GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, Inc. (GLAD)

Founded in 1978, GLAD came into existence as a public interest law firm created to ensure that the LGBTQ community in New England could speak in its own voice in the courts about issues that concerned our community. We sought to educate judges, lawyers, and the public about our lives and our need for legal protections. Today, we continue to employ strategic litigation, public policy advocacy, and education to press for social change, both in New England and nationally. As we live in a nation committed to the rule of law as the means of guaranteeing that all citizens are treated equally and with dignity, our goal is the same as the words etched over the U.S. Supreme Court building: equal justice under law. GLAD presses for change and expansion of rights under four main initiatives: the Civil Rights Project, the Transgender Rights Project, the AIDS Law Project, and the Youth Initiative. One of GLAD's experienced attorneys directs each project. GLAD comprises four departments - Legal, Public Affairs and Education, Development, and Finance and Operations. As impact litigators, our efforts and successes extend to all people burdened by the unfair policies, unconstitutional laws, and discriminatory practices that we challenge. While GLAD's target populations are the LGBTQ communities of New England and those people affected by HIV, the institutional reform and social change achieved by our work benefit hundreds of thousands of people in New England and beyond. We work specifically to expand and defend the rights of vulnerable segments of our community, including youth and students, elders, people of color and indigenous people, immigrants, those in prison, and those who are economically disadvantaged. Our GLAD Answers service is a free service that is open to callers from New England and around the nation. GLAD works closely with national partners to provide litigation support, strategize, and file amicus briefs in cases around the country.

GLAD employs strategic litigation, public policy advocacy, and education in making our world more just, inclusive, and affirming. We work toward a society in which our identities are simultaneously irrelevant to our opportunities in life and celebrated as part of the broader diversity of American society. What we are able to achieve first here in New England through impact litigation and first-of-their kind cases, such as second parent adoptions in the 1990s and marriage equality in the 2000s, sets the standard and creates the template for progress across the country. Our legal info line and connections to private law firms nationwide allows us to stay up-to-date on, and respond immediately to, the real legal issues LGBTQ people face every day. As such, GLAD is nationally recognized as being a leader in the LGBTQ movement. We are not only uniquely positioned to change law and policy, we are changing hearts and minds through a proven education strategy of one-to-one contact with key decision-makers and influencers, far-reaching media coordination, and community outreach efforts.

GLAD's legal team consists of nationally renowned experts on LGBTQ law. Civil Rights Project Director Mary Bonauto is nationally acknowledged as the chief strategist of the marriage movement. She is also recognized as a movement leader around issues of parentage and family law. Jennifer Levi, the director of the Transgender Rights Project, is a nationally distinguished expert on transgender legal issues and has served as counsel in a number of precedent-setting cases establishing basic rights for transgender people, including groundbreaking work on healthcare access issues and gender markers in identification documents. Bennett Klein, director of GLAD's AIDS Law Project, has litigated cases in state and federal trial and appellate courts establishing legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and people living with HIV, including the successful argument before the Supreme Court in GLAD's 1998 Bragdon v. Abbott case that stated people with HIV can be protected from discrimination via the Americans with Disabilities Act. Janson Wu has served as GLAD's Executive Director since December 2014, following eight years as a staff attorney. During his time at GLAD, Janson has been deeply involved in the breadth of GLAD's work, including the rights of LGBT elders, family law and parentage, employment benefits, transgender rights, DOMA, and marriage equality. He served on the legal teams of many of GLAD's significant cases, including the DOMA challenges Gill v. OPM and Pedersen v. OPM, and the successful asylum case of Ugandan activist John Abdallah Wambere. In 2012, in the case In re Madelyn B, Janson successfully argued before New Hampshire's highest court that a non-biological lesbian mother should be recognized as a parent. Together, GLAD's small legal team brings more than 100 years of combined experience.

2021 updates:
- Helped secure a victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County, establishing that sexual orientation discrimination and gender identity discrimination constitute sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
- Helped pass the Rhode Island Uniform Parentage Act, ensuring that all LGBTQ families are recognized and protected, regardless of marital status or genetic relationship. Continued work in coalition to pass similar legislation in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
- Helped pass a bill in New Hampshire that expands access to adoption, by ensuring that unmarried parents can adopt children, LGBTQ parents can confirm their parentage through adoption; and children born through assisted reproduction can have their parental relationships secured through a court judgment of parentage.
- Furthered work in Connecticut to deepen outreach to, and awareness of issues facing, the LGBTQ elder community – such as questions of discrimination as the first generation of “out” LGBTQ people to enter the world of congregate living.
- Continued to work in coalition to advocate for reform of Maine’s juvenile justice system, including the closure of a juvenile detention facility and seek additional services and legal protections for the youth.
- Successfully advocated for the issuance of an executive order and new guidance on transgender service members that equalize terms of service for transgender people.
- Continued our successful transgender I.D. clinic to provide legal representation to transgender people in New England to change their names and identity documents.
- Continued work to end exclusions of transgender health care in public, private, and state employee insurance coverage, including litigation in western Massachusetts involving a hospice nurse denied insurance coverage of transition-related care form his self-insured employer.
- Continued to use litigation, legislation, public policy and education to advance access to PrEP and to eradicate the stigma attached to it, including working on bills in Connecticut and Massachusetts to allow for the prescribing of PrEP to mature minors without parental involvement and a bill in Maine that would extend PrEP access to pharmacies, and suing a Rhode Island doctor for his refusal to prescribe PrEP to a man who subsequently became infected with HIV.
- Continued to monitor ongoing state legislative efforts in New England that seek to roll back hard-won gains protecting the confidentiality of HIV information in medical records.
- Continuing to monitor and work on the availability of treatment for HIV-positive individuals suffering from lipodystrophy.
- Produced and distributed shelter access cards for transgender people experiencing homelessness in MA, CT, and RI in both English and in Spanish.
- Created resource web pages for COVID-19, racial justice, and 2020 election voter registration and information.