L.E. v. Lee

In November 2021, Lambda Legal along with co-counsel filed a lawsuit on behalf of 14-year-old Luc Esquivel who is banned from participating the boys’ golf team at his high school in Knoxville, Tennessee because he is transgender. Luc loves golf. He enjoys the precision and focus golf requires, he enjoys the competitive aspects of being on a golf team, and he enjoys the camaraderie of playing with other boys.  Luc would like to try out for the boys’ golf team but he is prevented from doing so because Tennessee passed a discriminatory law in 2021 (SB 228), which prohibits transgender boys from playing on boys’ teams and prohibits transgender girls from playing on girls’ teams. Lambda Legal’s lawsuit targets this discriminatory law as it applies to Luc.

Lambda Legal challenged a similar law passed in West Virginia, which was one of hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills pushed in state legislatures across the country in 2021. A similar law in Idaho was blocked by a federal court in 2020 and a federal court in Connecticut recently dismissed a challenge to policies that allow all girls, including girls who are transgender, to participate on girls’ sports teams.