Opposing the new “Public Charge” rules

September 11, 2019: GLAD has joined a friend-of-the-court (amicus) brief with Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, National Women’s Law Center and others in support of Plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunction.

The Trump Administration has modified the current standards for a “public charge” in immigration policy. Currently the “public charge” definition pertains to primary dependency on the government, narrowly focused on people primarily dependent on the government through cash assistance or institutionalization for long-term care. Broadening the definition to include immigrants who could potentially be dependent on government assistance in the future further targets specific groups of immigrating people. This change would have a chilling effect that disproportionately impacts people of color, particularly women of color.

Read the full brief here.

News

Home » National/Federal » Page 34

The LGBTQ community is at the U.S. Supreme Court again. This time it is about the basic principle of nondiscrimination at work—that you shouldn’t be denied a job, mistreated on the job, or lose a job simply because of who you are. Currently, sex discrimination protections in federal law cover many LGBTQ workers, but fewer than ½ of U.S. states have anti-discrimination laws that explicitly protect LGBTQ people. The possibility of the Supreme Court now inventing an exclusion of LGBTQ people from our federal workplace nondiscrimination law is of concern to us all and could have impacts reaching beyond the workplace into healthcare, housing, and education.

How did we get here? We got here because LGBTQ workers continue to be dismissed from their jobs, no matter their qualifications and performance, just because of who they are. No one is immune from job discrimination, and some people are even more vulnerable to it, including many people of color, immigrants, and those in lower-wage jobs. Discrimination takes a harsh toll on building financial stability for the worker and their family, and on the dignity of those who are judged unworthy because they are LGBTQ.

The three cases before the Court demonstrate the ongoing problem. In two of them, Zarda v. Altitude Express and Bostock v. Clayton County Georgia, employees were fired for being gay men. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the employee, Don Zarda who was fired after he came out to a skydiving client, but the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the employer, Clayton County and against Gerald Bostock, in the second. Bostock, a well-regarded child welfare services coordinator for the courts, ran into trouble when he joined a gay softball league, and was fired for “conduct unbecoming” a county employee. In the third case, Aimee Stephens v. Harris Funeral Home, a transgender woman was fired after she came out to her employer. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Stephens, the employee.

For years, the LGBTQ legal movement has used Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act to combat this discrimination, and argued that discrimination against LGBTQ people is discrimination “because of an individual’s sex.” In other words, we have argued and increasingly won the argument that we are covered by our national civil rights laws. (That federal law also prohibits discrimination because of an individual’s race, color, national origin or religion and other laws extend protections to persons with disabilities).

The Trump Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has weighed in against the employees and against a simple and robust reading of our civil rights laws. They support the employers in the cases before the Court, and argue that LGBTQ people should be excluded from Title VII’s protections because of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

GLAD, in conjunction with the ACLU (counsel in two of the three cases) and other LGBTQ groups, helped devise and implement the strategy for friend of the court briefs in these cases at the Supreme Court. We rely on the gold standards for interpreting laws: Title VII’s text and the Court’s longstanding interpretations of it show that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is “discrimination because of an individual’s sex.” There is no reason for the Supreme Court to rewrite the law and take LGBTQ people out of it.

Along with the briefs on behalf of the employees, four friend of the court briefs—two of law professors, one of former Supreme Court attorneys for the U.S. government, and one of Republicans and conservatives who served in Republican administrations—exactingly develop the arguments based on the literal words of the law.

Consider that discrimination against LGBTQ persons cannot conceptually be defined or understood without reference to sex, such that actions taken “because of” one’s LGBTQ status necessarily take account of sex. Zarda and Bostock were fired because of their sexual orientation, i.e., because they were men who dated men. And Aimee Stephens lost her job at a funeral home because her employer “categorized her as a man.” The reason for the discriminatory treatment in each case was the “sex” of the individual employee. Zarda and Bostock would not have been fired if they had been women who dated men, nor would Stephens if she had a female sex assigned at birth. The Supreme Court’s earliest Title VII case, Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corporation, established a simple test for discrimination— “treatment of a person that but for the person’s sex would be different.” And that applies to all three employees before the Court.

In addition, since the 1989 Price Waterhouse ruling on behalf of a woman denied partner at an accounting firm because she was “not feminine enough,” it has been the law that discrimination based on sex stereotyping is sex discrimination. As the Supreme Court said in that ruling, “[W]e are beyond the day when an employer could evaluate employees by assuming or insisting that they matched the stereotype associated with their group.” The Court’s confirmation that gender and social roles are encompassed by sex discrimination necessarily speaks to discrimination against LGBTQ people as well. For transgender people, not only is there a stereotype about how men and women should identify, appear and behave, there are also 1.55 million people assigned a particular sex at birth who do not identify, appear or behave consistent with that assigned sex. In Stephens, the funeral home director said, “a male should look like a man;” the lower court rightly rejected this as justification for firing Aimee Stephens. And in Zarda, the lower court directly addressed stereotypes about sexual orientation as sex discrimination, saying, “an employer who acts on the basis of a belief that a woman cannot be [attracted to other women] or that that she must not be, has acted on the basis of gender.” Even though these arguments (and others) are based on the very words of the law and controlling Supreme Court precedents, the employers and the Solicitor General of the United States say that “sex” means different treatment of men and women based on sex assigned assigned at birth, and that there is no possibility that “sex” could have been understood to refer to LGBTQ people in 1964. But as amici briefs of leading historians and linguists demonstrated, sex was a broad term in 1964, and in the workplace was understood to prohibit sex role expectations. Because LGBTQ people were associated with such gender nonconformity, the federal agency that enforced the law actually processed complaints by LGBTQ individuals in the early years after the law was passed.

But even if the employers and the DOJ were correct that “sex” in 1964 only meant the sex one is assigned at birth, that doesn’t help them win the case. Even under their telling, it remains true that Zarda and Bostock were fired because they were men who dated men and would not have been fired if they were women who dated men, and that Stephens was fired because the employer was focused on her sex assigned at birth.

All of this is to say that what judges or the general public may have expected the law to cover in 1964 is not important analytically, only what it means via text, interpretation by the Supreme Court, and revision by the Congress. As Justice Scalia wrote in a case acknowledging that men could bring sexual harassment claims against other men under Title VII (and sexual harassment was not thought of as covered by sex discrimination in 1964), our laws “often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils” and it is “our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed.”

With the filing of briefs from employers and their supporters, it is clear and not particularly surprising that the Court is receiving a heavy dose of fear mongering—arguments that turn on denying the simple realities that some people are LGBTQ and pose no threat to anyone because of who we are. Other briefs supporting the employers raise concerns that unless the Court excludes LGBTQ people from Title VII, religious organizations and individuals would have to comply with the nondiscrimination mandate, even though there are already limited exemptions. This is a transparent plea to the Court to deny the law’s coverage to LGBTQ people rather than simply apply the already existing and carefully crafted religious exemptions in Title VII previously adopted by Congress and applicable to all others protected by the law.

Here are snapshots of some of the 47 briefs filed in support of the employees:

Briefs Addressing the Text and Meaning of Title VII

Amici briefs from the National Women’s Law Center and from anti-discrimination scholars addressed the sex stereotyping arguments – that LGBTQ people are not behaving or acting as they should given their assigned sex at birth – as consistent with Supreme Court precedents and Congressional updates to Title VII.
GLAD and NCLR, together with the law firm Wilmer Hale, filed a brief on doctrine as well, citing bollixed up decisions across the country to show that there is no legally workable distinction between “sex” and discrimination for being LGBTQ.
Lambda Legal filed two briefs (here and here) addressing the analytical flaws in judicial dissents in cases LGBTQ employees have won. Add 2 links because they did separate briefs.
Governmental entities, including Members of Congress, and states spoke to their view that Title VII’s sex discrimination provision already includes LGBTQ people.
The Transgender Law Center and 44 other groups made the case for per se sex discrimination when transgender people are mistreated at work, and the prevalence of discharges after transition.
The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund took aim at the view of sex as rooted in anatomy and physiology, with a focus on reproductive organs, as advanced by Aimee Stephens’ former employer.

Briefs Addressing Impact

The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and 57 other civil rights groups spoke to why the law includes LGBTQ people and that excluding LGBTQ people from Title VII would most directly harm women of color.
The Modern Military Association of America and Transgender American Veterans Association related the impact of discrimination on the families of transgender service members.
Briefs of 206 businesses, and another by business organizations, including chambers of commerce, filed because of the employers’ interest in workforce diversity and because both employees and employers need consistency and certainty in application of our Nation’s nondiscrimination laws.
For Labor, the SEIU, Teamsters Brotherhood and Jobs With Justice supported the sex stereotyping theory as applicable in these cases, and noted how discrimination against women in traditionally male dominated professions is often expressed as based on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. The AFL-CIO noted how the application of sex discrimination to LGBTQ employees has helped arbitrators and employers to take more seriously anti-LGBTQ harassment in the workplace, including with respect to termination for just cause.

The case is headed to oral argument on October 8, 2019, with a decision likely to come from the Court at some point between January and June 2020.

Our non-discrimination laws exist to ensure greater fairness and equality for everyone. The Supreme Court ruling in this case could impact interpretations of sex discrimination across a range of areas beyond employment, including heath care, housing, and education. The employers in these cases are essentially asking the Supreme Court to take a giant step backwards by inventing an exclusion of LGBTQ people from our federal civil rights laws.

While we watch carefully for the outcome from the Court and prepare to respond, whatever it is, we can also all take action now by pressing the Senate and our state legislatures across the country to enact laws, like the federal Equality Act and our existing New England nondiscrimination laws that clearly and explicitly protect LGBTQ people in every area of life.

Mathena v. Malvo

Home » National/Federal » Page 34

GLAD Law has signed onto an amicus brief in support of Lee Boyd Malvo, whose successful habeas petition to be re-sentenced following the USSC decision in Miller v Alabama is being challenged by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia is essentially arguing that Malvo’s life without parole sentence–imposed after a capital jury declined to sentence him to death–was a discretionary rather than mandatory sentence and thus outside Miller’s mandate. Juvenile Law Center’s amicus brief will urge the Supreme Court to abide by its holdings in Miller and Montgomery that only youth found to be permanently incorrigible are eligible for life without parole sentences and that this determination has yet to be made regarding Malvo.

News

Home » National/Federal » Page 34

GLAD strongly opposes the proposed regulation that changes the interpretation of Section 1557 of the Affordable Healthcare Act that would eliminate existing critical protections for LGBT people, especially transgender people, and people living with HIV. Our nation has a long and shameful history of discrimination on the basis of an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including in healthcare. While lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have frequently been refused medical care based on the view that their sexual orientation is pathological or immoral, transgender people have been subjected to particularly pernicious discrimination across all sectors of the healthcare industry. For many years, healthcare providers and insurers refused to recognize gender dysphoria as a valid medical condition and improperly categorized medically necessary treatment, including hormone therapy and gender affirming surgeries, as cosmetic or experimental. This shocking lack of access to medical care resulted in profound debilitation and suffering.

You can read the public comment in full here.

Statement on the Violence in El Paso and Dayton

Home » National/Federal » Page 34

This weekend saw two more mass shootings in the U.S. – one in Dayton, OH and the other in El Paso, TX. While we have not yet learned the motivation behind the violence in Dayton, the El Paso suspect allegedly posted a xenophobic, anti-Hispanic manifesto in an online forum. This follows an all-too-familiar pattern of race-motivated violence on our communities, emboldened by toxic, anti-immigrant sentiments straight from the top of our government.

Violence against the Latinx community directly impacts our LGBTQ family – which includes immigrants, Latinx and people of color. We send our deepest condolences to the victims of Sunday’s shootings, and their loved ones in the US, in Mexico, and beyond.

The sadness we feel for our fellow Americans is compounded with the frustration that these shootings continue to hurt our communities with no reasoned legislative or policy response in sight. While it can feel hard to keep moving forward, we cannot afford to be complacent. Along with common sense gun safety reform, we must continue to call out racism and xenophobia in all its forms. The Trump presidency has fanned the flames of white supremacy – what once was quietly smoldering in our country is now loud and proud. But they are still few – and with our movements united, we are many.

Especially now, we must continue to strive towards a better and more compassionate country for all of us.

Roe v. US Dept of Defense

Home » National/Federal » Page 34

Roe v. US Dept of Defense is a federal lawsuit brought by Lambda Legal and Modern Military Association of America challenging the Pentagon’s discriminatory policies, which prevent service members living with HIV from deploying to most locations outside the United States.

GLAD served as counsel along with Kevin J. Minnick and Adam K. Lloyd on a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by AIDS United, The American Public Health Association, Duke Law Health Justice Clinic, Southern AIDS Coalition, The National Alliance of State & Territorial AIDS Directors, and NMAC, that details the persistence of HIV-related stigma and how the military’s policy is unscientific, unjust and undermines both military strength and public health.

From the introduction:

“HIV-related stigma and discrimination are fueled by deeply ingrained prejudice against the groups disproportionately affected by the epidemic, including gay men, people who inject drugs, and people of color, as well as widespread ignorance about the nature and risk of HIV transmission.”

“[M]edical advances have transformed HIV into a chronic, controlled health condition that no longer leads to debilitation. HIV-related stigma persists nonetheless.”

“The amici submit this brief to bring the Court’s attention to the history and manifestations of HIV-related stigma and the stigmatizing impact of the military’s HIV policies, which are not limited to the lives and careers of qualified and patriotic servicemembers. The military’s HIV policies—including the irrational “deployability” argument advanced here—reflect and perpetuate stigma based on outdated perceptions of prognosis and transmission risks.”

“The amici urge this Court to affirm the district court’s preliminary injunction to ensure fair treatment and to prevent enforcement of an unscientific policy that undermines public health.”

Blog

Home » National/Federal » Page 34

With the constant stream of hostile rhetoric coming from the President’s personal twitter account and press statements, it can be hard to know what to respond to and what not to grant the dignity of our attention.

But when the President of the United States uses racist comments to attack individual Americans, we have to speak out. Trump’s comments that four U.S. Congresswomen, all women of color, should “go back where they came from” draws on racist tropes that have been used to target communities of color throughout our history.

That includes my own family’s experience. My parents came to this country in the early 70s, speaking “broken” English with thick accents. I grew up watching them treated as second class, including being refused service or ignored in public because the other person couldn’t understand what my parents were saying. Like almost all Asian-Americans I know, I grew up being asked, and am still asked regularly, “Where are you from?” I still answer “Minnesota,” my birth state, even though I know that’s not the answer they are looking for. The idea of who is truly American, and who is from America, continues to have deep roots in racism and white supremacy.

That is why we still must call out the President’s language as racist and unacceptable, every single time. We cannot let it represent who we are as a country, but in order to do that, we must also change who we have been as a country, and our ideas about who is truly American.

We also cannot turn away from the fact that the attitudes behind that language don’t start or end with a tweet. While Trump doubles down on the insinuation that only certain people can truly be American, his administration’s immigration policies are causing daily harm to living, breathing people – children being pulled away from parents and individuals being caged in deplorable conditions at our border; threatened raids intended to terrify communities of color into invisibility; and cutting off pathways to asylum to vulnerable populations, in violation of U.S. and international law.

Immigrant rights are LGBTQ rights, and elevating racism and white supremacy damages us all. There are attacks on all of our communities coming from this administration, and our communities contain all of us. As we fight our own critical battles on multiple fronts, let us lift up one another and remember that it is inclusion, not exclusion, that makes us strong. One justice movement, embracing our differences, is how we will fight and how we will win.

Equality Organizations Urge the Supreme Court Not to Invent an Exclusion of LGBTQ Workers from Title VII’s Protections Against Sex Discrimination

Home » National/Federal » Page 34

In a friend-of-the-court brief, GLAD, NCLR and other LGBTQ equality organizations make the case that rolling back the understanding that discrimination against LGBTQ workers is discrimination “because of sex” would create an unworkable rule for courts, employers, and employees alike:

Creating an exclusion where none exists in the statute is not a proper way to interpret Title VII—and it is one this Court has already repudiated in bringing consistency to Title VII’s application.

Brief of amici curiae GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, National Center for Lesbian Rights, Et Al

(Washington D.C., July 3, 2019) –GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), in partnership with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, have filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting employees in three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the application of Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers.

Filed on behalf of multiple LGBTQ equality organizations, the brief highlights the common sense understanding that LGBTQ status discrimination is discrimination because of sex, and details how courts have struggled in the past when forced to seek distinctions between evidence of discrimination relating to sexual orientation and evidence relating to sex. The only logical and workable outcome, the brief argues, is for the Court to affirm that:

Title VII prohibits all sex-based discrimination, including discrimination based on a person’s attraction to, or romantic interest in, people of the same sex, or an employer’s expectations about how men and women should look and behave,”

and that to do otherwise would:

“subject factually similar claims to arbitrarily inconsistent results and… exclude lesbian, gay and bisexual plaintiffs from protection based on facts that would be actionable… if brought by heterosexual plaintiffs.”

“There is simply no logical way to understand discrimination against a gay, lesbian or bisexual employee that does not relate to that person’s sex,” said Mary L. Bonauto, GLAD Civil Rights Project Director. “A straightforward reading of Title VII, along with existing Supreme Court precedent affirming prohibitions against sex stereotyping and same-sex harassment in the workplace point in only one direction – that lesbian, gay, and bisexual workers are protected under Title VII.”

In the case of transgender employees, for two decades courts have with near unanimity recognized the impossibility of understanding discrimination against transgender individuals as distinct from discrimination based on sex, and the brief urges the court not to discard the straightforward logic of those past rulings by attempting to draw an arbitrary line now that would only create confusion where it doesn’t exist:

The value of avoiding such arbitrary line-drawing is readily apparent from the Title VII claims brought by transgender plaintiffs, which, as the lower courts have generally appreciated, cannot be coherently disentangled from discrimination because of sex.

“The right to earn a living to support yourself and your family is essential, and no one should fear being fired because of who they are,” said Christopher F. Stoll, NCLR Senior Staff Attorney. “Courts and federal agencies have made clear for decades that discrimination against transgender employees is unlawful. To roll that back would not only upend the consensus understanding of Title VII, it would leave an already vulnerable population at risk for greater discrimination.”

The brief was submitted in three cases the Supreme Court will consider together on October 8, 2019: Altitude Express v. Zarda, Clayton County GA v. Bostock, and Harris Funeral Homes v. Stephens.

In addition to GLAD and NCLR, organizations represented on the brief include Advocates for Youth, the Disciples LGBTQ+ Alliance, Equality Arizona, Equality California, Equality Federation, Equality North Carolina, Equality Ohio, Equality Utah, FORGE, Inc., Freedom for All Americans, Mazzoni Center, Movement Advancement Project, National Equality Action Team, the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, Inc., One Colorado, Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, and Silver State Equality.

All amicus briefs filed in support of the employees will be available here.

Blog

Home » National/Federal » Page 34

At the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, on the site where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, stands a 13×26 foot sculpture, “Movement to Overcome.” Michael Pavlovsky’s work depicts a steep rock wall, with hundreds of human bodies scaling its sides. Some have their arms around the shoulder of another to keep them from falling, some are reaching for the next hold, and some are pointing the way forward. Almost every person is supporting someone else on their shoulders.

For me, there is no better representation of what movements look like.

That monument comes to mind as I reflect on the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Like the figures in Pavlovsky’s sculpture, LGBTQ people today stand on the shoulders of those who fought back with bricks and heels on Christopher Street.

Looking around GLAD today, I see Stonewall’s legacy reflected in the gains for LGBTQ rights we and others have won. I see it fiercely resonating in the vision and actions of the people continuing the fight.

For many, Stonewall is embodied by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, who with fellow freedom fighters – many who were trans women of color, drag queens, and others rejected by the rest of the community – refused to apologize for living their lives out and proud. GLAD’s Public Information Manager, J.D. Melendez, knew Sylvia when she supported a group of queer kids fighting for some space of their own in New York just before she died. He says of Sylvia and Marsha: “They not only showed us who we could be, but also, who we should be.”

Like the hundreds of figures in “Movement to Overcome,” we will never know the names of the vast majority of those on whose shoulders we stand. Pavlovsky designed his sculpture to represent, in his words, “the anonymous individuals that we know nothing about now that lived the civil rights struggle and participated in it.”

For five nights in June 1969, fed up with being mistreated, hundreds came to Christopher Street to fight and take care of each other. Those revolutionaries stood on the shoulders of pioneers who came before them. Across the nation, people inspired by Stonewall organized in their communities. That legacy grew into our modern LGBTQ movement.

Among many striving to carry on that legacy, I am grateful to be guided by the wisdom of those whose shoulders I stand on. When GLAD’s board president Joyce Kauffman came out in 1975, Stonewall was fresh. In her words: “It was scary to be out. It was brave to go into the streets and announce you were gay. To even say lesbian was revolutionary. It was a radical existence.” In that revolutionary spirit, Joyce became an attorney dedicated to helping LGBTQ people imagine, create and protect families of our own.

Like Pavlovsky’s figures pointing the way up, Stonewall is a symbol of hope in the U.S. and across the globe. GLAD’s Community Engagement Manager Qwin Mbabazi is an asylee and organizer from Uganda, “For many African LGBTQ movements,” Qwin says, “Stonewall is the epitome of HOPE. It’s like that small glimpse of light when all is going dark…[you] know that they won the great fight, and we can too.

We may be worlds apart from the time of Stonewall – and the incredible hope and resilience especially of LGBTQ youth won’t let the clock be turned back. Yet, too many Stonewall revolutionaries never saw the progress they propelled. And too many of the challenges we faced in 1969 remain. Police violence, youth homelessness, institutionalized discrimination still impact the most vulnerable among us.

I am reminded of Dr. King’s declaration of the Civil Right Movement’s moral imperative to address homelessness, joblessness, and poverty in the Black community. Our struggles to end racial injustice and to achieve LGBTQ equality are intertwined; our struggle doesn’t end until everyone in our community is free. Like the figures on that great rock wall, we must climb until we achieve true justice.

This Pride season, 50 years since Stonewall, should be one of both celebration and protest. As Sylvia said to J.D. just a week before she passed, “Keep fighting, my babies.”

Blog

Home » National/Federal » Page 34

Today, I am an out and proud lesbian, and I am prouder still to be the President of the GLAD Board. At the time of the Stonewall Riots 50 years ago, however, I had not yet come out. I was working alongside many others in the anti-racism and anti-war movements – but honestly, I was unaware of my own sexual orientation and I probably wouldn’t have believed you had you told me about my future self.

Then, in 1975, I came out, met my first girlfriend, and joined what was then called the Gay Liberation Movement.

Marching at Pride in 1977. That’s me in front of the banner.

It was scary to be out and it was an act of incredible bravery to go into the streets and announce you were queer. Being LGBTQ was to live a radical existence on the fringes of society. And participating in Pride was a revolutionary act.

Back then there were no protections for LGBTQ people. In fact, in many places, being LGBTQ was still criminalized. Which is exactly why, in the decade after Stonewall, GLAD was founded: to fight for the rights of LGBTQ people and ensure a better future.

GLAD has been on the forefront of the movement for LGBTQ rights ever since.

1970s and 1980s: Our first lawsuit was a response to a sting operation against gay men at the Boston Public Library. We challenged state sodomy laws around the country, sued to allow gay and lesbian couples to be foster parents, secured one of the first honorable discharges for a US servicemember targeted for being gay, and won the right of high school students everywhere to take a date of any gender to prom.
1990s: We won a lawsuit on behalf of members of Queer Nation who had staged a ‘Kiss In’ and were thrown out of a Boston bar. We won a groundbreaking second parent adoption case for a same-sex couple, and a censorship battle over a photo exhibit about gay and lesbian families entitled “Love Makes a Family.” We went all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure that people living with HIV and AIDS would be protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
2000s: We won the right of a transgender girl to wear girls’ clothing in school, and led the fight for marriage equality with court victories in Massachusetts and Connecticut. We won compensation from the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund for a woman who lost her partner on American Airlines flight 11, and filed the first multi-plaintiff legal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
2010s: In just the past few years, we won the national Supreme Court case allowing same-sex couples to marry, and charged Walmart with a first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit challenging anti-gay discrimination. We successfully fought for a transgender woman to be rightfully transferred to a women’s prison from the men’s facility where she faced daily abuse – the first time that has happened as the result of a court order. And we are suing the Trump Administration for its discriminatory transgender military ban.

That’s just a small sampling of the fights we’ve taken on. And there is so much more to do.

We have spent 40 years transforming the law in order to transform LGBTQ lives. We’re not backing down now. And we need your help to keep moving forward.

It’s up to all of us to keep fighting. No matter what. No matter the opposition. 50 years after Stonewall, we must move forward with clear heads and open hearts.

That’s how GLAD has created a set of protections for LGBTQ people that was once unheard of. As the legal arm of a broad liberation movement, we’ve helped create the possibility for LGBTQ people to live the lives we deserve.

Along with the rest of the GLAD family, I am going to keep fighting. Keep resisting. Keep the flame of the LGBTQ revolution burning bright.

I hope you’ll join me.

In solidarity,

Joyce Kauffman
GLAD Board President