Anti-LGBT Laws Rulings and Amendments

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit today rejected three of the five reasons the U.S. State Department gave for denying an accurate passport to Dana Zzyym, a U.S. Navy veteran who is intersex and nonbinary, and does not identify as male or female. While the Tenth Circuit held the State Department exercised its authority in an arbitrary and capricious manner, it nonetheless overturned a U.S. District Court ruling in favor of Zzyym and ordered the State Department to reconsider Dana’s passport application anew.

The Idaho Senate today approved a bill already passed by the state House of Representatives that would ban transgender people from changing the sex listed on their birth certificates despite a federal court ruling two years ago declaring such a ban unconstitutional. Lambda Legal, which brought the lawsuit that resulted in that ruling, urged Idaho Gov. Brad Little to veto the bill when it lands on his desk.

A federal district court today ruled in favor of Lambda Legal client Jennifer Fletcher and ordered that the State of Alaska’s denial of health care coverage to a legislative librarian based on its blanket exclusion of medically necessary transition-related surgical treatment from AlaskaCare, the state employee health care plan, is unlawful sex discrimination that violates federal law.