Criminal Justice

(NEW YORK, May 10, 1999) -- As sodomy laws topple state by state, the Arkansas Supreme Court will hear a case challenging a ban against the private, consensual sexual activities of lesbians and gay men, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said Friday.

On Thursday, May 13, Lambda Senior Staff Attorney Suzanne B. Goldberg, on behalf of six lesbian and gay Arkansans challenging the sodomy law, will urge the Arkansas Supreme Court to reject efforts to have the case, Bryant v. Picado, thrown out of court.

(NEW YORK, April 15, 1999) -- Adding its voice to protests of the fatal police shooting of unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said it would take part in Thursday's massive demonstration in a call for justice.

"Lambda joins thousands of grieving New Yorkers to demand a full and fair response to this tragedy," said Lambda Legal Director Beatrice Dohrn. "Police brutality is a scourge that especially victimizes the poor and people of color, including many lesbians and gay men."

New York, October 21, 2005) — In a decision issued today over-turning a criminal sodomy conviction, the Kansas Supreme Court relied upon the landmark US. Supreme Court decision striking down all sodomy laws and a friend-of-the court brief citing authoritative studies about the transmission of HIV.

The case, State of Kansas v. Limon, was handled by attorneys in the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. Lambda Legal filed a friend-of-the-court brief on the matter of public health and the spread of HIV.

(NEW YORK, March 4, 1999) -- The nation's oldest and largest gay legal group mourned the death Thursday of former United States Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, an eloquent defender of the right to privacy and impassioned voice for gay civil rights.

Lambda Executive Director Kevin M. Cathcart said, "Justice Blackmun's eloquent dissent in Hardwick set the standard for constitutional analysis of lesbian and gay civil rights. His words gave us hope that someday we would find justice in the Supreme Court."

(LINCOLN, NE) Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a brief before a federal appeals court urging the court to let stand an earlier decision striking down Nebraska’s extreme anti-gay relationship law that bans all protections for same-sex couples, including civil unions and domestic partnership.

(February 10, 1999) -- Today 11 major organizations representing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities announced their joint opposition to the death penalty.

(ATLANTA, November 23, 1998) -- Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Monday helped defeat the Georgia sodomy statute, in a victory for the right to privacy under the state's Constitution and against a notorious national symbol of anti-gay hostility and discrimination.

(ATLANTA, November 23, 1998) ? Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Monday helped defeat the Georgia sodomy statute, in a victory for the right to privacy under the state?s Constitution and against a notorious national symbol of anti-gay hostility and discrimination.

(NEW YORK, November 20, 1998) -- Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said outside a Houston court Friday that it will challenge the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law in defense of two men arrested in a private home on charges of engaging in consensual sex.

Lambda Staff Attorney Suzanne B. Goldberg, after the arraignment hearing in The State of Texas v. Lawrence and The State of Texas v. Garner, said that the national organization for lesbian and gay civil rights will seek to strike down the Texas sodomy law that the men are charged with violating.

(CHICAGO, November 19, 1998) -- Three University of Minnesota student organizations, already targeted by a religious conservative lawsuit to de-fund them, first must fight simply to be heard in their own defense in court, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said Tuesday.