Today, after the Puerto Rico Senate approved a new Civil Code for the Commonwealth affecting the rights of LGBTQ people, Lambda Legal, through Senior Attorney and Puerto Rico native, Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, released the following statement.
Today, Lambda Legal warned Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced that the proposed new Civil Code for the Commonwealth, which is now before the Puerto Rico Senate, is in clear contempt of a 2018 federal court order that declared unconstitutional the island’s policy prohibiting transgender Puerto Ricans from correcting their birth certificates and could expose the Puerto Rican government to sanctions and penalties.
(San Juan, PR, April 20, 2018) – Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico issued its opinion, as promised in the order earlier this month, that denying accurate birth certificates to transgender people is a violation of their privacy.
(San Juan, PR, April 4, 2018) – Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico struck down a policy that prevented transgender people born in Puerto Rico from correcting the gender marker on their birth certificates and ordered Commonwealth officials to allow such corrections. Lambda Legal, joined by pro bono co-counsel from Ropes & Gray, challenged Puerto Rico’s categorical ban on corrections to the gender marker in birth certificates last April in a first-of-its-kind federal lawsuit.
(San Juan, PR, June 26, 2017) – Today, Lambda Legal filed papers urging a federal court to strike down Puerto Rico’s policy denying transgender people accurate birth certificates in its case on behalf of three transgender people born in Puerto Rico and the advocacy group Puerto Rico Para Tod@s.
