James Doe was a Colonel in the U.S. Armed Forces and served honorably for twenty-seven years before retiring. He and his wife, Susan Doe, have a transgender son, John. TRICARE, the health insurance provided active and retired military members and their families, was refusing to cover puberty-delaying medications to treat John’s gender dysphoria due to an exclusion for treatment of gender dysphoria. Without that medication, John would have gone through the wrong puberty, which would have...
Our Voices
The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and Chicago Attorney Angelika Kuehn are representing Eileen Brewer, in a case seeking to end discrimination against unmarried couples that prevents them from accessing the same legal remedies that are open to others. Illinois courts currently bar unmarried couples from enforcing property disputes when they break up because of a 1979 ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court, Hewitt v. Hewitt, 77 Ill.2d 49 (1979), which was based on outdated laws that...
NCLR assisted S., a transgender father in Chicago. S. has lived his entire adult life as a male and has undergone medical treatment for sex-reassignment. He also had his birth certificate changed to reflect his male gender. S. married in 1985. He and his wife had a child together in 1992 through alternative insemination. When S. filed for divorce in 1998, his wife counter-petitioned to have their marriage declared void and to terminate S.’s parental rights. All three therapists who...
Jennifer Tobits and Sarah Ellyn Farley married in Toronto in 2006. Two weeks after their wedding, Ellyn was diagnosed with cancer. The Chicago couple fought the disease together for their entire marriage, until Ellyn passed away in September 2010. Because Ellyn’s parents had never accepted her marriage to Jennifer, they feared that Ellyn’s parents would make legal claims to their property and generally attack Jennifer’s status as Ellyn’s spouse. Shortly after...