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Today, Lambda Legal and Sirianni Youtz Spoonemore Hamburger PLLC filed a federal lawsuit challenging Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois’s (“BCBSIL”) administration of a blanket exclusion of gender-affirming care in an employer-provided health insurance plan provided by Catholic Health Initiatives Franciscan. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington in Tacoma on behalf of a 15-year-old transgender boy, “C.P.,” and his parents, and argues the exclusion is in direct violation of the nondiscrimination provisions under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. “My son needs the medical care that will allow him...

“Your genitals don’t make you a boy or a girl.” This is Planned Parenthood’s “gender spectrum” sex ed pseudoscience, championed by leading LGBT organizations including the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and Human Rights Campaign. It has rapidly become a religion among leftist politicians and Bible-evading churches where blasphemy can get you fined, fired and finished financially. Welcome to the cult of transgenderism, where hucksters sell their poisonous ideology, the victims are scammed, and a liberal media spotlights the #fakenews face of the movement. The Left controls so much of the discussion, because they control so many of the primary institutions that redefine...

For the first time in 34 years, attorney Diana Flynn is starting a new job. Until recently, Flynn served as a senior official in the Department of Justice (DOJ), where her duties included leading the Civil Rights Division's appellate and Supreme Court litigation efforts. She resigned, however, after the DOJ pursued what she characterized as rollbacks of LGBTQ and other civil rights. “I really expected I would spend the rest of my career in the Civil Rights Division,” Flynn told NBC News, but said she finally decided she could not “under these circumstances.” Flynn recently started a new position as...

A federal court in Puerto Rico has ruled that transgender people in the U.S. territory should be allowed to change the gender on their birth certificate if they wish. Lambda Legal said Wednesday that a judge this week found a previous ban on making such a change was unconstitutional. The New York-based civil rights organization had filed a lawsuit against Puerto Rico’s government a year ago seeking to eliminate the ban in the first federal lawsuit of its kind. …

“Keep up the great work,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch told LGBT activists at a Lambda Legal reception in Washington on Thursday. “We are finally witnessing the cascade of equality…that will forever reshape this country,” she said in her prepared remarks. She told the activists that they have the “enthusiastic partnership” of both the Justice Department and the president: “President Obama and I are both passionate about this cause and deeply devoted to this mission, and this administration is committed to invigorating the values of equality and opportunity that you have long demanded for all Americans.” Lynch noted that many LGBT...

If pang of conscience prevents a person from performing his or her job in government, or upholding an oath to administer justice under the Constitution, that person needs to resign. As the legal dust settles and Nevada prepares to extend marriage equality to all its citizens, there’s one small, sad footnote to be written: The signature on the legal document enjoining the state from enforcing its 12-year-old ban on gay marriage will not be that of U.S. District Judge Robert C. Jones. Jones, formerly the chief federal judge in Nevada, oversaw Lambda Legal’s lawsuit against the state, which contended that...

ALBANY — The state’s highest court agreed on Tuesday to hear arguments in two cases that challenge New York’s recognition of same-sex marriages legally performed elsewhere. Lower courts have already sided with two government entities that revised their policies to honor the marriages, but those decisions were appealed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian group that is waging multiple legal battles in New York to stop state and local entities from recognizing marriages of same-sex couples who were wed in places, like Massachusetts and Canada, where the ceremony is legal. Neither case involved Gov. David A. Paterson’s directive last...

We are in the midst of a Cultural Revolution in the West. The foundation of our Western societies has always been the first society, authentic marriage and the family founded upon it. It is the first government, first economy, first school, first religious institution and first mediating institution. Marriage has been clearly understood as arising out of the consent between one man and one woman and intended for life. It has been given a privileged and protected legal and social status. It is viewed as the primary civilizing institution which is constituted for the bearing and caring of children wherein...

Ruling: Gay marriage ban doesn't nix custody COLUMBUS - A mother plans to appeal a magistrate's decision that she cannot use the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage to take away her former partner's visitation rights, the mother's lawyer said Thursday. Family courts often settle custody disputes between unmarried people and even people of the same sex, such as a grandmother and aunt or an adult sibling and a parent, according to the ruling by Magistrate Darrolyn Krippel of Franklin County's domestic relations court. "Granting custody of a minor child to a nonparent is done every day," Krippel wrote in...

<p>State Medicaid officials have refused to pay for a liver transplant for an Altoona man because he is infected with HIV, a position the man's attorneys argue is discriminatory and not based on current medical knowledge and practice.</p> <p>William Jean Gough, 46, meets the medical criteria for the procedure and his survival chances are as good as someone who isn't infected with the AIDS virus, said Hayley Gorenberg, AIDS project director at Lambda Legal in New York, which, along with the AIDS Project of Pennsylvania, is representing Gough in his appeal of the decision.</p>

Same-sex marriage issue fuels debate Wednesday, June 25, 2003 By WHITNEY KVASAGER,HERALD NEWS PATERSON - Seven gay and lesbian couples are waiting to know if they can continue their lawsuit that seeks to broaden the state's definition of marriage. On Friday, a judge may give her opinion.On Tuesday night, people crowded into a community forum to give theirs.The forum, sponsored by the Herald News at the Passaic County Community College theater, began with a panel discussion between representatives for and against same-sex marriage. Panel members came from Lambda Legal, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the New Jersey...

OK for same-sex marriages sought in N.J. Wednesday, January 15, 2003 By RUTH PADAWER Staff Writer More than 200 of the faithful squeezed into the small church hall, applauding wildly as believers offered testimonials of love. One by one, they bore witness to the power of commitments. They were met with hoots and whistles from an adoring flock. This was no religious revival. Instead, it was a pep rally for gay rights in New Jersey. With a lawsuit pending in state court over same-sex marriage, gay-rights leaders this week unveiled the first of 10 meetings designed to rouse sympathizers from...

Same-sex marriages supported by clergy Published in the Home News Tribune 7/08/02 By JENNIFER MICALE STAFF WRITER NEW BRUNSWICK[, NJ]: While civil marriage is denied to same-sex couples, the law cannot tell a person whom to love, the Rev. Kevin Taylor said yesterday. Taylor's sermon to members of Unity Fellowship Church in New Brunswick was part of a larger effort by the New Jersey Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry to support marriage rights for same-sex couples. Nearly two weeks ago, seven lesbian and gay couples filed a lawsuit in state Superior Court in Jersey City claiming the right...