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...
Our Voices
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...
Meghan Murphy repeatedly referred to a transgender woman using male pronouns while posting on Twitter. She was informed by Twitter that this activity violated the company’s hateful conduct rules, but Murphy persisted, resulting in Twitter permanently suspending her account. Murphy sued Twitter in February 2019 alleging that the company violated the terms of their user agreement by suspending her account. The trial court dismissed her case, finding that Twitter had the authority to permanently...
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...
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...
