Plaintiffs

• (In English)

Lambda Legal, Modern Military Association of America (MMAA), with partner law firm Winston & Strawn, filed a lawsuit on behalf of a sergeant in the D.C. Army National Guard who was denied the opportunity to serve as an officer and faces possible discharge from the United States armed services because he is living with HIV. The lawsuit challenges the Pentagon’s current policies preventing enlistment, deployment or commissioning as an officer if a person is living with HIV, and likely would affect implementation of the new “Deploy or Get Out” policy unveiled by the Trump administration in February.

Lambda Legal filed a class-action lawsuit in California Superior Court against A.J. Boggs & Company on behalf of 93 low-income Californians living with HIV whose confidential medical records – including their HIV status – were compromised by a data breach of A.J. Boggs’s California AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) online enrollment system.

Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging Ohio’s refusal to correct the gender marker on birth certificates for transgender individuals, for any reason, at any time. Ohio is one of the last two states (the other being Tennessee) that have yet to change this extremely regressive and outdated policy.

Lambda Legal and co-counsel Mark Schuver and Natalie Lorenz 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of Mark Horton, a healthcare sales specialist whose job offer at St. Louis-based Midwest Geriatric Management (MGM) was withdrawn when the employer found out Horton is gay. 

Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on behalf of William "Liam” Pierce, after the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s office rescinded a job offer as a Sheriff’s Deputy because he is a person living with HIV.

Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit to compel the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice to release information about their decision to withdraw guidance detailing the protections transgender students have under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bans discrimination in education on the basis of sex. After the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice rescinded the guidance in February, Lambda Legal filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for documents and communications on the decision to withdraw the guidance.

On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision approving the analysis Lambda Legal has been advancing for fifteen years that discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation is sex discrimination, and violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This federal law, which often is referred to as “Title VII,” prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion.

Lambda Legal and local counsel Dianne Ellis filed an appeal in the Mississippi Supreme Court on behalf of Christina Strickland, a non-biological lesbian mother denied legal parentage to children she and her now ex-wife planned for and raised together.

Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of three transgender Puerto Ricans and the LGBT rights organization Puerto Rico Para Tod@s to compel the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to allow transgender individuals to correct the gender marker on their birth certificates.

Lambda Legal joined Barber v. Bryant, the federal challenge to HB 1523, Mississippi’s discriminatory anti-LGBT legislation, which was brought by Mississippi civil rights attorney Robert McDuff and the Mississippi Center for Justice.