The Supreme Court’s Wednesday night 5-4 order allowing Texas SB8 to stay in effect has essentially banned access to abortion care in the country’s second largest state. This is an exceptionally cruel law, which flagrantly violates the Constitution and long-standing federal precedent. It will hurt women, LGBTQ people, and families across Texas, and particularly poor people and people of color who do not have the ability to travel out of state. Safe, accessible reproductive healthcare – including abortion care – is a matter of racial, economic, and gender justice and we must all be in the fight to repeal or reverse this ban and stop the erosion of the constitutionally protected human right to reproductive choice.
The experiences of sexual harassment and abuse described by multiple women in New York Attorney General Leticia James’ report on her office’s investigation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo are deplorable. Cuomo’s departure today is an important step in accountability that will hopefully begin to bring some sense of justice to the women who courageously came forward.
As an LGBTQ organization, we are committed to lifting up and acting in solidarity with survivors and reporters of abuse, and challenging sexism and sex discrimination that fosters that abuse. Many members of the LGBTQ community have been and continue to be impacted by sexual harassment, sex-based discrimination, and sexual assault. These are our issues.
The unfolding of the story around the New York governor’s office has also shown once again that stopping sexual harassment and changing the structures and attitudes that enable it requires more than holding one individual accountable at a time. The Attorney General’s report highlighted not just the governor’s behavior but a culture and workplace environment that encouraged complicity and silence over transparency. That culture manifested in incredibly damaging ways inside the governor’s office, leading to deflection and efforts at retaliation against those bringing harassment claims rather than addressing the concerns brought forward and working toward justice and change.
The public attention on this case presents an opportunity not just for those who perpetuated that culture within the New York governor’s office to reckon with what happened, but for all of us to commit to doing better. The work to transform institutions that allow sexual harassment and discrimination to thrive unchecked is long and hard, without easy, short-term solutions.
It requires listening to, supporting, and centering the experiences of survivors. It requires robust laws and full and fair enforcement of those laws. It requires consistent and sufficient training within institutions and organizations, policies that establish clear paths for reporting, and oversight to ensure those paths are accessible and followed. It requires the will to remake institutional cultures that allow and encourage individuals with the power to ignore, cover-up, or perpetuate discriminatory and harassing behavior.
It also requires a commitment to broader culture change. We need to examine our own misogynistic attitudes and behaviors. We need to understand and address the countless ways those attitudes and behaviors are instilled and reinforced by our culture at large. We also need to create space for people to acknowledge their failures and complicity in broken systems so that they can become part of the solution.
Systemic and cultural change takes time, but we must not delay or ignore the urgency of the work before us. As an organization dedicated to gender equity, racial justice, and full LGBTQ equality, we are committed to working toward the day when all people, including all women, can live and work in a culture that fully respects their humanity.
Suggested resources for people experiencing sexual harassment or assault:
RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) sexual harassment resources, including information on how to intervene as a bystander.
National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs: A coalition of programs that document and advocate for victims of anti-LGBT and anti-HIV/AIDS violence/harassment, domestic violence, sexual assault, police misconduct, and other forms of victimization. The site has a list of local anti-violence programs and publications. Hotline: 212.714.1141
The Trevor Project: Help and suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth. Hotline: 866.488.7386
LGBT National Hotline: Call center that refers to over 15,000 resources across the country that support LGBTQ individuals. Hotline: 888.843.4564
FORGE (For Ourselves: Reworking Gender Expression): Home to the Transgender Sexual Violence Project. Provides services and publishes research for transgender persons experiencing violence and their loved ones.
The First Challenge to the Military Ban Comes to a Close
With the end of the transgender military ban earlier this year and the U.S. armed forces now embracing open service, today GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have officially closed 多伊訴川普案, the first lawsuit challenging the ban.
GLAD and NCLR are immensely grateful to transgender servicemembers—past, present, and future—and all who fought to end the ban.
Background: 多伊訴川普案 was filed in August 2017 following President Trump’s announcement that the U.S. military would no longer accept or allow transgender individuals to serve. The lawsuit asserted that the ban was unconstitutional and the policy was enacted to discriminate, not to serve any legitimate purpose, requesting the court keep the ban from taking effect while the case was being heard in court.
Join GLAD, NCTE， 和 BAGLY for an evening of phone banking on September 16 to build support for the Equality Act!
Call voters in target states where Senators have not yet pledged to vote for the Equality Act. You’ll be asking them to leave a message for their Senator, and connecting them to the lawmaker’s office directly using a simple webpage. The process is simple to learn, the script is easy to follow, and getting folks pumped up about this critical legislation is fun!
JUST IN: Senator Elizabeth Warren will be joining us to kick off the phone bank with a special message!
Never done a phone bank before? It’s simple and straightforward:
Join us on Zoom for a short training, and we’ll stick around in case you have any questions
You’ll use a simple website that will connect you to voters without showing your phone number
You’ll have a script that includes what to say and helpful responses to potential questions
Connecting with the community and allies across the country can be fun and energizing!
If you happen to be connected to someone who doesn’t support the Equality Act, tell them to have a nice day – and just move on to the next call
To sign up:
Fill out the registration form below (select GLAD in the “Organization” menu)
Confirm your shift when you get the confirmation instructions
When Antwan Carter was on trial in a Massachusetts court, Black and LGBTQ jurors were improperly excluded from the jury. Black and Pink MA partnered with GLAD, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Racial Justice, and Lambda Legal to argue to the Supreme Judicial Court that the discrimination in jury selection in Antwan Carter’s trial was not only unfair, it was unconstitutional.
For citizens of the United States, jury service is a pillar of participation in civic life. Much like voting, the right to serve on a jury is fundamental to understanding ourselves as Americans. Indeed, the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that everyone accused of committing a crime is entitled to a trial before “an impartial jury.” The right to a fair trial is constitutionally linked to the right to serve on a jury. As with voting rights, the rights tied to jury service are precarious and must be guarded. As always, it is often the most marginalized among us whose rights are at stake.
“When any large and identifiable segment of the community is excluded from jury service, the effect is to remove from the jury room qualities of human nature and varieties of human experience, the range of which is unknown and perhaps unknowable.”[1]
What Justice Thurgood Marshall articulated in 1972 after decades of litigation about race-based exclusions from jury service—that diversity among jurors is key to fair and effective deliberations—is an ongoing struggle today.
In 1966 attorneys Pauli Murray and Dorothy Kenyon briefed a case for the ACLU against the Jury Commissioner in Lowndes County, Alabama, on behalf of Gardenia White. Ms. White was a voting rights activist who was excluded from the juror rolls, both because she was a woman and because she was Black. At the time, Lowndes County excluded women from jury service by law and African Americans by practice.
Each a prominent pioneer of civil rights litigation, Murray and Kenyon understood that limiting the right to be a juror because of defining aspects of our personhood is a form of disenfranchisement. They won their case with legal arguments that highlighted the evil of intersectional discrimination in jury service.
The ACLU hoped the case would result in a Supreme Court ruling to establish sex as a protected classification under the Fourteenth Amendment. Still, Lowndes County wisely decided to change its policies rather than invite a lengthy public court battle by appealing the decision. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, at the time a lawyer with the ACLU, later credited Murray and Kenyon for the argument that ultimately applied equal protection to sex-based classifications in Reed v. Reed, even signing their names to the brief in deference to their ingenuity.
Courts have long recognized that a fair trial depends on an unbiased jury. If people are excluded based on sex, race, ancestry, or religion, the U.S. Constitution’s promise of an impartial jury of one’s peers is illusory. A venire, also known as a jury pool, cannot reflect a cross-section of the community if classes of citizens are systematically excluded from participation. As Thurgood Marshall explained, the exclusion of any class of people “deprives the jury of a perspective on human events that may have unsuspected importance in any case that may be presented.” [2]
Today, we are less likely to see the intentional exclusion of a class of people from a jury venire, but discrimination nevertheless persists in jury selection. When jurors are selected from the venire, attorneys are typically granted the right to dismiss some individuals from the panel by exercising a designated number of “peremptory strikes,” which the attorneys may exercise for any reason or no reason at all. The only limitation to that right is that an attorney may not strike a juror based on a protected trait.
Of course, proving trait-based discrimination against a prospective juror is a difficult task. Too often, prosecutors in criminal cases rely on that difficulty to gain an unfair advantage against defendants. Jurors of color are most frequently the target.
Prosecutors have an incentive to eliminate members of marginalized communities from juries. As a Ventura County District Attorney training document (initially cited in a California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and Hueston Hennigan LLP amicus brief from for Johnson v. California) confessed, “people who are marginalized by societal norms” should be viewed with caution by prosecutors because they are presumably more empathetic to the experience of other marginalized people, including criminal defendants.
As a result, courts have devised an imperfect process to ferret out discrimination in jury selection. An attorney may object when a juror is dismissed by opposing counsel. It is up to the judge to decide if it looks like potential discrimination is playing out. In this case, the judge may ask the dismissing attorney to provide a neutral justification for dismissing the juror. Then the judge must decide if the neutral reason is the pretext for discrimination.
In Antwan Carter’s trial, that process failed to prevent the exclusion of Black and LGBTQ jurors. When the defense attorney in Antwan Carter’s trial raised objections to the prosecutor’s strikes, the judge ruled that she could not inquire into the possibility of discrimination based on two incorrect and unacceptable justifications. First, she ruled that the presence of Black jurors on the panel meant that there was no pattern to imply race discrimination. This cannot be correct because a prosecutor cannot have a license to discriminate against jurors based on race just because he allowed some people of color to be seated on a jury. Second, the judge said there is no constitutional rule against LGBTQ discrimination. Surprisingly, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has not yet ruled definitively that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected classes under the state’s Declaration of Rights. It is past time for the Court to clarify that LGBTQ people are equal citizens whose rights are constitutionally protected from governmental discrimination.
As we wait to see if the Court will acknowledge this judge’s mistake and reverse the verdict against Antwan Carter, state legislatures across the country are considering and even passing laws aimed at further restricting voting rights. In a country where so many people don’t have a meaningful right to participate in civic life, either because of incarceration or prior conviction even if they have served their sentence has been served, or because of disability, or even blatant discrimination based on race or gender or sexual identity, we must remain vigilant as we continue to fight for full citizenship for everyone.
This year, too many legislatures and governors have given into fear and lies about transgender people. It sucks that we have to keep having this fight. But we can create a world that celebrates every young person for who they are.
At the beginning of Pride month this year, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill that excludes transgender girls from school sports. It was just one of the too many bills targeting transgender people signed into law this year.
While it is decades since I have lived in Florida, seeing the governor signing an anti-transgender law in the name of school children brought me right back to a painful moment in my own youth.
Teenage Jennifer Levi
I was 12 years old, just about to turn 13, and living in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1977 when Anita Bryant, the “orange juice queen,” spearheaded the Save Our Children campaign. That campaign was designed to overturn one of the country’s first gay rights ordinances, in Miami-Dade County, and it succeeded.
I remember crying the day I heard about the vote. It was overwhelming to learn that my neighbors voted for repeal by a 2:1 margin.
After the defeat of the Miami-Dade County ordinance, Save Our Children turned its efforts elsewhere and, within a year, overturned similar laws in St. Paul, Minnesota; Wichita, Kansas; and Eugene, Oregon. But the LGBTQ community in Florida and across the country organized and fought – and allies began to join us.
Save Our Children’s efforts were stopped in November 1978 when California voters rejected Proposition 6, or the Briggs Initiative, a proposed state law in California that would have banned openly gay teachers in public schools.
That history is the foundation of my professional life and the formative experience that would shape my connection to advocacy.
I recall sitting in typing class and hearing my teacher repeat what Bryant was saying about the danger of gay teachers in public schools. Only she used a much more offensive term – a six-letter F word – for gay men.
I remember that moment vividly to this day more than 40 years later. I knew, of course, she was speaking out against gay teachers. But more personally, I felt the clear and stinging message that my life, my trans, gender non-conforming, queer, soon-to-be lesbian self was also not, in her view, worthy of the dignity, humanity, and respect afforded to other students at Nautilus Junior High. And that hurt.
If I could speak to my 12-year-old self now, though, I would tell that young person: there will be remarkable changes ahead. And you will be a part of them.
But while we have made such positive advances, we are in this moment experiencing backlash, the likes of which make the Save Our Children campaign look almost moderate.
During this legislative session, we saw over 200 bills introduced in legislatures across the country. These bills seek to exclude transgender students from school programs, deny youth medical care for their most basic needs, and target transgender people for exclusion and demeaning treatment in places of public accommodation.
Antia Bryant, c.a. 1971
Transgender people and our families have had to endure hours of legislative discussion and testimony putting up for debate our most basic protections under civil rights laws. And newspapers have been filled with editorials calling into question who we are and how we should live.
Alongside Florida, the states of Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Montana, South Dakota, and Tennessee also enacted some of the most reactionary laws ever passed this legislative session. Many of these laws directly target transgender young people, and all of them impact trans youth as well as adults.
The Tennessee legislature was arguably the most aggressive in its attacks. Governor Lee signed five bills targeting transgender and LGB people, including a bill excluding transgender girls from school sports, one taking aim at healthcare for trans youth, a bill restricting transgender students’ access to school restrooms, and one prohibiting LGBTQ topics in school.
A final new Tennessee law – the first of its kind in the country – requires businesses in the state to post a demeaning and fear-mongering warning notice on their premises if they allow transgender individuals access equally to other patrons. The Tennessee legislature and governor have basically rolled out a giant “Not Welcome” sign to transgender people in the state.
But GLAD is fighting back. Partnering with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, attorney Abby Rubenfeld, and the law firm of Sherrard, Roe, Voigt, and Harbison, GLAD is challenging the sign law in federal court on behalf of Curb Records and the Mike Curb Foundation – Nashville-based companies speaking out because demeaning and excluding transgender people is counter to their values and also bad for business.
In an interesting twist of fate, our client in the case, Mike Curb, was on the front lines in California challenging the Briggs Initiative when I was a young teenager reeling from the impact of the Save Our Children campaign back in Florida. Mike, his family, and his company have been dedicated to full inclusion and equality for LGBTQ people for decades and it’s so important to have allied voices like his in this fight.
“Our foundation has been dedicated to inclusion and nondiscrimination, including for LGBT people, from day one. It is hard to believe that our LGBT community in Tennessee is being assaulted with so much harmful legislation, much of it being signed by Governor Lee, at a time when our country needs to come together more than ever before.” – Mike Curb, plaintiff in Curb v Lee.
Filing this Tennessee lawsuit gives me strength and hope. As a 12-year-old, there was less I could do to fight against the repeal efforts of the Miami-Dade gay rights ordinance. But I did what I could. And despite how hard it felt, then too there were experiences that gave me hope and glimpses of the better future that lay ahead.
San Francisco’s 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade, c/o Chicago Tribune
One day, I went to a sign-making event at a restaurant located in a vibrant gay district called Cocoanut Grove. To set the scene just a bit, Cocoanut Grove had one of the first outdoor exercise courses popularized in the 70s, and it lay along a course that ran along the Miami Bay. I can now look back and think how powerfully affirming it was for me as a young, queer person just beginning to understand who I was, to see strong butch lesbians (I am sure there were femme ones, too, but my eyes queued on the butch ones) and athletic, handsome gay men of many shapes, colors, and sizes sitting kissing on park benches or holding hands while rollerblading through the park.
That was the backdrop through which I walked that day from our car to the Coco Plum. In my hands was a bright orange poster board and an array of pink and black markers. My plan was to write a big sign that said – A Day without Human Rights is a Day without Sunshine – the slogan the movement had crafted as a play on Anita Bryant’s famous orange juice slogan, to call out the hypocrisy of Bryant and her team.
As I sat down at a table toward the rear of the restaurant, I saw someone I recognized. Seated at another table working on another sign was my science teacher, Mr. Wilson (not his real name). There were lots of rumors about Mr. Wilson being gay, but to me, they were just that – rumors. That day Mr. Wilson walked over to my table and said,
“I know kids talk. And I want you to know it’s true that I’m gay. I’m proud of it and willing to put it all on the line to make the world safer for teachers like me. But more than that, I want the world to be a safer place for young people to come out and not just be accepted but celebrated for who they are. I know that day will come. And we’ll all get there together. It’s sucks that we have to have this fight. But I don’t know any other way to it than through it.”
I can’t tell you how much it meant to hear his message that day. One thing we can all do in this moment is to be that person for the young queer and trans people in our lives – or even for the queer and trans kids halfway around the country who desperately need to hear an affirming message from us right now.
The queer community in Miami-Dade County lost the fight in 1977. But the struggle formed a local movement that connected eventually to a state and then a national one.
Having one teacher reach out to me and seeing so many adults standing up to bigotry and prejudice inspired and transformed my life and future.
This year too many legislatures and governors have given into fear and lies about transgender people. It sucks that we must keep having this fight. But like Mr. Wilson, I still believe we can create a world that celebrates every young person for who they are. And that’s worth fighting for.
2021 has been one of the worst years on record for anti-LGBTQ state legislation, particularly attacks on transgender youth. But even among all the (very) bad, we’ve had some legislative victories, seen the strength and resilience in our community, built momentum for federal nondiscrimination protections, and heard the powerful voices of leaders – both young and seasoned – who are leading the way forward.
查看 Justice HangOUT discussion with GLAD Executive Director Janson Wu and National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen about the impacts of this legislative year and what’s next in the fight for LGBTQ justice and equality. Moderated by Qwin Mbabazi, GLAD Community Engagement Manager.
This virtual event was co-presented by 高興的 和 國家跨性別平等中心 and recorded live on July 7, 2021.
Justice HangOUTs are free interactive online events featuring LGBTQ+ movement leaders to give you the information you need about the issues you care about, and an opportunity to ask your burning questions. Click here to watch past Justice HangOUTs.
June 30, 2021 (NASHVILLE) – Renowned independent record label Curb Records and the Mike Curb Foundation today 提起聯邦訴訟 challenging a new Tennessee law, HB 1182, that requires businesses to post a demeaning notice on their premises if they have policies allowing access for transgender individuals on an equal basis to other patrons.
The complaint asserts that HB 1182 – which designates precise dimensions, red and yellow coloring and specific language amounting to a “not welcome” sign to patrons – promotes a hostile climate for LGBT people in the state and denies them equal access to businesses open to the public as well as to employment and educational opportunities. Curb Records and the Mike Curb Foundation argue that the law compels them and other Tennessee businesses to endorse a climate of fear and nonacceptance of LGBT people, in contradiction to their company values of integrity, respect for diversity and nondiscrimination.
“It’s outrageous to have the government come in and force me to send such a derogatory message to my employees and customers,” said Mike Curb, founder and Chairman of Curb Records and President of the Mike Curb Foundation. “My grandmother Eloisa Salazar faced incredible discrimination as she grew up on the Mexico-U.S. border, and her experience shaped my family’s and my company’s values. Our foundation has been dedicated to inclusion and nondiscrimination, including for LGBT people, from day one. It is hard to believe that our LGBT community in Tennessee is being assaulted with so much harmful legislation, much of it being signed by Governor Lee, at a time when our country needs to come together more than ever before.”
Grammy award-winning record producer Mike Curb started his career almost six decades ago in California and Curb Records has operated for the last three decades in Nashville, Tennessee. The company has launched the careers of numerous successful country, rock, pop, R&B, gospel and Christian rock artists. Curb Records and the Mike Curb Foundation have provided grants and gifts totaling more than $100 million in Tennessee in support of education, historic preservation, individuals facing homelessness, and a wide range of civic and charitable endeavors in local Tennessee communities. These projects include the Curb Center at Vanderbilt University, the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business at Belmont University, the Linda and Mike Curb Institute for Advanced Medical Education at St. Thomas Hospital, the Curb Institute for Music at Rhodes College in Memphis, the Fisk University Jubilee Chair, the Curb Victory Hall for homeless veterans and over 100 other Tennessee charities. The Curb entities also own and have restored multiple historic sites across Tennessee including Elvis Presley’s former home in Memphis, RCA Studio B, Columbia Studio A, the Quonset Hut, and the Johnny Cash Collection in Nashville as well as other historic buildings on Nashville’s Music Row.
Mike Curb’s long history in business, philanthropy, and government also includes serving as Acting Governor and elected Lieutenant Governor of California and President of the California state senate. He was a leader in the fight to stop California’s 1978 Briggs Initiative which would have banned gay schoolteachers. Mike Curb also served as co-chair of Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign.
Curb Records and the Mike Curb Foundation are represented in their suit by Sherrard Roe Voigt & Harbison, attorney Abby Rubenfeld, the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD).
2021 has been one of the worst years on record for anti-LGBTQ state legislation, particularly attacks on transgender youth. But even amongst all the (very) bad, we’ve had some legislative victories, seen the strength and resilience in our community, built momentum for federal nondiscrimination protections, and heard the powerful voices of leaders – both young and seasoned – who are leading the way forward.
Join GLAD Executive Director Janson Wu and National Center for Transgender Equality Deputy Executive Director Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen for a Justice HangOUT to talk about the state of our movement, the highs and lows of 2021 so far, and what’s on the horizon in the fight for LGBTQ justice and equality.
This free virtual event is co-presented by GLAD and the National Center for Transgender Equality. ASL interpretation and captioning will be provided. Please RSVP below.
Justice HangOUTs are free interactive online events featuring LGBTQ+ movement leaders to give you the information you need about the issues you care about, and an opportunity to ask your burning questions. Click here to watch past Justice HangOUTs.
Statement on Supreme Court’s Ruling in Mahanoy v. B.L.
GLAD issued the following statement on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mahanoy v. B.L.:
“We’re pleased to see the Court take a thoughtful and nuanced approach to the complex issue of student speech,” said Patience Crozier, GLAD Senior Staff Attorney. “The Court recognized schools can have a need to regulate off-campus speech in various contexts, including bullying that contributes to a hostile school environment and harms other students. At the same time, today’s decision strongly reminds schools that they have no right to over-police out-of-school speech by students.”
GLAD joined an amicus brief filed in Mahanoy v. B.L. by the National Women’s Law Center and Lambda Legal. Noting potential repercussions in this case for students from historically marginalized backgrounds, including LGBTQ students and students of color, who experience disproportionate levels of both harassment and school discipline, the brief urged the Court to take a nuanced approach allowing schools to address bullying without granting an overly broad authority to punish off-campus speech.
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