Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc.

Our 2021-26 Strategic Plan identified five strategic goals: 1. Cementing ourselves as leaders in securing legal equality for our community. 2. Advancing legal reform through litigation and policy advocacy on a prioritized set of issues. 3. Embedding Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion – particularly racial and transgender/gender nonconforming equality – into every aspect of Lambda Legal’s work and organizational culture. 4. Securing our long-term financial health. 5. Making Lambda Legal a household name to those who care about LGBTQ+ equality.

We have made winning new protections for the most vulnerable in our community a primary goal of our work through 2026. Because we know that some members of our community are more likely to face discrimination and mistreatment than others, we are prioritizing work on behalf of these seven populations: 1) LGBTQ people facing systemic discrimination in housing, public accommodations, social services, and credit; 2) LGBTQ Youth in schools and other government systems such as foster care; 3) LGBTQ Seniors; 4) Transgender/gender-nonconforming people needing health care, identity documents, and other forms of care and recognition; 5) People facing bias in the justice system and policing such as LGBTQ people of color and people engaging in sex work; 6) People living with HIV facing criminalization and discrimination; and 7) LGBTQ Immigrants seeking asylum and/or in detention.

Lambda Legal works to achieve its goals through impact litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education, and we work on issues at the national, state, and local levels. Consonant with our 2021 – 2026 Strategic Plan, Lambda Legal identifies potentially harmful legislation early in its development; crafts litigation strategies should it be necessary to sue; works with potential clients whose cases will be the public face of such litigation; puts in place a communications strategy to educate the public about the issues of the case; and represents Lambda Legal’s clients, both in court and in the court of public opinion.

Lambda Legal goes to court with cases we believe we can win, and which hold the potential to further equality for the LGBTQ community. But we go to court fully aware of what we may face: a federal judiciary largely transformed by Trump-era appointees who are significantly more hostile toward LGBTQ people, with nearly 40% of Trump’s confirmed federal appellate judges having demonstrated anti-LGBTQ bias, which we documented in our January 2021 “Courts, Confirmations, & Consequences: How Trump Restructured the Federal Judiciary and Ushered in a Climate of Unprecedented Hostility toward LGBTQ+ People and Civil Rights.” We have won significant victories in courtrooms of judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans. Lambda Legal makes careful decisions about which court to litigate which issue and will not do so in those jurisdictions where it seems impossible to make our case successfully.

We face an uphill battle in state legislatures, where the political climate has shifted dramatically rightward, and has resulted in a dramatic uptick of anti-trans legislation introduced at the state level. This requires that we pay constant close attention to developments in multiple legislatures, and be ready to consult with allied lawmakers to help defeat such measures or mitigate their impact.

Lambda Legal is confident that we have the winning strategies, the most experienced legal practitioners in this field, and the firm belief in social justice and equality that will propel us to victory in the cases we litigate and the legislative and regulatory relief we seek.

Lambda Legal is staffed by highly experienced and knowledgeable attorneys with unique subject matter expertise. Every case we bring is fully briefed, and in each instance of objectionable legislation, a proposed bill is fully reviewed, and potential allies are identified for efforts to modify, defeat or win. In our public policy work, we monitor local, state, and federal initiatives that impact the LGBTQ community, employing state-of-the art software that also allows us to identify trends. We work in partnership with like-minded organizations (for example, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its state affiliates, Transgender Law Center, National Center for Lesbian Rights, and various state-wide Equality groups) to achieve our mutual goals. A “whole of agency” approach is used to respond to subject matter issues, and our lawyers from offices across the country work in cross-departmental teams to maximize their expertise.

Lambda Legal has a robust Communications department with extensive print and broadcast contacts and deep social media strategy, utilizing Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Our website, www.lambdalegal.org offers current and historic information about our policies and cases. So that we may achieve our Strategic Plan goals of expanding our impact and making Lambda Legal a “household name,” we continue to refine our communications strategy to better reach our target audiences through email, social media, and print.

Lambda Legal has helped to effect dramatic social change through historic courtroom victories and policy work in support of marriage equality, transgender rights, employment equality, HIV criminalization, provision of accurate identity documents and more. Our successes benefit not only our plaintiffs, the broader community and American democracy, but the people we work with every day.

We have been trailblazers in ending inequality against the LGBTQ community and all people living with HIV since our inception. We challenged a ban on school activity by a gay student group at the University of New Hampshire in 1974, and won the nation’s first HIV/AIDS discrimination case in 1983. In 2003, we persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn all remaining state sodomy laws in the US. In 2009, we won an historic unanimous decision in Iowa Supreme Court that denying marriage to same-sex couples is unconstitutional, paving the way for marriage equality, in which we were co-counsel in the historic Obergefell v. Hodges case at the Supreme Court. In 2022, we won a multi-year court battle on behalf of people living with HIV, who may now deploy and commission as officers in the U.S. military. The groundbreaking ruling represents a landmark moment in the fight to advance the rights of people living with HIV and reflects the reality that HIV is a chronic, treatable condition, not a reason to discriminate.

Today we face a systematic onslaught on our rights by far-right politicians across the country with an unprecedented barrage of bills targeting the LGBTQ community, and non-binary and transgender youth in particular. And despite a more enlightened Administration, we must still litigate in a judicial climate where one-quarter of all sitting circuit judges were appointed by Donald Trump. Lambda Legal serves as a firewall against heightened attacks on the LGBTQ community and people living with HIV, and we remain resolute in our fight to create a world where LGBTQ people and those living with HIV are respected, protected, and celebrated. We continue to do so by pursuing impact litigation and public policy advocacy in four areas:

• Defending LGBTQ identities and relationships
• Strengthening legal protections against LGBTQ discrimination
• Challenging policies harming the health and well-being of LGBTQ people and all individuals living with HIV
• Rooting out anti-LGBTQ bias in the justice system