Press Releases

In reaction to today's filing of a motion to vacate last year's historic decision by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker declaring California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional, Jon Davidson, Legal Director for Lambda Legal, issued the following statement: Proponents of Proposition 8 certainly are getting desperate. This reeks of a hail-Mary attempt to assail Judge Walker's character because they are unable to rebut the extremely well-reasoned ruling he issued last year. It's becoming a sadly typical move of the right: don't like the ruling; attack the referee.

A coalition of groups that advocate for the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people today filed a brief urging the U.S. District Court not to vacate last year's historic ruling invalidating Proposition 8. Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the ACLU of Northern California and Equality California filed the friend-of-the-court brief in Perry v. Brown in response to a motion filed last month by supporters of Proposition 8 that asked the court to undo last year's decision in that case. The Prop 8 supporters contend that now-retired Chief Judge Vaughn Walker should have declined to hear the case because he was in a long-term relationship with another man, and that the judge's 135-page decision, which followed a three-week trial, should be invalidated for that reason.

This morning the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California heard oral arguments on a motion filed by Prop 8 proponents seeking to overturn Judge Walker's ruling striking down Prop 8 as unconstitutional because he has been in a relationship with another man for 10 years.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled today that being gay doesn't disqualify a judge from ruling impartially on a case involving rights that impact lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

(Madison, Wisconsin, June 20, 2011)—Today, the Circuit Court, Branch 11 in Dane County, Wisconsin, upheld as constitutional the state's Domestic Partner Registry.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a brief strongly arguing that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional in a case brought by Lambda Legal and Morrison & Foerster LLP on behalf of Karen Golinski, a lesbian federal court employee denied medical coverage for her wife, whom she married when same-sex couples could do so in California. The DOJ had previously announced they would no longer defend DOMA, but this is the first legal filing in the country in which they have fully argued to a court that DOMA is unconstitutional. They asked the federal court not to dismiss Golinski's claim.

Today, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the stay on the injunction issued by the district court in the Log Cabin Republicans' challenge to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT). The government is once again enjoined from enforcing DADT anywhere in the world. The government was enjoined once before for eight days, before a different set of Ninth Circuit judges issued the stay of the injunction in this case.

In response to the news that the President has transmitted to Congress certification from the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and himself that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" may be repealed without adverse consequences to the military, Lambda Legal issued the following statement from Jon Davidson Legal Director for Lambda Legal

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit today upheld the right of transgender people to receive medical care while they are incarcerated. The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin and Lambda Legal had challenged a Wisconsin law that prohibited prison doctors from prescribing hormone treatment or sex reassignment surgery to transgender inmates.

The nation's leading child welfare organizations have joined family law and constitutional scholars in support of Lambda Legal's petition for a writ of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of a same-sex couple seeking an accurate birth certificate for their Louisiana-born son whom they adopted in New York. The state of Louisiana has refused to issue a birth certificate listing both fathers as the boy's parents.