Robicheaux v. Caldwell

Lambda Legal joined the legal team representing a total of seven Louisiana same-sex couples and the Forum for Equality Louisiana, the state’s LGBT rights organization, in their appeal to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals of last month’s U.S. District Court ruling upholding Louisiana’s discriminatory marriage ban.

The case going up on appeal involves consolidated lawsuits filed in the past year: Robicheaux v. Caldwell, Robicheaux v. George, and Forum for Equality Louisiana, Inc. v. Barfield. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman issued his ruling upholding Louisiana’s marriage ban in a combined decision known as Robicheaux v. Caldwell, in early September.

The plaintiffs in the combined appeal are:

• Jonathan Robicheaux and Derek Penton of New Orleans, together since 2005 and married in Iowa in 2012; and Courtney and Nadine Blanchard of Lafourche Parish, married in Iowa in 2013 and raising a son together (represented by New Orleans attorney Richard G. Perque);

• Robert Welles and Garth Beauregard of New Orleans, together for 24 years (represented by New Orleans attorney Scott J. Spivey of Landry & Spivey);

• Forum for Equality Louisiana, the Louisiana statewide LGBT advocacy organization founded in 1989; Jacqueline and Lauren Brettner of New Orleans, together since 2011, married in New York in 2012 and the parents of a baby girl born in 2013; Henry Lambert and Carey Bond of New Orleans, together since 1974 and married in New York in 2011; Andrew Bond and Nicholas Van Sickels of New Orleans, together since 2003, married in the District of Columbia in 2013 and the parents of a daughter; and L. Havard Scott and Sergio March Prieto of Shreveport, together since 1997 and married in Vermont in 2010 (represented by J. Dalton Courson, Lesli D. Harris, John Landis, Brooke Tigchelaar and Maurine Wall of the New Orleans firm Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann LLC).