SLC joined a coalition of LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in North Central Florida to push for Alachua County to pass a ban on conversion therapy for minors. Conversion therapy is a harmful and scientifically denounced practice with the goal of changing or reducing one’s same-sex attraction or altering a person’s gender identity through physical treatments like aversive conditioning, and a variety of behavioral, cognitive, and psychoanalytic practices.

All people should be able to access places of public accommodation, including facilities that offer lodging, food, entertainment, health care, professional services, or recreation. However, federal and state law currently do not provide explicit protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity at places of public accommodation. Several cities and counties, including Gainesville, have added sexual orientation and/or gender identity as protected classes under local human rights ordinances to provide these protections.

Plaintiffs Jami Claire, Kathryn Lane, and Ahmir Murphy are state employees who have been denied medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria because of the state’s categorical exclusion of coverage for medically necessary gender-affirming care in health care plans provided to state employees. Some transgender people experience gender dysphoria, the medical diagnosis for the clinically significant distress sometimes resulting from the incongruence between a person’s gender identity and their sex assigned at birth. Left untreated, this serious medical condition often leads to debilitating distress, depression, anxiety, impairment of function, and self-harm, including suicide.

The right to privacy and equal protection won out over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) unprecedented political interference and unjustified delay in approving emergency contraception (also known as the Morning-After Pill) as an over-the-counter drug for all women without any age restriction. With plaintiffs from Gainesville, Florida, this action was brought on behalf of women, girls, reproductive rights organizations and National Women’s Liberation. After an eight-year battle, the Court ordered the FDA to make emergency contraception available over-the-counter and eliminated the prescription requirement, age restrictions, and any other restrictions on how it is sold. This suit had nationwide impact. Co-counsel was the Center for Reproductive Rights.

After Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, litigation ensued to compel the National Archivist to publish the ERA in the US Constitution. With pro bono co-counsel Baker Donelson, we filed an amicus in the federal Virginia and Massachusetts cases on behalf of the US Council of Mayors and ERA organizations from Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana. We explained the import and impact of the ERA in a policy brief, arguing that ratification of the ERA would put the United States in the company of all other industrialized nations in guaranteeing equality for women; lead to sex discrimination claims being subjected to a strict scrutiny analysis by courts along with race, religion and national origin; and provide uniform protections from sex-based discrimination across the United States for the first time in history.