Reflections on Week One of the Biden-Harris Administration President Biden has certainly been busy, hasn’t he? As of January 29, 2021, Biden has issued 22 executive orders and seven other types of executive actions, such as presidential memoranda. (By the time you read this, those numbers will surely have increased.) Of these dozens of policy announcements, a few of them, viewed together, tell an interesting story. Those of us in the LGBTQ community were thrilled, of course, that an Executive...
I recently experienced acute déjà vu when writing our amicus brief in the Supreme Court case June Medical Services v. Russo, which deals with a challenge to a 2014 Louisiana restriction on abortion. That’s probably because the Supreme Court heard a case about an identical state abortion restriction just four years ago. In Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the Court found that a Texas law requiring that abortion providers have hospital admitting privileges did virtually nothing to protect...
The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has proposed a rule that would open the door to increased discrimination in health care against LGBTQ people and those who use reproductive health care services. But they can’t start applying this rule before they hear from the public. We need to let them know that this new rule is unacceptable. Use the form below to tell the administration that all people deserve access to health care free from discrimination. If you are an...
As an organization that litigates cases to protect equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender(LGBT) people, we do not take lightly a decision to oppose judicial nominees. The records of these two individuals, however, compel us to take this position. We believe the unvarnished animus towards LGBTQ people exhibited by Mr. Bush and Mr. Schiff render them unfit to serve as federal judges. Click here to read the full text of our letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary....
In 2014, President Obama issued an Executive Order prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ people by entities that contract with or receive grants from the federal government. This was an important milestone in expanding essential job protections for our community, and it is now under serious threat. Sweeping language in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2017 (NDAA) would nullify that Executive Order and authorize taxpayer-funded discrimination in each and...
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently issued a regulation that requires any homeless shelter that receives federal funding to treat transgender people equally. The rule expressly requires that shelters must house transgender individuals based on their gender identity. The rule is an important coda to the groundbreaking Equal Access Rule issued by the agency back in 2012, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and marital...
For the past two years, NCLR has partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the True Colors Fund on our #RuralPride campaign, in which we visit rural communities across the country and conduct day-long summits to identify the needs and lift up the voices of LGBTQ people living in rural America. We have visited towns across the South and Midwest, from coast to coast, working to connect federal officials and national LGBTQ organizations with rural LGBTQ advocates to increase...
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, struck down two onerous and medically unwarranted restrictions on abortion. The 5-3 ruling came in a legal challenge to the Texas legislature’s harmful anti-abortion law, House Bill 2 (HB2), passed in 2013. HB2 was enacted to make safe abortion care more difficult to provide and obtain and has resulted in the closure of nearly 75 percent of the clinics in the state of Texas, forcing some women to drive up to...
Today the nation commemorates the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Today, as this fundamental right faces unprecedented attacks, it is time that we reclaim the promise of Roefor this and future generations. Roe held that one of the most personal and intimate decisions one can make — whether and when to bear a child — belongs to the individual. While the precise contours of the right and the...
This week, NCLR and a coalition of 13 other LGBT, racial justice, and health equity organizations filed an amicus brief in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down draconian restrictions on abortion providers enacted by the State of Texas in 2013 which, if upheld, would lead to the closing of most abortion clinics in the state. The brief urges the Court to carefully scrutinize the state’s asserted justification for the law, just as the Court has done with other...
