A New York trial court judge has held that out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples in New York must be legally respected, just as out-of-state marriages of different-sex couples are respected. In October 2004, then Comptroller Alan Hevesi concluded that the New York State Retirement System must recognize Canadian marriages of same-sex couples. The current Comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, has continued the policy. Last year the Alliance Defense Fund, an antigay group, brought this lawsuit, Godfrey v. DiNapoli, challenging the policy and claiming that it is illegal to respect out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples.

Lambda Legal intervened on behalf of two New York state employees, Peri Rainbow and Tamela Sloan, who were married in Canada. The couple have been together for seven years, and they have a daughter who they adopted out of foster care. They wanted to make sure they would continue to have the important protections they earned for their family under the New York State Retirement System and to defend the respect due their marriage in New York.

Ric Weiland

When Ric Weiland joined forces with his high school friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen, he had no idea that Microsoft would grow to be a giant company or that he would become a philanthropist who would one day make a historic donation to Lambda Legal and other LGBT and HIV civil rights organizations.

Weiland was a visionary in life and in death. He passed away at the age of 53 and left an extraordinary gift: He created a $46 million fund for 10 LGBT and HIV organizations. The funds will be distributed over eight years. Lambda Legal will receive approximately $1.4 million each year for a total of more than $11 million. Lambda Legal’s share of the fund represents the high regard Weiland had for the organization.

“Every time I spoke with Ric, he was thoroughly up to date on our legal and educational work, and we talked about his commitment to the LGBT community,” says Lambda Legal Executive Director Kevin Cathcart.

Lambda Legal will use the approximately $1.4 million it will receive each year over the next eight years to implement the “Weiland Initiative” to strengthen and expand its legal and educational work, winning more battles for the LGBT community and people with HIV, and moving our community closer to equality. In 2008/2009, it will equal approximately one-tenth of Lambda Legal’s overall budget.

“Ric’s death was a terrible loss,” Cathcart says. “But it is no surprise that his generosity will live on. At Lambda Legal, we are honored by the great respect he had for our work, reflected in this tremendous bequest. He set a new standard for vision and philanthropy for our movement, but I knew him well enough to know that nothing would make him happier than to see his gift matched or exceeded by the gifts of others.”

Decisions issued to resolve two administrative complaints filed by lawyers who work within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit conclude that these employees are entitled to health insurance for their same-sex spouses. The decisions resolve internal complaints and do not establish legal precedent.

The first administrative order was authored by Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Kozinski in response to a grievance filed by judicial attorney Karen Golinski. It concludes that the court’s internal nondiscrimination policy forbidding sexual orientation discrimination against court employees requires equal health insurance for employees with a same-sex spouse. Judge Kozinski concludes that the federal “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA) raises troubling constitutional questions that need not be resolved because the federal law does not prevent equal health benefits in this instance. Judge Reinhardt issued the second administrative order in the grievance filed by federal public defender Brad Levenson, concluding that DOMA does block application of the court’s nondiscrimination rules but may not be constitutionally applied in this context.

Since taking office, President Obama has renewed his position that gay people should receive equal rights and privileges and has called on Congress to repeal the section of DOMA that denies federal benefits to same-sex couples in legally recognized unions.

Print/view the PDF of Golinski EDR Amended Order J. Kozinski

Print/view the PDF of Levenson EDR Order J. Reinhardt

The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals prior ruling that the state must honor the Vermont Supreme Court's order that gave Janet Jenkins the right to see her daughter.

Janet Jenkins (formerly Miller-Jenkins) and Lisa Miller (formerly Miller-Jenkins) were joined in a civil union in Vermont and later had a child. When the couple split up, Miller moved with their child to Virginia, where she asked a Vermont court to dissolve the union and sort custody of the child. The Vermont court granted Jenkins visitation. Miller then took her case to a Virginia court. Again, the court ruled in Jenkins' favor.

When Miller took her case to Virginia's Supreme Court, she invoked Virginia's antigay marriage law to have herself declared the child's sole legal parent. We represented Jenkins and defended her relationship with her daughter, and won.

Lambda Legal, along with Arent Fox LLP and ACLU-VA, used the federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act to prove that the Vermont court alone has jurisdiction in the matter, preventing court intervention in another state. "I'm relieved that this tug of war with my daughter is over," said Jenkins. "This has been a very long four years. My daughter and I need some time to be together – she needs her other mom."

The case is Miller-Jenkins v. Miller-Jenkins.

When the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center opened its doors to the public two years ago its goal was to provide educational forums, counseling groups and publications for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. But, according to the city of Kingston's assessor, this wasn't enough to warrant the center's property its mandatory tax exemption — even though New York courts affirmed long ago that real property used by LGBT centers for such purposes are exempt. The assessor's decision was later ratified by the Board of Assessment Review.

The center is run completely by volunteers providing educational and social services to the LGBT and, in fact, the entire community, but is now faced with a discriminatory tax bill for almost $9,000.

This fight for tax exemption is another example of how the LGBT community must continually fight to prove it serves worthy charitable and societal goals.

Lambda Legal, along with the Workers' Rights Law Center of New York, Inc. and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson LLP, represent the center.

In his first year at the helm of Proyecto Igualdad, Lambda Legal's education and advocacy program for Spanish speakers and the Latino/Hispanic communities, Francisco Dueñas has been very busy. In addition to providing resources and information to Spanish speakers and engaging the many Latino/Hispanic communities, Dueñas has recently been appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to serve in a voluntary capacity on the L.A. Human Relations Commission.

And Frontiers magazine just named Dueñas one of the top 25 "unsung heroes" of the Los Angeles LGBT community for his success at making outreach to the Latino community a "hot" topic.

From Frontiers:

#7 Francisco Dueñas
Know Your Rights

WHY HIM? After working in an AmeriCorps program for the L.A. Unified School District for LGBT teens, Dueñas became Lambda Legal's national liaison to the Latino community, educating gay Latinos about their rights and helping mainstream Latino groups integrate gay people into their communities.

BIG CHALLENGES: Because his work deals with people who are marginalized in both the gay community and the Latino community, Dueñas finds that "straddling the different communities, getting them to work together [and] build coalitions, and helping them feel that they're both getting something out of it" is the hardest part of his job.

THE FUTURE OF LATINO L.A.: "In terms of population and spirit, the community is huge, critical and important. We're still developing our community, our leadership, and our visibility. I especially feel gay Latinos can play a crucial role in bridging communities, both cross racially and cross-culturally."

LAMBDA LEGAL'S HELPING HAND: The organization serves the Latino community by being a bilingual resource. The help desk is available to let LGBT people know their rights — which is especially important when it comes to issues like immigration and employment as they apply to LGBT people.

Read the whole story on the Frontiers website.

In response to the nomination of Elena Kagan, U.S. Solicitor General, to the U.S. Supreme Court, Lambda Legal says it is pleased with the Obama Administration's efforts to increase the representation of women on the Court, and reissues its memorandum outlining its principles for selecting federal judges.

The New York City-born Kagan is a former Harvard Law School dean who, earlier in her career, served as law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall. At Harvard, Kagan took a strong position in opposition to the military's policy of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and joined a brief arguing that military recruiters could be barred from campuses.

However, the Obama Administration has taken legal positions on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" with which Lambda Legal strongly disagrees.

"If Solicitor General Kagan is confirmed it would be the first time in history that the nation's highest Court would have three women on the bench," says Lambda Legal Executive Director Kevin Cathcart. "Her legal background and experience are impressive. She has been a trailblazer in her profession and a distinguished legal scholar for many years."

"While we don't expect a nominee to answer questions about how she would rule on specific issues that will come before her, we do expect that she will respond to questions about her judicial philosophy and her understanding of core constitutional principles of equal protection and privacy that are so crucial to the civil rights of people who face discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and/or HIV status."

Lambda Legal has identified principles for federal court nominations in a memo, including adherence to precedents established in cases of importance to the LGBT community and people living with HIV. Among those are decisions which safeguard the rights to liberty and privacy, protect against anti-gay and anti-transgender bias, preserve the right to sue in state courts under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and guard against HIV discrimination.

If confirmed, Kagan will take the seat successively held by two of the Supreme Court's most outspoken defenders of individual rights, Justice John Paul Stevens and, before him, Justice William O. Douglas. "We urge the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to look to those principles as they assess Solicitor General Kagan's qualifications to take the seat," Cathcart says.

Civil rights leader Dorothy L. ("Del") Martin died at UCSF Hospice in San Francisco, California on Wednesday, August 27. A pioneer and inspirational leader for LGBT and women's rights for over 50 years, she was 87 years old.

Martin and her wife, Phyllis Lyon, made international headlines in June when they became the first same-sex couple to legally marry in California. In 2004, after their first marriage was voided by the California Supreme Court, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, and the American Civil Liberties Union represented them as plaintiffs in the California marriage lawsuit that succeeded this May.

But the extraordinary role they played in the fight for marriage equality was only the most recent example of their courage and leadership. Martin and Lyon were co-founders in 1955 of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first public and political lesbian rights organization in the United States. Martin was instrumental in shaping, leading and inspiring the modern LGBT and feminist movements.

In addition to her groundbreaking work as editor of DOB's monthly magazine, The Ladder, Martin also pressed multiple key civil rights initiatives, including the campaign to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to drop its categorizing of homosexuality as a mental illness, which was victorious in 1973. In 1972, Martin and Lyon published Lesbian/Woman, one of the earliest, positive books about lesbians in America. Martin was also a leader in the movement to end violence against women. She published Battered Women in 1975, and was co-founder of La Casa de las Madres, a battered women's shelter.

Del Martin declared her most important contribution was "being able to help make changes in the way lesbians and gay men view themselves and how the larger society views lesbians and gay men." Tributes to Martin's extraordinary civil rights contributions must similarly honor her beloved partner of over 50 years, Phyllis Lyon. Their hearts, lives and work were intertwined, sharing a fierce dedication to fairness and equal dignity for all, as well as humor, common sense and strategic vision.

A decision today by New York State's highest court, in which all seven judges concurred, expands the rights of non-biological same-sex parents.

The New York State Court of Appeals ruled that Debra H., a non-biological mother represented by Lambda Legal, is a legal parent and can seek custody and visitation from her former partner, Janice R. Prior to the birth of their son, the couple had entered into a civil union in Vermont, where both partners are recognized as legal parents of a child born in the relationship.

The court ruled that "New York will recognize parentage created by a civil union in Vermont." Marriages of same-sex couples are not available in New York, but the state recognizes unions performed in other jurisdictions. The decision allows Debra to go to trial court and seek custody and visitation, as well as provide her son, now six and a half years old, with financial support. Unfortunately, however, a majority of the court stopped short of overruling its 1991 decision in Alison D. v. Virginia M., which held that only a person related by biology or adoption to a child qualifies as a parent. Today's decision adds one more category of parent, those in an out-of-state legally recognized relationships with a child's biological parent, but does not go far enough.

"This is a terrific outcome for our client," said Susan Sommer, Director of Constitutional Litigation at Lambda Legal. "But it doesn't solve the dilemma for many New York children. You should not have to travel out of state to establish your legal relationship with your child. The New York legislature should follow the lead taken by many other states and pass legislation clarifying children's legal relationships with both their intended parents, regardless whether the parents have entered into a marriage or civil union."

Debra and Janice agreed to raise a family together in a two-parent household and conceived their son using in vitro fertilization. Debra was by Janice's side throughout labor and delivery and cut their son's umbilical cord; her last name was included in their son's name on his birth certificate. In the years that followed Debra gave him the nurture and care of a mother.

Janice had promised that Debra would formally adopt their child, and they met with an adoption lawyer prior to their son's birth. But when it came time for the second-parent adoption, Janice, who is an attorney, advised Debra "as a lawyer" that they didn't need to get the courts involved and Debra would always be the boy's parent. When the couple's relationship ended in 2006, Debra continued to parent her son, who moved with Janice into an apartment only a block away.

In May 2008, Janice abruptly refused Debra any further contact with the boy. Debra filed for emergency joint custody and restoration of parental access. The trial court ordered interim regular ongoing visitation and allowed Debra's petition to proceed to a hearing. When Janice appealed, Lambda Legal entered the case in early 2009 on Debra's behalf.

Many prominent legal and child welfare experts filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the rights of non-biological parents in circumstances such as this, including the New York State Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association, the National Association of Social Workers, and 45 family law professors on the faculty of every law school in New York State. The boy's court-appointed attorney also asked the court to give Debra the opportunity to protect their relationship.

Lambda Legal joined with other LGBT legal and advocacy groups in filing two friend-of-the-court (amicus) briefs in major cases before the U.S. Supreme Court:

On April 1, 2010, Lambda Legal and other leading LGBT organizations, including Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force joined the State of Washington in defending laws requiring public disclosure of the names of voters who sign petitions supporting state ballot initiatives. In particular, this brief refutes the false claims now presented to the Supreme Court in this and other cases that individuals who support anti-gay initiatives have been subjected to “systematic intimidation” by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

In Doe v. Reed, anti-gay groups are asking the Supreme Court to overturn a decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordering the release of the names of 138,000 people who signed petitions supporting a ballot initiative to repeal basic protections for same-sex couples in Washington State. In November 2009, Washington voters rejected this attempt – Referendum 71 – and preserved the state’s domestic partnership law. Under Washington’s Public Records Act, the signatures on referendum petitions are public. The antigay groups claim that their supporters would be exposed to harassment and intimidation by the LGBT community if their names were made public.

Our amicus brief argues that it is the lesbian and gay community that continues to suffer serious violence, harassment and discrimination, along with a 30-year barrage of ballot petitions aimed at stripping LGBT people and other minority groups of basic protections. The brief also attacks the notion of an alleged organized campaign of harassment and intimidation against supporters of anti-gay ballot initiatives, calling into question legal statements and press accounts cited by anti-gay groups (details available at www.glad.org/Doe-v-Reed).

“What is happening here is attackers screaming, ‘Help! Help!’ while they do the pummeling,” said Jon Davidson, Legal Director at Lambda Legal. “Let’s not forget who is really under assault. In trying to play the victim, anti-gay organizations are relying on exaggeration and outright lies to try to block an important check on anti-minority ballot initiatives. The requirement that petition signatures be available for public inspection prevents fraud and encourages open debate”

In the second case, Lambda Legal and Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) filed a brief on March 15, 2010 in support of the University of California Hastings School of Law in a case brought by the Christian Legal Society (CLS) to challenge the school's nondiscrimination policy. The law school's policy requires student organizations supported by the school to agree to accept "all comers" and not to discriminate against students based on their status or beliefs. In 2004, Hastings denied CLS registration as an official campus organization after CLS refused to comply with the school's nondiscrimination policy. CLS said that it could not comply because it requires that those who join its group to agree not to engage in "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle" including "homosexual conduct."

Registration as a student organization at Hastings gives groups the right to use Hastings' name and logo, access to a university email address, limited use of facilities, and modest university funds for travel and other expenses. CLS sued in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, saying that the school's written policy only limits school support to organizations that agree not to discriminate based on certain enumerated categories, including religion and sexual orientation but that the Christian Legal Society excludes members on the basis of conduct, not orientation. After losing at both the District Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, CLS appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The amicus brief by Lambda Legal and GLAD explains that CLS refused to accept all students as members and that excluding students who engage in same-sex sexual conduct does discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

"The Supreme Court already accepted, in Lambda Legal's Lawrence v. Texas case, that treating people badly because they engage in same-sex sexual conduct obviously discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation," said Davidson.

Davidson added, "CLS is demanding that even though it will not agree to the same reasonable conditions required of all other student groups Hastings assists, CLS must be provided a public school's support. CLS has no right to such preferential treatment. The Constitution does not obligate the government to subsidize those who discriminate."