Today, Lambda Legal warned Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced that the proposed new Civil Code for the Commonwealth, which is now before the Puerto Rico Senate, is in clear contempt of a 2018 federal court order that declared unconstitutional the island’s policy prohibiting transgender Puerto Ricans from correcting their birth certificates and could expose the Puerto Rican government to sanctions and penalties.
The Idaho House of Representatives today passed a bill that would ban transgender people from changing the sex listed on their birth certificates despite a federal court ruling two years ago declaring such a ban unconstitutional.
After news of the murder of Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, known as Alexa, a transgender woman in Puerto Rico in a possible hate crime, Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, Senior Attorney at Lambda Legal, issued a statement.
“The Supreme Court has the opportunity to affirm the basic principle that when agencies accept government money to provide services to children involved in the public foster care system, their religious beliefs are not a license to discriminate.”
Lambda Legal today urged the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska to end the State of Alaska’s blanket exclusion of medically necessary transition-related surgical treatment from AlaskaCare, the state employee health care plan, and to obtain relief for Jennifer Fletcher, a state legislative librarian, who was forced to pay out of pocket for her medical treatment.
A federal magistrate judge today recommended striking down as unconstitutional the U.S. Social Security Administration’s (SSA’s) categorical denial of survivor’s benefits to surviving same-sex partners who were barred from marrying due to discriminatory state marriage bans.
The State Department cannot rely on its male-or-female-only gender policy to withhold a U.S. passport from Dana Zzyym, a U.S. Navy veteran who is intersex and nonbinary.
Lambda Legal, Immigration Equality and pro bono counsel Morgan Lewis this week urged federal district courts in Georgia and Maryland to compel the U.S. State Department to recognize the U.S. citizenship of two children born abroad to married same-sex couples who are themselves U.S. citizens.