Help 2 trans people fight a legal battle

SEEKING URGENT LEGAL HELP!!!

My partner and I (both trans, and my partner is a POC) were traveling home through Idaho around midnight and got pulled over by police as we tried to avoid a commuting truck that was kicking a ton of water into our windshield for "driving too close." During the ticket write up the cop claimed he smelled weed and proceeded to spend an hour throughly searching our car. It was 20 degrees out and raining -- he threw our stuff onto the ground during the search and we were removed from the vehicle and searched.

After the search we're facing 3 misdemeanor charges - one of which is for the alleged possession of a tiny grinder. The punishment for these misdemeanors will be something on the spectrum of a $1000 fine to a year in prison. Due to the current political climate we're terrified of prison time because in a federal prison it would mean mandated detransition, and living as queer people in prison is incredibly hard.

We need community support to fight our charges and get the minimum possible punishment. In order to avoid months of ongoing 10 hour trips back to the county this happened in and for more certainty of avoiding prison time we need to hire a lawyer instead of going with a public defender.

Break down of costs:

$193 - fines

$5000 - for a lawyer *needed by 4/7/25*

$1000 - fine after court

This is acutely difficult for us as a couple financially because only one of us is employed so the majority of our money goes into our rent even though we're in low income housing.

We would deeply appreciate any support / shares of our fundraiser! We don't want to provide more details about our case publicly on the advice of our lawyer but are happy to chat privately.

Any extra funds that we might end up with we will post about for transparency and donate to the Lavender Rights Project. Please donate here or venmo to @cedarrapids, anything helps. Thank you for your support!

UPDATE: Wow, we are both totally in shock with the overwhelming amount of support that we’ve gotten. Thanks to everyone that donated, we were able to completely pay for a lawyer! We cannot begin to express the level of gratitude that we both have, everyone that has donated to (and shared!) this fundraiser has made such a huge difference and we can’t thank you enough. Even though we have met our first goal, we are still fundraising for the expected court fines as well as the cost of living in the meantime, since we have emptied our entire savings during this process (we received roughly half of the lawyer’s cost through donations, the rest was our personal savings). Both of us have scheduled surgery dates coming up soon, and with only one income the time we will have to take off is going to make rent extremely difficult for the next 2 months. We know that it’s tough out there for everyone, and we couldn’t be more thankful to all of you for supporting us through this deeply stressful time. We are maintaining the original $6193 goal, and we will still be donating anything extra to the Lavender Rights Project. Thank you again to everyone who has contributed to the success of our first goal, we hope to reach the final goal soon! Please consider supporting our cause by donating or sharing this fundraiser, everything helps more than you can know!