Lambda Legal today urged the Oregon Supreme Court to deny a petition from the former owners of an Oregon bakery seeking to overturn a lower court ruling that they violated Oregon's anti-discrimination law in 2013 when they refused to sell a wedding cake to a lesbian couple because they claimed it was against their religion.
47 businesses, attorneys general from 15 states and the District of Columbia, the nation’s leading LGBT rights organizations, and several other organizations submitted friend-of-the-court briefs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in support of Lambda Legal client Mark Horton, a gay man whose job offer from a St. Louis-based health management organization was withdrawn after the company’s owners learned Horton is gay.
Lambda Legal and co-counsel Mathis, Marifian & Richter, LTD. filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on behalf of Mark Horton, a healthcare sales specialist whose job offer at St. Louis-based Midwest Geriatric Management (MGM) was withdrawn when the employer learned Horton is gay.
A U.S. District Court judge ordered Idaho state officials to allow transgender people born in Idaho to apply to correct the gender markers on their State of Idaho birth certificates by April 6, 2018. Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit last April challenging Idaho’s categorical ban on such corrections.
Today, in a 10-3 decision, the full Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion.
The Intermediate Court of Appeals of the State of Hawai`i affirmed a lower court ruling against a Hawai`i bed and breakfast that denied a room to a lesbian couple because of their sexual orientation.
Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin were denied the opportunity even to apply to serve as foster parents for refugee children by a USCCB affiliate because, they were told, they did not “mirror the Holy Family.”