Author: Chris Stoll, Esq.

U.S. Supreme Court Made History June 26, 2015 with Landmark Decision in Favor of Marriage Equality

A year ago on June 26th, several of us from NCLR sat in white-knuckled silence at the U.S. Supreme Court, waiting for the Court’s most important decision ever for LGBT Americans and their children. Anticipation gave way to jubilation when Justice Kennedy announced the Court’s decision. In soaring and inspirational prose, Kennedy’s opinion for the Court made clear that same-sex couples are entitled to be treated as full citizens under our Constitution, equal in freedom and dignity to their friends and neighbors, including the freedom to commit themselves to one another through civil marriage.

A year later, that moment stands as a triumphant reminder of how far the modern LGBT movement has come in less than half a century. Yet the events of the past year also show us how much work still lies ahead. The devastating attack on the LGBT and Latinx communities in Orlando reminds us that, even in 2016, we remain targets for hatred and violence. In state legislatures across the country, hundreds of rabidly anti-LGBT bills were introduced. Through the hard work of activists and citizens in every state, almost all of them were defeated, but despite our best efforts, sweeping anti-LGBT legislation passed in North Carolina and Mississippi. And despite the progress we have made, family rejection of LGBT youth and harassment in schools continue to contribute to a host of harms, including an alarming rate of homelessness among LGBT young people.

The events of the past year make this anniversary a bittersweet one. But as our Executive Director Kate Kendell would say, we know how this story ends. We at NCLR will continue to fight for equality until every single member of our community can live their life openly, safely, and without fear.

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On February 29, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Doe v. Christie, a case challenging New Jersey’s law prohibiting state-licensed therapists from engaging in the discredited practice of conversion therapy with patients under 18 years of age. The Supreme Court’s order allows the law to remain in full effect and marks the final chapter in a nearly three-year-long series of challenges filed by Liberty Counsel, an anti-LGBT legal group.

NCLR was proud to join Garden State Equality in asking the New Jersey legislature and governor to pass this life-saving legislation, and then to represent GSE in successfully urging the federal courts to reject this legal challenge and uphold the law.

At the time Governor Chris Christie signed the bill into law on August 19, 2013, New Jersey was the second state after California to pass legislation protecting against harmful efforts by licensed therapists to change a young person’s sexual orientation or gender identity – practices that put youth at risk of serious lifelong harm, including depression, substance abuse, and suicide. Since that time, similar laws have been passed in Washington, D.C., Oregon, and Illinois, and NCLR’s #BornPerfect campaign is working with leaders in dozens of other states to bring the same protections to young people everywhere.

Wherever these laws have been challenged, NCLR has also stood ready to defend them in the courts. And we’ve been successful. Federal appeals courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to these laws brought by anti-LGBT legal groups representing therapists, minors, and parents who want to preserve these outdated and dangerous “treatments.”

These federal court decisions rest on the common-sense principle that states have the power to regulate medical care to protect patients from treatments that are ineffective and risky. Just as a doctor or patient has no right to administer or receive untested or unsafe prescription medications, therapists have no right to engage in so-called treatments that do not benefit minors and expose them to serious risks of harm. Laws protecting minors from conversion therapy are based on a strong scientific consensus among medical and mental health professionals, and states have a right—and a duty—to make sure licensed therapists are not engaging in these harmful and discredited practices.

In 2014, NCLR launched #BornPerfect: NCLR’s Campaign to End Conversion Therapy in five years. Learn more about #BornPerfect.

A year ago today, we celebrated a major tipping point in the movement for LGBT equality—a watershed United States Supreme Court decision that continues to impact the lives of same-sex couples across the country.

The Supreme Court’s decision on June 26, 2013 striking down the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which barred the federal government from recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples, set off a legal tidal wave unlike anything we have seen before.

Inspired by Justice Kennedy’s stirring decision—the first recognition ever by the Supreme Court that our families are just like other families and deserve the same respect—couples across the country flooded the courts with new cases seeking the freedom to marry.

Since then, every court that has considered the issue has ruled in favor of the freedom to marry. Today, same sex-couples can get married in 19 states, at least 8 tribal nations, and the District of Columbia.

There are now more than 70 marriage cases pending in federal and state courts nationwide, and we at NCLR are doing our part. Just yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a landmark ruling in our Utah marriage equality case that found Utah’s freedom to marry ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process. This historic ruling is the first federal appellate court ruling since the Supreme Court’s DOMA decision—and the first ever to hold that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry.

We are also representing couples in marriage cases in Florida, Idaho, and Wyoming. Earlier this year, we won an important ruling in Tennessee (now on appeal) that the state must recognize the marriages of couples who married in other states.
Together with our colleagues at the ACLU, we won the freedom to marry in the New Mexico Supreme Court in December 2013, enabling our clients Jen Roper and Angelique Neuman to legally marry before Jen passed away from brain cancer.

It’s only a matter of time before a marriage case reaches the Supreme Court.  No matter what, NCLR will be there again.  We will urge the Court to recognize that the equal respect it spoke about so powerfully a year ago means that all couples, in every state, deserve the freedom to marry.
We’re committed to stay in this fight until every couple across the country has the freedom to marry.

Ever since NCLR’s founding, we have been at the forefront of some of the most important legal cases in the history of the LGBT movement, from winning the freedom to marry in California, to securing critical protections for LGBT parents in courts around the country, and all the way to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. But no year in our history has ever been quite like this one.

The Supreme Court’s decision last summer striking down the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which barred the federal government from recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples, set off a legal tidal wave unlike anything we have seen before. Inspired by Justice Kennedy’s stirring decision—the first recognition ever by the Supreme Court that our families are just like other families and deserve the same respect—couples across the country flooded the courts with new cases seeking the freedom to marry. From Alabama to Wyoming, brave couples are stepping up to send a clear message that the time for our full equality is now.

There are now more than 70 marriage cases pending in federal and state courts nationwide, and we at NCLR are doing our part. We are representing couples in marriage cases in Florida, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Earlier this year, we won an important ruling in Tennessee (now on appeal) that the state must recognize the marriages of couples who married in other states. Our Utah case was the first marriage case to be argued in a federal appeals court since the Supreme Court’s DOMA decision, and it is sure to be one of the first in this new wave of marriage cases that the Supreme Court will be asked to review.

Together with our colleagues at the ACLU, we won the freedom to marry in the New Mexico Supreme Court earlier this year, enabling our clients Jen Roper and Angelique Neuman to legally marry before Jen passed away from brain cancer. We’re committed to stay in this fight until every couple across the country has the freedom to marry.

NCLR has made tremendous progress on other fronts as well. Last year, we won important federal court decisions upholding new laws in California and New Jersey protecting youth from dangerous “therapies” that falsely claim to be able to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender expression.

We achieved other victories for LGBT youth. Just a few days before the Supreme Court handed down the DOMA decision, we reached a settlement with the Indianapolis Public Schools in the case of an openly gay, gender nonconforming African-American student who was subjected to severe harassment that school officials failed to address.

Not long after, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice resolved a complaint filed by NCLR on behalf of a transgender student in California’s Arcadia Unified School District. The resolution required the school district to revise its policies to ensure that transgender students have equal access and opportunity to participate in all of the district’s activities and programs.

Our legal work does not just involve cases that make headlines. Every year, we help hundreds of people with the information provided through our legal helpline, and we help others resolve their problems without ever needing to go to court. Just in the past year, we helped an educator in a tiny rural school district in the Midwest to stay in her job after a member of the school board outed her in the community and tried to drive her out. And we advised a college soccer player in Florida whose coach subjected the student and her girlfriend, who was also on the team, to severe harassment and public humiliation in front of other team members. With our guidance, the student filed a formal complaint with the university, and the school promptly took action and fired the coach. Cases like these don’t end up in the news, but they are every bit as important to our goal of full equality for LGBT individuals in every state and every city and town in the country.

So there you have it – a year in the life of NCLR’s litigation work (well, a small part of it, anyway). The past year has been a wild ride, and if our current docket is any indication, the year ahead promises even more excitement. It is only a matter of time before marriage is before the Supreme Court again and, no matter what, we will be there.

Originally published in the San Francisco Bay Times.