Alabama

Five leading national civil and LGBT rights organizations late yesterday filed an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief in the multi-state lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s guidance regarding public school districts’ responsibility to allow transgender students to use the same restrooms as other students.

What a travesty. The Alabama Supreme Court has rushed out a "per curiam" decision (one none of the members of that court would admit to authoring) ordering probate judges not to marry same-sex couples in the state without even providing for full briefing on the constitutional rights of same-sex couples and their families.

Lambda Legal sent an open letter to the President of the Alabama Probate Judges Association and probate judges of counties that are not issuing licenses to same-sex couples urging them to disregard Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s legally incorrect and unfounded Administrative Order and instead issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and different-sex couples alike, after the U.S.

In two separate rulings, a federal judge in Alabama struck down the state’s discriminatory marriage ban, prompting a brazenly political and deeply misguided response from the Chief Justice of Alabama’s highest court.