News & Commentary

By Chase Strangio

The Supreme Court issued a historic ruling on June 26, 2015, granting same-sex couples the freedom to marry throughout the United States. As ACLU client Jim Obergefell and his co-plaintiffs stood triumphantly on the Court’s steps, advocates across the country celebrated this victory and the decades of work that brought it to fruition. From filing the very first lawsuit arguing for the freedom to marry in 1970 to representing Edie Windsor in the case that took down the Defense of Marriage Act to being counsel in 16 other federal marriage equality cases since 2013, the ACLU has been at the forefront of the fight for legal recognition of same-sex relationships.

By Joey Hernández and Zara Lockshin

 There is no “transgender exception” to the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution—the provision that prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment. That prohibition obligates prisons to treat inmates’ serious medical needs regardless of their sexual orientation. And that treatment

By Chase Strangio

By Joey Hernández and Anna Salem

Thanks to the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment in our Constitution, we have some simple and basic legal rules when it comes to prison health care. Prisons must provide the people in their custody adequate health care. Prisons can’t ignore people’s serious health needs. Decisions about what treatments people need must be made by health care professionals with the necessary expertise, not prison bureaucrats. Prisons can’t have blanket policies that say no one can ever get a certain form of health care, even if doctors say they really, really need it.Yesterday a federal court invoked these very uncontroversial legal principles to rule that California prison officials must provide Michelle-Lael Norsworthy, a transgender woman incarcerated at a men’s prison, with gender confirming surgery her doctors and medical experts say she desperately needs.