In February 2021, NCLR and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) filed amicus briefs urging the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm rulings in favor of surviving same-sex spouses who were denied equal access to Social Security survivor’s benefits. The cases are Ely v. Saul, a nationwide class action, and two individual cases, Driggs v. Saul and Schmoll v. Saul. In November 2021, the Social Security Administration (SSA) dismissed its appeals in these cases as well as its...
Our Voices
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...
Plaintiffs Helen Roe, James Poe, and Carl Voe are transgender children who are 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. That surgery requirement is particularly harmful to transgender young people because it is not medically appropriate for them to undergo those surgeries at their age. Having to use...
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. That discriminatory exclusion violates well-established standards of care and federal law. On August 6, 2020, the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and the National Health Law...
Katharine Prescott, holds a photo of her late son Kyler Prescott, in the memorial garden they created in his memory at their home in Vista, California September 21, 2016. About Kyler On September 26, 2016, the mother of a transgender teenaged boy who was admitted into Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego (RCHSD) for inpatient care filed a lawsuit against the hospital for discrimination against her son. Katharine Prescott took her 14-year-old son, Kyler Prescott, to RCHSD in early April...
Plaintiff Santi Ceballos On March 28, 2019, Equality Arizona, represented by National Center for Lesbian Rights and Lambda Legal, along with law professor Clifford Rosky and pro bono counsel Perkins Coie LLP, filed a federal lawsuit challenging Arizona’s anti-LGBTQ curriculum law, which bars public school students from receiving medically accurate, age-appropriate information about non-heterosexual people in their health education classes. Arizona law prohibits instruction in HIV/AIDS...
