LAMBDA LEGAL ARCHIVE SITETHIS SITE IS NO LONGER MAINTAINED. TO SEE OUR MOST RECENT CASES AND NEWS, VISITNEW LAMBDALEGAL.ORG
All
Know Your Rights
Lambda Legal and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Department of Justice and BOP seeking all documents and communications connected to its decision to alter the Manual. The changes weaken protections for transgender people who are incarcerated.
On November 12, 2018, Lambda Legal and Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service announced the successful settlement of a 2015 lawsuit filed on behalf of John Dorn against the Michigan Department of Corrections. Mr. Dorn’s settlement with the MDOC includes substantive changes to the MDOC policy directive that allowed disproportionate punishment of incarcerated people living with HIV without adequate justification, an MDOC review and reconsideration of other individuals who were classified to administrative segregation under the former policy, and a monetary settlement.
Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit challenging Kansas’ refusal to correct the gender marker on birth certificates for transgender individuals. At the time of the filing, Kansas was one of just three states, along with Tennessee and Ohio, that had yet to change this extremely regressive and outdated policy.
Lambda Legal filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and again in the U.S. Supreme Court in a lawsuit over whether government can enforce nondiscrimination laws when contracting with faith-based providers to screen potential foster parents for children in state care. Our briefs, filed on behalf of organizations serving LGBTQ youth, highlight the harm to LGBTQ youth of allowing faith-based child-placing agencies to use religious criteria to reject same-sex couples who wish to serve as foster parents.
On September 25, 2018, Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) on behalf of a 63-year-old lesbian seeking spousal survivor’s benefits based on her relationship with her partner of 27 years, who died in 2006 before same-sex couples in the State of Washington were able to marry. The lawsuit filed on behalf of Helen Thornton in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington argues that SSA’s exclusion of same-sex couples from survivor’s benefits based on their inability to marry is unconstitutional.
If you would have been married to your same-sex partner for at least nine months before their death but were never able to marry because of discriminatory marriage laws where you lived, you may be a member of the Thornton class. Click here for the Thornton FAQ: https://www.lambdalegal.org/in-court/legal-docs/20210218_thornton_faq
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.
On September 13, 2018, Lambda Legal and American Oversight, a non-partisan, nonprofit ethics watchdog committed to transparency and accountability in the executive branch, filed a lawsuit seeking to compel the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to produce documents related to Supreme Court Justice Nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s work in the George W. Bush administration, particularly his involvement in policies that discriminated against LGBTQ children, families and relationships. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
As the U.S. Senate started the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Lambda Legal and American Oversight filed a lawsuit to compel the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to immediately produce records related to Kavanaugh’s work in the George W. Bush White House. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges the agencies’ failure to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in August that sought documents related to Kavanaugh’s involvement in Bush administration policies that discriminated against LGBTQ children, families and relationships.
In a groundbreaking decision, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a landlord may be held liable under the Fair Housing Act for failing to protect a tenant from known, discriminatory harassment at the hands of other tenants, reinstating Lambda Legal’s federal lawsuit on behalf of lesbian senior, Marsha Wetzel, against Glen St. Andrew Living Community in Niles, Illinois. The suit claims that the facility failed to protect Wetzel, a resident of the facility, from harassment, discrimination and violence she has endured at the hands of other residents because of her sex and sexual orientation.
Lambda Legal and Modern Military Association of America (MMAA) filed a lawsuit on behalf of Kevin Deese and John Doe (a pseudonym), who the Navy and Air Force refused to commission as officers based on their HIV-positive status after they graduated from the respective military academy for each branch of the Armed Services. In both situations, these now former Service Members had the support of their superiors and military healthcare providers to continue serving and to commission as officers.
Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, GLBTQ Advocates & Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the National LGBT Bar Association filed an amicus brief urging the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the appeal of Charles Rhines, a gay man on death row in South Dakota.