A video of a trans lawyer resisting while being taken into custody for contempt of court went viral over the weekend. The attorney in question is Rob Hopkins, a biological woman identifying as a man, practising in the state of Oklahoma.
The incident itself is over a month old, having taken place on 5 February 2026, during a hearing in a child custody case in Ada, Oklahoma. Hopkins’s client did not show up to the hearing, as she had multiple outstanding warrants for her arrest, which initially caused the tensions in the courtroom.
Judge Laurie Jackson threatened to hold the attorney in contempt for repeatedly interrupting her, to which she immediately claimed that she was being treated harshly because she was transgender. However, the judge informed her that she was never even aware that she was trans.
Things escalated after an intense back-and-forth with the opposing counsel about whether or not Hopkins’s client would ever appear in court. After yelling at the other attorney, Judge Jackson instructed the bailiffs to take Hopkins into custody for direct contempt of court—which she did not take well.
She resisted arrest, resulting in a scuffle with the two deputies. During the incident, Hopkins repeatedly yelled out, ‘I can’t breathe’, a phrase heavily associated with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020, which sparked nationwide riots. However, in this case, the officers did not put a neck restraint on the trans lawyer for any significant time, and the suspect suffered no injury during the arrest.
Hopkins also instructed people to call 911, despite having officers on the scene already, and strangely called for female officers to take her into custody. The two bailiffs handling her were both male.
After being held in jail for contempt of court, Hopkins announced in a video statement on 11 February that she is shutting down her law firm, Hopkins Law and Associates. Based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, it operated for 13 years and focused on LGBTQ issues. In the same video, Hopkins also revealed that she is considering a discrimination lawsuit, which suggests that she is still under the impression that she was unfairly treated for being transgender.
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