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Fighting for LGBTQ+ Rights: Hope, Courage, and the Road Ahead

The following remarks were delivered by Jennifer Levi at GLAD Law’s 2026 Summer Party event in Provincetown, MA.

It is incredible to look out at all of you this afternoon. In this setting. In Provincetown. A sea of faces – most of whom I know, some of whom I don’t yet, and all of whom I am so glad are here. 

Some of you may know this, and some of you may not, but after 28 years at GLAD Law, I am shifting from my role as Senior Director of Transgender and Queer Rights into a part-time Strategic Advisor role. And I want to tell you why – in what is honestly one of the hardest moments any of us can remember – I am standing here feeling not dread, not resignation, but something that actually feels like hope. 

Bear with me for a brief history lesson – I promise it will be brief. 

I arrived at GLAD Law in August of 1998 as the organization’s third attorney. Mary Bonauto, Civil Rights Director. Ben Klein, AIDS Law Project Director – who had just argued and won Bragdon v. Abbott at the Supreme Court, by the way. And me. A much younger, somewhat fitter, and considerably less gray version of the person standing before you today. 

Just months after Bragdon, and just months before Matthew Shepard was murdered – his killing, and the grief and fury that followed, answering any question about what the stakes were. 

Then the intake line rang. A transgender woman named Lucas Rosa in Springfield had been denied the chance to apply for a loan at Park West Bank. Not denied the loan. Denied the application. Because the loan officer said her ID pictures did not match her birth sex. 

GLAD Law took the case. That case became a foundation. That moment became a career. 

There have been so many important, pivotal cases over these 28 years – hard to know which ones even to single out. But two stand out. Rosa v. Park West Bank was the first case to establish that federal sex discrimination law protects transgender people – a chain of precedent running all the way to Bostock, the Supreme Court case recognizing that federal sex discrimination protections extend to LGBTQ+ people.  

And Nicole Maines’ case made the Maine Law Court the first state high court to rule for transgender students. A lot of people were nervous about pursuing transgender legal protections at all – much less around an elementary school student, in a case involving a bathroom. GLAD Law went there anyway. And it moved the movement. 

But what I am most proud of is not any single case. It’s the through line – the instinct to see where the law needs to go before the path is clear, and the confidence to move. That is what has defined GLAD Law across these 28 years. And I cannot talk about that instinct, that confidence, without saying Gary Buseck’s name – a mentor to me and to generations of GLAD Law lawyers and staff, whose fingerprints are on everything good we have ever done. 

None of this came without cost. A few years ago, I was among 39 civil rights lawyers accused of judge shopping – for having the audacity to challenge one of the first laws in the country banning transgender medical care, and doing it in Alabama. The irony of that accusation, facing now an administration that makes a habit of running straight to the Northern District of Texas to pursue investigations of organizations thousands of miles away, is not lost on me. I was fully exonerated. But this work is not for the weak. It never has been. And I am endlessly grateful for being one of the people doing it. 

Here is what I want you to understand about where GLAD Law is right now.

When I arrived, we were throwing things at the wall – gloriously, audaciously – and a lot stuck. But to be candid, then the work shifted gears. We were careful. We consolidated. We built – and at a different pace, with different tactics, we made marriage equality the law of the land. A seismic achievement, full stop. 

But this moment calls for something different. And GLAD Law has answered. 

That period of consolidation and measured movement is over. 

We are living through a moment when things can feel genuinely hopeless. When the Supreme Court can ignore the pain of transgender kids who just want to hang out on a playing field with their friends. When it can uphold state laws banning the only medical care known to allow transgender kids to thrive. When the federal government is relentlessly pursuing the private medical records of families and patients. 

And yet.

GLAD Law has blocked the enforcement of subpoenas seeking those records.

We got an injunction against the military’s exclusion of transgender servicemembers – people who have met every term of service and want nothing more than to serve their country. This week, I spoke with a member of the Air Force who has been so unfairly sidelined – who can set aside the broadside attack on him by Hegseth and Trump and say simply: “I just want to get back to work.”

We have kept nearly two dozen transgender women in women’s prisons from being transferred to men’s facilities where we know – and the Bureau of Prisons knows – they would be brutally attacked.

We filed against the military ban the day after it was announced. We challenged the gender ideology executive order out of the gate. We caught the administration trying to launder a halted patient records request through the Northern District of Texas and pretend it was something new. 

We see what they’re doing. And we are moving. 

These are times that demand courage. That demand us to be nimble and crafty. That demand the belief that we can make change — because we can, and we are. GLAD Law is fighting back. Because we have to. Because this community deserves it. And because we are making a difference. 

And we are doing it with extraordinary leadership. Josh Rovenger, our Legal Director, and Ricardo Martinez, our Executive Director – two of the most courageous, visionary people I have ever worked alongside, who lead with brilliance and grace and gumption. And behind them, a new generation of lawyers who are ready. Their own ambitions. Their own vision. Their own hunger. GLAD Law is in the best possible hands. 

I could not be more grateful to all of you – not just for showing up year after year at Summer Party, but for supporting and spurring on this work every single day. Through cases that felt impossible and victories that felt unimaginable. 

I know that every person here today carries the weight of this moment. The foundations of justice that GLAD Law has spent decades building are under assault. That is undeniable. 

And still, I have tremendous hope. I have to. You can’t be in this job for nearly 30 years and not believe that things can change.  

I have hope because you all keep showing up. Together, we keep imagining, keep believing that we can build the world we want to live in. That belief is not naive. It is the most powerful thing we have. And as long as we hold onto it – together – I have no doubt that we will. 

Thanks to all of you for being a part of this professional ride of a lifetime.