D.H. and John Doe are transgender teenagers who require male chest reconstruction surgery to treat their gender dysphoria. Arizona is refusing to cover this medically necessary treatment because of a categorical exclusion on covering surgical treatments for gender dysphoria in the state’s Medicaid regulations.

NCLR, along with co-counsel Rifkin Law Office, Hadsell Stormer & Renick LLP, and Ferguson Durham, PLLC, represents Adree Edmo, a Native American transgender woman in the custody of the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC).

Amelie Koran is a federal employee who was denied coverage for transition-related care under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB). The federal Office of Personnel Management is the agency responsible for administering the FEHB, which provides health insurance coverage for millions of current and former federal employees across the country.

NCLR and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) represent the plaintiffs in two major lawsuits challenging President Trump’s directive to reinstate a ban on transgender people serving in the military. The suits were filed on behalf of transgender service members with decades of combined military service.

In 2023, Kentucky’s legislature passed SB 150, overriding the governor’s veto. The law bans all transgender medical care for minors and puts stiff penalties on medical professionals that provide such care. NCLR, along with the ACLU of Kentucky and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, have brought a case on behalf of trans youth and their parents to block the ban from going into effect.

On January 20, 2025 Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”, which directly targets transgender people by taking away their legal protections, and ordering trans women who are incarcerated in federal prisons to be unlawfully transferred to men’s facilities and be denied medically necessary health care.

In 2023, Florida passed SB254 which bans all transgender medical care for minors, making the provision of such care a felony crime. NCLR, along with GLAD, HRC Foundation, Southern Legal Counsel, and Lowenstein Sandler, filed a case on behalf of transgender youth and their parents to challenge the ban on the grounds that it violated the Equal Protection Rights of trans youth and the Due Process Right of parents to oversee their child’s medical care.

On March 17, 2025, GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), with Stapleton Segal Cochran LLC and Langer Grogan & Diver P.C.,  filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey seeking immediate court action to prevent two longstanding, high-ranking Air Force service members from being discharged from the military.

NCLR, GLAD Law, Brown Goldstein & Levy LLP and Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP represent three transgender women in a case challenging a federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) policy directed by President Trump which would override Prison Rape Elimination Act protections for vulnerable populations, including transgender women, and would terminate all medical care for gender dysphoria for incarcerated individuals.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law) filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging President Trump’s January 27, 2025, order banning transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. The suit, Talbott v. USA, was filed on equal protection grounds on behalf of six active service members and two individuals actively seeking enlistment.

The complaint alleges that S.B. 1165 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Title IX, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Rehabilitation Act by banning these girls from playing school sports.

NCLR, along with lawyers from Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, filed a complaint on March 31, 2022, on behalf of Equality Florida (EQFL), as well as students, parents, and a teacher, all of whom continue to face harmful repercussions resulting from the passage of the law.  The complaint alleges that HB 1557 is unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

On April 8, 2022, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law SB 184. The law directly targets transgender adolescents and their families by imposing criminal penalties on any individual, including parents and healthcare providers, who facilitate or provide essential medical care to transgender adolescents for the treatment of gender dysphoria.

In 2021, an anti-LGBTQ legal group filed a federal lawsuit in Washington to challenge the state’s ban on conversion therapy on behalf of Brian Tingley, a therapist and advocate of conversion therapy. NCLR successfully moved to intervene in the lawsuit on behalf of Equal Rights Washington, the state’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization and a primary supporter of the law during the legislative process.

Plaintiffs D.T., Jane Doe, and Helen Roe are transgender children who unable to correct the gender markers on their birth certificates because of Arizona’s discriminatory laws.  Arizona requires transgender people to undergo surgery to obtain a birth certificate that matches who they are.

Christina Ketcham is a 60-year-old transgender woman who started her transition over four years ago and continues to experience significant distress from the incongruence between her typically masculine facial features and her identity as a woman. To alleviate that distress, Christina’s treating healthcare providers determined that certain facial feminization procedures are medically necessary to treat her gender dysphoria. But, the health insurance offered by her employer has a categorical exclusion for all facial feminization procedures.

John Doe is a transgender student at West Point High School. Despite repeated requests, John’s French teacher, Peter Vlaming, refused to use male pronouns when referring to John. Vlaming was fired in December 2018 and subsequently sued the West Point School Board for allegedly violating his constitutional right to free speech and free excerise of religion, among other claims.

Kevin Seaman, an interdisciplinary artist, cultural worker, and drag queen whose drag persona is LOL McFiercen, and The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns devoted to community service and promoting human rights, have reached a collaborative agreement with Lyft to ensure individuals in the queer and drag communities are not discriminated against by drivers using Lyft’s platform.

In May 2017, NCLR and Teresa Renaker of Renaker Hasselman LLP appealed a decision by the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to collect an overpayment of benefits that resulted from decades of discrimination. After 38 years of service, when Ms. Krall notified OPM of her marriage to her loving partner of 21 years, OPM informed the couple that if they elected a survivor pension benefit, the couple would have to first repay hundreds of thousands of dollars of retirement benefits Ms. Krall received as a single life annuity.