On April 8, 2022, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law SB 184. The law directly targets transgender adolescents and their families by imposing criminal penalties on any individual, including parents and healthcare providers, who facilitate or provide essential medical care to transgender adolescents for the treatment of gender dysphoria. NCLR, SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), Human Rights Campaign Foundation, and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, along with co-counsel...
Our Voices
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...
On August 21, 2020, NCLR and Lambda Legal led a coalition of LGBTQ advocacy organizations and legal aid groups in submitting a proposed amicus brief urging California’s Fifth Appellate District to reverse a trial court ruling against Maddie Wade, a former employee of Starbucks in Fresno. On August 27, 2020, the court granted leave to file the amicus brief. The case is Wade v. Starbucks Corporation. Maddie Wade, who worked for Starbucks for eight years, sued Starbucks and her former manager,...
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...
NCLR, along with co-counsel Rifkin Law Office, Hadsell Stormer & Renick LLP, and Ferguson Durham, PLLC, represents Adree Edmo, a Native American transgender woman in the custody of the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC). Adree Edmo After a three-day evidentiary hearing on Ms. Edmo’s motion for a preliminary injunction, Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued an order on December 13, 2018 requiring IDOC and IDOC’s medical provider Corizon to provide Ms. Edmo with medically urgent...
Christina Ketcham is a 60-year-old transgender woman who worked for Clatsop County for nearly thirty years. She started her transition over four years ago and continues to experience significant distress from the incongruence between her typically masculine facial features and her identity as a woman. To alleviate that distress, Christina’s treating healthcare providers determined that certain facial feminization procedures are medically necessary to treat her gender dysphoria. But, the health...
In 2017, the City of Boca Raton, Florida, and the County of Palm Beach, Florida, each enacted local ordinances prohibiting state-licensed therapists from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a patient under 18 years old. Every leading medical and mental health organization in the country has warned that these practices do not work and put young people at risk of serious harm, including depression, substance abuse, and suicide. In 2018, an anti-LGBTQ legal group filed a...
On September 30, 2021, Equality Florida, Impact Fund, and NCLR filed an amicus brief on behalf of a coalition of civil rights groups and nonprofit organizations urging a Florida appellate court to affirm a ruling upholding the validity of Orange County’s Human Rights Ordinance (HRO). The case is O C Food & Beverage, LLC v. Orange County. Anita Yanes and Brittney Smith brought a sex discrimination lawsuit alleging they were denied entrance to Rachel’s Orlando, a club and restaurant in...
In 2019 and 2020, NCLR led a coalition of national, state, and local LGBTQ groups in filing amicus briefs in federal lawsuits challenging a regulation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services called “Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care.” The Trump Administration’s regulation, more aptly referred to as the “denial of care” rule, would allow health care professionals to deny certain medical treatments or services to patients based on the provider’s own religious or...
Gavin Grimm transitioned in his sophomore year of high school and started using the boys’ restroom. Despite using the restroom for nearly two months without incident, the Gloucester County School Board adopted a policy prohibiting him and other transgender students from using the facilities that match their gender identity. Gavin sued his school district for violating federal law. Gavin eventually graduated, but the school district continued to discriminate against him by refusing...
