Today, Lambda Legal and Ropes & Gray filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of 16 nonprofit organizations that advocate for people living with HIV. The brief argues in support of 19 states and DC, led by California, and the U.S. House of Representatives who are collectively defending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and appealing a ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that invalidates a key provision of the ACA and threatens the law in its entirety.
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.
Today, after the Puerto Rico Senate approved a new Civil Code for the Commonwealth affecting the rights of LGBTQ people, Lambda Legal, through Senior Attorney and Puerto Rico native, Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, released the following statement.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in two cases joined for the purposes of argument, Trump v. Pennsylvania and Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania.
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 U.S. District Court judge today denied North Carolina state officials’ request to dismiss a lawsuit filed last March challenging North Carolina’s blanket exclusion of medically necessary transition-related health care from the state’s employee health plan.
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.
Lambda Legal today urged the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska to end the State of Alaska’s blanket exclusion of medically necessary transition-related surgical treatment from AlaskaCare, the state employee health care plan, and to obtain relief for Jennifer Fletcher, a state legislative librarian, who was forced to pay out of pocket for her medical treatment.
Lambda Legal, Immigration Equality and pro bono counsel Morgan Lewis this week urged federal district courts in Georgia and Maryland to compel the U.S. State Department to recognize the U.S. citizenship of two children born abroad to married same-sex couples who are themselves U.S. citizens.