At the beginning of March, 2018, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in the case of EEOC v. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. that discrimination based on transgender status violates Title VII prohibitions against sex-based discrimination.   How the Case Arose This case was initiated when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Read More

The United States Supreme Court recently refused to become part of a legal battle against the state of Mississippi regarding an anti-LGBTQ law. The law in question allows both private businesses and state employees to deny services to members of the LGBTQ community based solely on religious grounds. The law took effect on October 10, 2017 Read More

  Georgia’s Senate recently passed a bill, referred to as SB 375 or the “Keep Faith in Adoption and Foster Care Act,” that has the potential to enable child welfare organizations to prevent same-sex parents from adopting a child based on the organization’s beliefs. If the bill passes through the Georgia House, adoption organizations would Read More

  Recently, in the case of Zarda v. Altitude Express, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Title VII prohibition on sex discrimination includes sexual orientation discrimination. The case arose when Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who identifies as gay, claimed that his position was terminated after a customer complained that the worker Read More

  The Missouri Supreme Court is positioned to hear two LGBT rights cases. One of these cases involves a transgender teen who was denied access to appropriate facilities at a school. The second involves a gay man who claims discrimination because he did not demonstrate stereotypical masculine qualities. Both of these cases arise from the issue Read More

An anti-LGBT group called Liberty Counsel recently initiated a legal action against the city of Tampa, Florida for banning conversion therapy. This legal action comes after the Tampa City Council unanimously passed Ordinance 2017-47 which prohibits any type of counseling procedure or process that has the goal of changing a person’s gender expression, gender identity, Read More

  Morgantown, West Virginia recently passed a non-discrimination law to protect LGBTQ individuals as part of a human rights ordinance. This addition came when the seven-person Morgantown City Council voted unanimously to add non-discrimination language to the city’s existing ordinance. While this might seem like a small change, Morgantown is only the 11th city in Read More

The Supreme Court of the United States appears to be divided on a case concerning the refusal by a Colorado bakery to design a wedding cake for same sex couples. During the hearing of the cake case before the Supreme Court, the justices asked specific and probing questions of legal counsel on each side. Different Read More

  The state of California recently became part of LGBTQ history when its Board of Education approved 10 history textbooks that include LGBTQ events for K-8 classrooms. This decision made California the first state to approve of such textbooks. More interestingly, the California Department of Education rejected two textbooks that did not include details about Read More

Mississippi’s HB 1523 is a religious exemption law that passed in 2016 as a response to the US Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to allow same-sex couples to marry nationwide.  It is a virulently anti-LGBTQ law that allows both government workers and private companies to refuse to offer their services to LGBTQ individuals on the basis Read More