Doe v. Thornbury
Our Voices
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. On February 10, 2025, NCLR, GLAD Law, and Lowenstein Sandler LLP filed a challenge...
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. In the Third Amended Complaint, we also added...
Ireland v. Hegseth
Doe v. Bondi
On January 28, 2025, The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law), and Joseph Wardenski, Principal Attorney, Wardenski P.C. have 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 was filed on equal protection grounds on behalf of six active service members and two...
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. NCLR, SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), Human Rights Campaign Foundation, and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, along with co-counsel...
In 2018, the State of Washington passed a law prohibiting state-licensed therapists from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a patient under 18 years old. Every leading medical and mental health organization in the country has warned that these practices do not work and put young people at risk of serious harm, including depression, substance abuse, and suicide. In 2021, an anti-LGBTQ legal group filed a federal lawsuit challenging the new law on behalf of Brian...
LaNesha Matthews and Kyresha LeFever were a same-sex couple who had twins together using assisted reproduction. Their children were conceived using Kyresha’s eggs, and LaNesha gave birth, a process sometimes called egg sharing or reciprocal IVF. The parents broke up when the twins were young but coparented and shared custody for years until a dispute arose when the twins were 5-years-old. Kyresha sought shared custody, which the trial court initially granted after determining that Kyresha is a...
When Indiana began allowing same-sex couples to marry in 2015 after the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that same-sex couples have a right to marry in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Indiana Department of Vital Records refused to place same-sex spouses on their children’s birth certificates as they do for different-sex spouses. Eight female same-sex couples who conceived children through sperm donation sought the right to be recognized on their children’s birth certificates in federal...
