Press Releases

(San Francisco, June 20, 2008) – Three California voters and four organizations dedicated to protecting the civil rights of gay and lesbian people filed a lawsuit in the California Supreme Court today about an initiative that seeks to change the California Constitution to bar gay and lesbian couples from marriage. That initiative is currently slated to appear on the November ballot.

(Virginia, June 6, 2008) — Today, the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed a prior ruling by the Virginia Court of Appeals that said that the state must honor the Vermont Supreme Court's order of visitation between Janet Jenkins and her daughter.

(NEW YORK, June 28, 2000) — A divided United States Supreme Court on Monday held that the Boy Scouts of America can discriminate against a gay scoutmaster, blunting the decade-long legal challenge to the group’s anti-gay policy that Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund has waged on behalf of decorated Eagle Scout James Dale.

(NEW YORK, January 14, 2000) -- The United States Supreme Court Friday agreed to hear the Boy Scouts of America's appeal of a New Jersey ruling that struck down the group's ban on gay members and leaders, a move Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund said could shed more light on the organization's discriminatory policy nationwide.

WASHINGTON -- The National Black Justice Coalition today announced a nationwide campaign to generate black support for same-sex marriage and to fight against the recently proposed Federal Marriage Amendment.

(NEW YORK, September 15, 2000) — Beatrice Dohrn, at the helm of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund’s groundbreaking legal department for most of the past decade, directing Lambda’s civil rights litigation strategy in cases from adoption and employment rights to protections for gay youth and anti-gay initiative challenges, announced her resignation Friday.

Baltimore County announced that, beginning January, it will extend spousal benefits to all county employees who are married to a same-sex spouse. This comes on the heels of an arbitrator’s ruling in favor of Lambda Legal clients Margaret Selby and Juanika Ballard, Baltimore County police officers who had been denied benefits for their same-sex spouses.