A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction that Idaho Chief U.S. District Judge David C. Nye issued several years ago blocking the implementation of Idaho’s “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” which was enacted in 2020. Hecox v. Little, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 21541, 2023 WL 5283127 (August 17, 2023). Judge Nye has yet to issue a final ruling on the merits … <Read More>
Lambda Legal
Alliance Defending Freedom Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in West Virginia Transgender Sports Case
Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative religious litigation group, representing as intervening defendant a cisgender girl who claims it is unfair to require her to compete in track and field against a transgender girl, applied to the Supreme Court to reverse an order by a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing B.P.J., a transgender girl, to continue competing while the court of appeals considers her appeal of an adverse ruling by … <Read More>
Eleventh Circuit En Banc Holds Transgender Boy Not Entitled to Use Boys’ Restroom at Florida High School
Ruling in Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida, 2022 WL 18003879, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 35962 (Dec. 30, 2022), a case that could have been dismissed as moot if U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan (M.D. Fla.) had not awarded $1,000 in damages to Drew Adams in 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, sitting en banc, voted 7-4 to reverse the district court and two vacated 2-1 … <Read More>
Trump Administration’s 11th Hour Attempt to Restrict Refugee Claims Blocked by Federal Court
The Trump Administration’s last-minute rulemaking on refugee law hit a roadblock on January 8 when a federal district court in San Francisco granted a request from organizations that represent refugees to issue a nation-wide preliminary injunction that will stop the rule from going into effect as scheduled on January 11. District Judge James Donato found that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their claim that “Acting” Secretary Chad Wolf of the Department of Homeland … <Read More>
Federal Court Issues Preliminary Injunction against Trump’s Anti-Diversity Training Executive Order
A federal court in San Jose, California, issued a preliminary injunction on December 22 against enforcement of two key provisions of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13950, which prohibits the Defense Department, civilian federal agencies, federal contractors and grant recipients from carrying out diversity and inclusion training programs that include concepts offensive to President Trump. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman found that the plaintiffs, a group of LGBT and AIDS organizations that provide such training … <Read More>
Federal Court Says Ohio Must Let Transgender People Correct Their Birth Certificates
U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson ruled on December 16 that Ohio’s refusal to issue corrected birth certificates for transgender people violates the United States Constitution. Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union sued state officials on behalf of four transgender plaintiffs whose attempts to get their birth certificates changed to correctly identify their gender had been thwarted. Ray v. McCloud, Case No. 2:18-cv-272 (S.D. Ohio).
At the time Lambda sued two years ago, … <Read More>
Federal Court Orders State Department to Recognize Birthright Citizenship of Child Born Overseas to Married Gay Male Couple Through Gestational Surrogacy
A U.S. District Judge in Georgia issued a ruling on August 27 that a married male couple’s daughter, conceived through donor insemination from a donated egg with an English woman serving as gestational surrogate, should be deemed a natural-born U.S. citizen and entitled to a passport over the objections of the State Department. The complication in this case is that the spouse whose sperm was used was not a U.S. citizen at the time, although … <Read More>
North Carolina Federal Court Refuses to Dismiss Challenge to North Carolina’s Exclusion of Coverage for Gender Transition from State Employee Medical Plan
On March 11, U.S District Judge Loretta C. Biggs denied the state’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Lambda Legal claiming that the State Health Plan’s categorical exclusion of coverage for treatment sought “in conjunction with proposed gender transformation” or “in connection with sex changes or modifications” violates the Equal Protection Clause, Title IX, and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Kadel v. Folwell, 2020 WL 1169271, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 42586 … <Read More>
Alaska Federal Court Says Employer’s Denial of Insurance Coverage for Sex-Reassignment Surgery Violates Federal Law
A federal district court in Anchorage, Alaska, has ruled that a public employer’s health benefits plan violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it categorically denies to employees, whether male or female, coverage for the surgical procedures used to effect gender transition. According to the March 6 opinion by Senior U.S. District Judge H. Russel Holland, the employer’s exclusion of this coverage is “discriminatory on its face and is direct evidence … <Read More>
Unanimous Federal Appeals Panel Blasts Trump Administration in HIV-Military Discharge Cases
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, Virginia, blasted the Trump Administration on January 10 for relying on “outmoded” information that is “at odds with current science” when the Air Force moved to discharge otherwise healthy HIV-positive service members based on the spurious assertion that they were not available for deployment outside the United States. Roe v. U.S. Department of Defense, 2020 U.S. App. … <Read More>