NCLR represented Susan Stanton, who was threatened with termination from her longtime position as the City Manager for the City of Largo, Florida after her employer learned that she is transgender and will be undergoing sex reassignment. Despite Stanton’s 17 years of dedicated service to the City of Largo, the City Commission voted on February 28, 2007 to begin the legal process of firing Stanton, who informed the Commission that she is transgender after learning that a local newspaper...
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up because of a 1979 ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court, Hewitt v. Hewitt, 77 Ill.2d 49 (1979), which was based on outdated laws that...
B.F. and T.D., a lesbian couple, were in a committed relationship for seven years. When their attempts to get pregnant were unsuccessful, the couple decided to adopt. Because the availability of second parent adoptions is unclear in Kentucky, only T.D. adopted the child. For the next six years, the couple raised their child together. After the couple separated, however, T.D. cut off all contact between B.F. and the child, forcing B.F. to file for visitation. Both the trial court and the...
NCLR, the ACLU, and Equality Florida challenged a proposed anti-marriage equality voter initiative in the Florida Supreme Court. The measure, if passed, would block recognition of marriage and jeopardize the current domestic partner protections. Unfortunately, in March 2006, the Florida Supreme Court rejected this argument and approved the initiative for placement on the ballot.
The Eighth Circuit denied a petition for reconsideration of its prior decision denying asylum to W.K., a gay man from Zimbabwe. As a teenager in Zimbabwe, W.K. was imprisoned for being gay and suffered harassment and abuse from local authorities and neighbors, including being shocked with an electric wire. Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, was one of the most notoriously anti-gay leaders in the world. He has called lesbians and gay men “worse than dogs and pigs” and...
The National Organization for Women (NOW) filed a lawsuit alleging that anti-abortion protesters had engaged in a nationwide conspiracy to shut down abortion clinics through “a pattern of racketeering activity.” NCLR joined an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court supporting NOW’s argument. The amicus brief was authored by NARAL Pro-Choice America and the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. On February 28, 2006, in an 8-0 decision, the...
In a decision issued on February 16, 2007, the Utah Supreme Court reversed three decades of Utah case law holding that courts may protect children’s relationships with non-biological parents. Keri Jones and Cheryl Barlow had a child together in Utah using alternative insemination. After they separated, Barlow tried to keep Jones from having any contact with their child. In 2004, a Utah trial court granted Jones visitation. Barlow, who is represented by an anti-gay legal organization,...
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...
