Today, Lambda Legal announced that Scott Schoettes, who has been with Lambda Legal as the HIV Project Staff Attorney since October 2007, has been hired as the new HIV Project Director.

(New York, January 10, 2011) - Today, Lambda Legal announced that Scott Schoettes, who has been with Lambda Legal as the HIV Project Staff Attorney since October 2007, has been hired as the new HIV Project Director.

(New York, NY, January 10, 2011) – In response to the weekend's shootings in Arizona which left six dead, including U.S. District Judge John Roll, and six injured, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Tucson), Lambda Legal Executive Director Kevin Cathcart issued the following statement:

1/9/2011

"The legal battle over same-sex marriage in California pivoted back last week to the state Supreme Court to answer a legal question that will affect not only gays and lesbians who want to marry.

"The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order Tuesday asking the state high court to decide if state law allows proponents of a proposition to defend it in court when state officials refuse that role.

1/10/2011

"The Texas attorney general can't block a divorce granted to two women who were legally married elsewhere, an appeals court ruled Friday.

"...Unlike the Dallas case, the Austin case did not examine whether the judge had jurisdiction to grant the divorce. Ken Upton, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, a national legal organization that promotes equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, noted the Austin appeals court decision was in fact quite narrow.

Lambda Legal and Just New Mexico are praising an opinion letter issued yesterday by New Mexico Attorney General Gary King finding that marriages between people of the same sex performed in states or countries where they are legal likely are valid in New Mexico as well.

Today a panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, certified to the California Supreme Court the question of whether California law either gives proponents of initiatives an interest in seeing that law enforced, or authorizes proponents to act in the place of the government to defend their initiative. Jennifer C. Pizer, National Marriage Project Director for Lambda Legal, issued the following statement

Lambda Legal has sent a letter to Governor-Elect Jerry Brown urging him to scrutinize closely the judicial philosophies of those he appoints as state court judges and to add greater diversity to the bench.

12/28/2010

"The North Carolina Supreme Court on December 20 voided the adoption by a lesbian mother of the child who she and her former partner, the biological mother, were raising together. The ruling jeopardizes the legality of all other such 'second-parent adoptions' in the state.

Greg Nevins, Supervising Senior Staff Attorney at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, agreed the status of the other adoptions remains unclear at this point, but 'at a minimum, [the ruling] is causing a lot of anxiety.'"

Lambda Legal and the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin (ARCW) announced that the discrimination lawsuit they brought on behalf of Melody Rose, a woman living with HIV who was denied gallbladder surgery, has been resolved.