Press Release

Events Highlight Need for Education and Awareness on Issues Facing the Transgender Community

(New York, NY) - In observance of National Transgender Awareness Week November 17th to November 21st, Lambda Legal is joining a host of organizations and community organizers from across the country for a week of education and community events including Transgender Day of Action, Transgender Day of Remembrance and Transgender Day of Resilience. 

“We have reached a tipping point, and the lives of thousands of same-sex spouses and their families hang in the balance.”

“It is a shame it took another lawsuit to ensure that state officials respected the federal constitution, but the time is almost here for same-sex couples who want to marry to call the caterer!”

(Huntington, WV) – Although West Virginia’s Attorney General had already conceded that the state’s marriage ban was unconstitutional and marriages began last month, the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia made it official today, ruling in favor of Lambda Legal’s plaintiffs and striking down the discriminatory marriage ban as mandated by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier ruling striking down a similar ban in Virginia.

Today the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld as constitutional bans on marriage rights for same-sex couples in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, becoming the first federal circuit court after the Supreme Court’s watershed 2013 Windsor ruling to uphold such bans and departing from recent decisions from the 4th, 7th, 9th and 10th Circuits.

(Chicago, IL, November 6, 2014) — Today, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit against the Social Security Administration (SSA) on behalf of Dave Williams, a widower, formerly of Arkansas, now a Chicagoan, who was denied spousal benefits after the death of his husband, Carl Allen.

(San Juan, PR, October 28, 2014) — Today, Lambda Legal filed a notice of appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Conde-Vidal v. Garcia-Padilla, after the U. S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico dismissed the lawsuit seeking to end the Commonwealth’s discriminatory ban on marriage for LGBT couples.

Houston, TX - Lambda Legal today filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Passion Star, a transgender woman currently in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), arguing that TCDJ officials have displayed deliberate indifference to threats of sexual assault and violence against Ms. Star in TDCJ’s male facilities.

(Charleston, SC, October 23, 2014) — Late yesterday Lambda Legal, in partnership with South Carolina Equality, filed a motion for a preliminary injunction and for summary judgment asking the U. S. District Court for the District of South Carolina to rule swiftly and strike down South Carolina’s discriminatory ban denying same-sex couples in the state the freedom to marry.

(Washington D.C., October 22, 2014)— Today Lambda Legal filed suit against the Social Security Administration (SSA) on behalf of Kathy Murphy, a Texas widow denied spousal benefits after the death of her wife, and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (the National Committee), arguing that denying Social Security benefits to same-sex spouses because they live in states that discriminate against their marriages violates the U.S. Constitution.