History
It was nothing short of a revolutionary idea more than three decades ago — create a national legal organization dedicated to achieving full equality for gay and lesbian people. There were no groups whose principal mission was fighting for gay rights in the nation's courts. And the courts initially tried to stop the first one. Lambda Legal's application to be a nonprofit organization was denied unanimously by a panel of New York judges because, in their view, our mission was "neither benevolent nor charitable." But just as we have countless times since, we fought on until we won.
In 1973, after nearly two years of legal battles, New York's highest court finally allowed Lambda Legal to exist. A couple of volunteers set up shop in one room of a New York supporter's apartment, eventually installed two phone lines and got to work. They recruited a few more volunteers, and pioneered Lambda Legal's innovative strategy: taking on vital legal battles to create building blocks that would allow more gay and lesbian people to live openly and honestly as we fought for full equality in all aspects of our lives. From the outset, we complemented our legal work with educational programs for the general public and our own community.
In the early days, we had an uphill battle. While more gay people were beginning to come out in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots, many faced discrimination from employers, businesses, courts, the government and their own families. Throughout the 1970s, Lambda Legal fought — and won — some of the nation's first cases on behalf of gay parents and gay couples. We successfully fought for gay student groups and gay employees who faced blatant discrimination from state-funded universities. We took on the federal government for penalizing gay people and gay groups through discriminatory FBI and IRS practices, and prompted the government to stop barring gay immigrants from entering the country.
In the 1980s, we stepped up our efforts against government discrimination, while focusing more on antigay bias in corporations and established community institutions. Several major companies led the way in adopting or strengthening antidiscrimination policies in response to lawsuits by Lambda Legal in the 1980s, and some began offering benefits to their employees' same-sex partners. Lambda Legal successfully used litigation to pressure the federal government to stop giving gay service members "dishonorable discharges," which allowed them to keep their housing and G.I. benefits. Lambda Legal won a number of important victories that permitted various lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities to hold pride parades, list gay community services in phone books and receive gay publications in prison. We convinced New York's courts to strike down the state's sodomy law, which was used unfairly against LGBT people.
Twice in the 1980s, Lambda Legal played a key role in safeguarding legal victories when the nation's highest court was asked to overturn gay rights wins. In 1981 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn our victory against New York's sodomy law. And in 1985, Lambda Legal helped persuade the U.S. Supreme Court not to overturn a lower court decision declaring unconstitutional an Oklahoma law prohibiting teachers from "advocating" in favor of "homosexual activity." (The law even prohibited teachers from speaking out against Oklahoma's sodomy law.)
But the fight for equality suffered a major setback in 1986, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its infamous shamefully homophobic decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, which allowed Georgia's sodomy law to remain on the books. Lambda Legal immediately went to work to develop a strategy to overcome the damage done in the Hardwick case — a strategy that would yield remarkable successes in the years ahead and ultimately lead to our monumental 2003 Supreme Court win in Lawrence v. Texas.
Throughout the 1980s, life for LGBT people changed dramatically, as HIV and AIDS ravaged our communities. In the early 1980s, Lambda Legal received dozens of calls a day from people with HIV or AIDS who were being refused treatment at hospitals, fired from their jobs, evicted from their homes or refused services at restaurants and stores because they had HIV. Lambda Legal won the first AIDS discrimination case in the nation in 1983, helping establish that under disability laws it's illegal to discriminate against people who have HIV. We forced insurance companies to cover HIV testing and treatments and pay benefits to those disabled by the disease. Lambda Legal also helped establish privacy rights for people with HIV, including the right to keep test results and medical records confidential.
In the 1990s, Lambda Legal built on our earlier victories to further chip away at government-sanctioned discrimination. As part of our strategy to work around the Hardwick decision, we helped convince state courts to strike down sodomy laws in Kentucky, Tennessee, Montana and even in Georgia. While not successful, we continued fighting the military's policy banning openly gay service members.
We also went on the offense to establish greater protections for lesbian and gay families. We helped win a first-of-its-kind decision from the Hawaii Supreme Court that paved the way for marriage for gay and lesbian couples (only to see that victory snatched away in a voter initiative). We filed the first-ever domestic partnership benefits case in a federal court, and we won some of the first victories in the nation that defined gay couples as "families." In the early 1990s, Lambda Legal won some of the first legal victories recognizing the role of lesbian and gay parents who had no biological or established legal relationships with the children they helped raise.
As a result of a backlash against our community's progress in the 1990s, Lambda Legal went to court to fight efforts to put our basic rights on various ballots for a popular vote. We led efforts to keep antigay initiatives off ballots in a number of cities and states, and played a key role in persuading the U.S. Supreme Court (Romer v. Evans) to strike down a voter-enacted amendment to Colorado's constitution that prohibited gay rights laws. Also in the 1990s, Lambda Legal won tremendous victories for LGBT and questioning youth, who were coming out at younger and younger ages. We won a historic legal precedent holding schools responsible for harassment and violence against LGBTQ students and successfully defended the right of gay-straight alliances to exist in schools, even in conservative places like Salt Lake City, Utah and Orange County, California. These victories helped initiate a profound cultural shift, as they forced people across the country to recognize the fact that LGBTQ youth exist and have the same needs as all other young people.
As the 21st century begins, Lambda Legal is stronger than ever, with our well-honed strategy that has brought success in all 50 states. Nothing illustrates our success more than Lawrence v. Texas, our groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court victory striking down all 13 remaining sodomy laws in the country and opening up an expansive new era of legal respect for LGBT people. Lawrence represents the culmination of our carefully laid plan to eradicate sodomy laws state by state until we found the best test case to take the nation's highest court and had the court of public opinion firmly in our camp. We are currently employing a similar strategy in the battle for marriage equality, where we are certain to see many wins and losses in the coming years before all of the elements are in place for the sweeping victory that end marriage discrimination once and for all.
Over the last 30 years, life for LGBT people has changed significantly — and Lambda Legal has changed with it. We've learned more and more about how to use the court of public opinion to win for our community even when we can't prevail in the court of law. So, for example, when we suffered a heart-breaking loss in our U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the bigotry of the Boy Scouts, we were able to convert that loss to a growing national consensus against the institution's discriminatory policies.
Lambda Legal's strategy has not changed much since the 1970s. Today, we still pursue impact litigation, education and advocacy to make the case for equality in state and federal court, the Supreme Court and in the court of public opinion. We still make a big impact in people's lives by changing laws, policies and ideas.
In addition to our marriage and relationship work, we are pushing forward with aggressive efforts to create a world where LGBT people can be out at work and not fear being fired. A world where LGBT parents — biolgoical or not — are fully recognized. A world where young people can live and attend school free of discrimination and abuse. A world where people living with HIV can access medical care, pursue a career, become a parent and live free from discrimination based on decades-old stereotypes about the disease. A world where society and our own communities are more inclusive of transgender people.
We've grown from a couple of volunteers in someone's apartment to a staff of roughly 100 employees with a national headquarters and four regional offices across the country. Our first case — fighting for the right to exist and to become the nation's most powerful force for LGBT legal rights — was about being recognized like everybody else and being treated equally. That's the same fight we've waged on behalf of LGBT people and those with HIV ever since.
