Mary Walsh (L) and Bev Nance (R) at their July 30, 2009 wedding in Provincetown, MA On July 25, 2018, Mary Walsh, age 72, and Bev Nance, age 68, a married lesbian couple, filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of Missouri against St. Louis senior housing community Friendship Village Sunset Hills. The complaint alleges that Friendship Village violated the federal Fair Housing Act by discriminating against Walsh and Nance on the basis of sex, denying them a unit because they are a...
Our Voices
R.M.A. is a transgender student in the Blue Springs School District. He sued his school for violating the Missouri Human Rights Act by excluding him from the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms at school. The school district filed a motion to dismiss. The trial court agreed with the district that the definition of “sex” under the MHRA does not include transgender people and granted the district’s motion. That decision was affirmed by the Western Division of the Missouri...
Kathleen and Kate were a same-sex couple who conceived a child together through assisted reproduction. Kate gave birth to their child, who they raised together until the couple broke up when then child was almost three years old. Because Kate and Kathleen were unmarried and Kathleen did not adopt their child, Kathleen sought visitation as a so-called “third party” under Missouri law. The trial court denied Kathleen’s request for visitation but the Missouri Court of Appeal reversed, holding...
Mark Horton was offered a job as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Midwest Geriatric Management, LLC, only to have the offer withdrawn after the company learned he had a same-sex partner. A U.S. district court in Missouri dismissed his discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 based on a case from the 1980s stating that Title VII does not protect lesbian, gay, and bisexual people from discrimination. On March 14, 2018, NCLR, along with GLBTQ Legal Advocates...
Melissa and Angela McGaw are two women who were in a long term relationship and had twins through donor insemination. The couple chose the sperm donor together and parented the children together for more than nine years. After the parents later broke up, the biological mother, Angela, kept Melissa from seeing the children. Melissa sought custody of the children in Missouri, where the family lives, and was denied. Melissa appealed the denial. The Western District Court of Appeals in Missouri...
