Today’s proposed HHS rule represents nothing less than our own government attacking LGBT people, everyone living with HIV, women and many others in urgent need of health care.
“Jon W. Davidson’s work day began at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time on Wednesday, moments after President Trump made the unexpected announcement on Twitter that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military,” wrote Derek Hawkins in the Washington Post this past in July. “Davidson, legal director of the LGBT rights group Lambda Legal, was still processing the president’s out-of-the-blue tweets when the worried emails started pouring into his inbox. Some came from troops fearing discharge, others from people just trying to wrap their heads around Trump’s decision.”
Lambda Legal filed a friend-of-the-court brief in this case, arguing that landmark decisions vindicating the rights of LGBT people compel the conclusion that the constitutional right to choose to have an abortion finds protection under the Equal Protection Clause as well as the Due Process Clause of the federal Constitution.
The rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (“LGBT”) and people living with HIV are on the line again this year before the United States Supreme Court.
When introduced in November 2015, Indiana Senate Bill 100 was presented as a bill to add sexual orientation and gender identity protections to Indiana law, which lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Hoosiers urgently need. Unfortunately, the bill that was introduced provides little meaningful protection from discrimination for transgender people and includes damaging carve-outs and exemptions targeting all LGBT people in Indiana. While broadly problematic, there are six key problems with SB100:
On April 28, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in six cases from four states concerning marriage for same-sex couples. The Court asked counsel to address two questions in their presentation:
Question 1: Must states allow same-sex couples to marry under the United States Constitution? Question 2: Must states recognize the legal marriages entered by same-sex couples in other jurisdictions?
There are three possible outcomes.
As the four legal teams representing same-sex couples from Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan left the Supreme Court after oral argument in Obergefell v. Hodges, we felt overwhelmed by the significance of the moment.