Press Release

In response to the Trump administration’s announcement that the Denial of Care Rule will no longer go into effect on July 22, Lambda Legal, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the County of Santa Clara issued the following statement.

Transgender people born in Kansas will now be able to correct the gender marker on their birth certificates under a consent judgment between Lambda Legal and state officials issued Friday evening by a federal court.

Today the U.S. Senate did further damage to our federal judiciary by confirming Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Today, members of Congress and civil rights leaders held a telephone press briefing in opposition to President Trump’s nomination of Matthew Kacsmaryk to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The Senate is expected to vote on cloture today on Kacsmaryk’s nomination as a lifetime judge.

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that the Oregon Court of Appeals must look again at how the Oregon court system processed the discrimination claim against an Oregon bakery, Sweetcakes by Melissa, and its conclusion that the bakery violated Oregon’s nondiscrimination statutes when they refused to bake a wedding cake for Lambda Legal clients Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, because they said doing so would violate the owners’ religious beliefs.

(Washington, DC, June 13, 2019) – Late yesterday, a federal district court denied motions by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to dismiss Lambda Legal’s lawsuit challenging discrimination in a federal foster care program.

The rule is so overbroad, unworkable, and sweeping in its targeting of LGBT people and women for denials of health care that it will harm patients.

The Washington Supreme Court today unanimously reaffirmed its February 2017 ruling that a Richland, WA, florist had violated the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) when she refused to sell flowers to a same-sex couple for their wedding. The U.S. Supreme Court last year vacated that 2017 ruling and ordered the case sent back to the Washington court for reconsideration in light of its narrow ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Human Rights Commission finding in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. Jennifer C.

Today, Lambda Legal announced the Central District of California entered judgment for Nikko Briteramos against the owner of a Los Angeles barbershop who refused to cut Briteramos’ hair because he is living with HIV.

(Greenville, May 30, 2019) – Lambda Legal, the ACLU, ACLU of South Carolina, and South Carolina Equality Coalition are suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the state of South Carolina on behalf of a married lesbian couple, Eden Rogers and Brandy Welch, who were turned away by a government-funded foster care agency for failing to meet the agency’s religious criteria, which exclude prospective foster parents who are not evangelical Protestant Christian or who are same-sex couples of any faith.