Fair Courts Project

In a major victory for fair courts, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled in Wolfson v. Concannon that the rules in the Arizona Judicial Conduct Code restricting political activities of judges and judicial candidates do not violate the U.S. Constitution.

2015 was a historic year in the fight for equality for LGBT people and those living with HIV, and Lambda Legal led the fight in courts and communities across the country. Here are some of the highlights of Lambda Legal’s work this year:

Lambda Legal has debuted one of its newest resources, “Know Your Rights in Court” on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and people living with HIV when navigating the court system. The hub is accompanied by an interactive video, in which Lambda Legal Fair Courts Project Director Eric Lesh helps answer some of the most frequently asked questions.

During a Senate subcommittee hearing titled ‘With Prejudice: Supreme Court Activism and Possible Solutions’, 2016 presidential hopeful Ted Cruz and others bashed recent Supreme Court decisions granting the freedom to marry for same-sex couples and ensuring that Affordable Care Act subsidies remain available. Cruz, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts labeled these decisions ‘judicial activism’, and invited witnesses to condemn the Court’s decisions. One witness, Ed Whelan, in written testimony stated: “The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling last month inventing a supposed federal constitutional right to marry a person of the same sex is brazenly lawless. In the flagrancy and magnitude of its errors in overriding, and cutting short, the democratic processes, Obergefell v. Hodges is rivaled in Supreme Court history only by Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and Roe v. Wade (1973).”