appointed to a state prison board and join the American chapter of an international anti-transgender group, former Texas state representative Shawn Thierry has a new gig: Houston judge.
On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he had appointed Thierry as judge of the 515th Harris County Judicial District Court. Thierry’s appointment is effective Sept. 1, with her term expiring Dec. 31, 2028. The 515th District Court was one of five new courts created last legislative session to address a backlog of civil court cases.
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“I look forward to serving on the bench with integrity, fairness, and respect for the rule of law,” Thierry wrote in a statement on X.
Abbott’s office noted in a press release that Thierry currently serves on the Texas Juvenile Justice Board, which Abbott appointed her to in 2025. She is a graduate of Howard University and holds a JD from Thurgood Marshall School of Law and, the press release notes among her many distinctions, “a former volunteer with the Houston Food Bank.” But Abbott’s office did not mention some of Thierry’s more recent work.
Thierry was originally elected as a Democrat in 2017 to represent Texas House District 146, which includes Houston’s historically Black Sunnyside neighborhood, replacing outgoing Rep. Borris Miles, who now serves in the Texas Senate. Thierry mostly flew under the radar until the 2023 legislative session, when she broke ranks with her party to vote for several bills opposed by LGBTQ+ advocates and allies. Thierry was one of 12 Democrats to vote for a bill that would have taken books deemed sexually explicit out of Texas schools. She also voted to ban transgender athletes from competing on college teams that align with their gender identity.
But the biggest breaking point was when Thierry crossed the aisle to vote for a bill that banned gender affirming care for transgender minors. While Thierry was one of two Democrats to back the bill, she was by far the most vocal. Thierry released a lengthy statement the day she voted for the bill, saying she was driven by concerns about long-term outcomes for transgender youth taking puberty blockers and hormones. In a speech on the House floor, Thierry spoke through tears.
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“After listening to the debate today, I absolutely believe we should raise the age to 18,” Thierry said at the time.
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle after the vote, Thierry said that her vote didn’t have “anything to do with an LGBT issue” and that she believed that issues facing gay, lesbian and bisexual people had little to do with transgender people. As then-Chronicle reporter Taylor Goldenstein noted, Thierry had liked several posts on X from the group Gays Against Groomers, which opposes gender-affirming care for minors and Drag Queen story hour events.
“Many people will tell you who are LGB … they don’t believe the trans movement is their movement,” Thierry told the Houston Chronicle in 2023.
Thierry drew praise from both Texas Republicans and national anti-transgender activists, who at the time had focused heavily on bills restricting healthcare and sports participation for transgender youth. Thierry leaned heavily into this messaging while running for reelection in 2024. Campaign signs comparing gender affirming care to castration that read “Stop the Genocide of Black Children,” began popping up in her district. Thierry told the Chronicle she didn’t put the signs up, but she had used similar rhetoric, comparing transition care to Israel’s war on Gaza, which many scholars have called a genocide.
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“We’re talking about genocide in Gaza—which is real, the Israelis in Gaza—what about genocide right here?” Thierry said on a 2024 podcast. “And so I stood up, hand before God, and said, ‘No.'”
State Representative Shawn Thierry, district 146, is seen after a meeting with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with Democratic members of the Texas Legislature in Hart Building on Wednesday, July 14, 2021.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag
Houston organizer Lauren Ashley Simmons, a labor organizer who identifies as queer, challenged Thierry and eventually beat her in a primary runoff. During an endorsement meeting with the Houston Chronicle, Thierry called former colleagues who had endorsed Simmons “the gay ones.” Months later, Thierry announced she was joining the Republican Party because, in her words, her former party had “lost its way” and “champions policies that I cannot, in good conscience, support.”
Days before coming out as a Republican, Thierry joined the American wing of international anti-transgender group Genspect. Irish psychotherapist Stella O’Malley formed Genspect in 2021 as part of the broader “gender-critical” movement in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Genspect opposes both social transitioning and gender affirming care for minors and has lobbied for care bans in states around the country, including Texas, and around the world. Thierry is still listed as Genspect USA’s Director of Public Policy as of Tuesday.
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In 2025, Abbott appointed Thierry to the board of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department as the state legislature worked to house transgender inmates in prisons that match their sex at birth, not their gender identity. Currently, Thierry serves as the Executive Director of Policy at Texas Southern University.
In 2023, Thierry was featured in a Texas Monthly article about the worst lawmakers to work for in the Texas Legislature. Former Thierry staffers told Texas Monthly that she threw flower pots at them. When interviewed by Texas Monthly, Thierry alleged that the staffers were retaliating against her for her anti-LGBTQ+ votes because they were queer and began rattling off names of gay staffers in her office.
In April, Thierry posted in the replies to a far-right Texas pastor on X who posted about Transgender Day of Visibility.
“Celebrating the mutilation, sterilization and castratiion [sic] of vulnerable children in the name of transgender visibility should be a war crime,” Thierry wrote. “It’s the war against children and it’s beyond sick and evil.”
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