Gay rights case
LGBTQ Rights
The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in 1936. Founded in 1986, the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project brings more LGBTQ rights cases and advocacy initiatives than any other national organization does and has been counsel in seven of the nine LGBTQ rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided. With our reach into the courts and legislatures of every state, there is no other organization that can match our log of making progress both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.
The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and violence toward genderqueer people, to close gaps in our federal and state civil rights laws, to prevent protections against discrimination from being undermined by a license to discriminate, and to defend LGBTQ people in and from the criminal legal system.
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The ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual person Transgender Project seeks to create a just culture for all LGBTQ people regardless of race or income. Thr
Active Court Cases that Will Influence the Articulate of LGBTQ+ Rights
by Aneesha Pappy •
WASHINGTON—As the LGBTQ+ community continues to face discriminatory legislation across the country, there are also a number of active court cases making their way through the court system that explore to either roll help these anti-equality laws or expand LGBTQ+ protections. In addition, anti-equality state attorneys general and anti-equality organizations are challenging non-discrimination rules issued by the federal government. Ranging from healthcare to education, these cases address a variety of rights and will contain an important impact on the state of equality for LGBTQ+ Americans.
In order to track these cases and the consequences of their decisions, this background document provides topline information while also illustrating the disturbing range of attacks facing LGBTQ+ people.
Health Care
Bans on Health Care for Trans People
- Bans on health nurture for transgender youth hold been passed in 24 states across the region, with 17 being challenged in state or federal court. In addition numerous states have also adop
Lawrence v. Texas
Overview
Lawrence v. Texas (2003) is a landmark case, in which the Supreme Court of the United States, in 6-3 decision, invalidated sodomy commandment across the United States, making same-sex sexual outing legal in every Express and United States region. The majority opinion in this case, written by justice Kennedy, overturned the previous ruling of the Supreme Court on the same issue in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy. The court in Lawrence v. Texas explicitly held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by the substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The decision in this case was a breakthrough for the gay rights movement and helped to place the stage for Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the same-sex marriage as a fundamental right under the United States Constitution.
Background
Before Lawrence v. Texas, legal punishments for sodomy included fines, life prison sentences or both. In the late 19th and first 20th centuries, several states imposed various laws against anyone deemed to be a “sex
Man who won gay rights case at Supreme Court agrees to settlement
ATLANTA — A Georgia county has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by a man whose case was one of three that led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said civil rights rule protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment.
The Clayton County Board of Commissioners this week approved an $825,000 settlement for Gerald Lynn Bostock, his lawyer Ed Buckley said Friday. Bostock had sued the county, which sits just south of Atlanta, saying he was fired in 2013 because he is gay.
“I’m filled with joy and words can hardly communicate how happy I am that this is now over,” Bostock said during a news conference Friday. “As I said from the beginning, no one should go to serve fearful of losing their job because of who they are, who they love or how they identify.”
His case was one of three decided by the Supreme Court in June 2020 in a ruling that said a key part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII bars job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Bostock had appealed to the steep court after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his claims. The federal
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