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Pride season could bring more marriage victories

Appellate, federal district courts across the country expected to rule soon

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A look of the state of marriage equality litigation in various states (Blade image by Jim Neal).

A look of the state of marriage equality litigation in various states (Blade image by Jim Neal).

Marriage equality is advancing through the judicial system at breakneck speed, and the rulings are expected to keep coming in the near future as Pride season begins — and some cases will make history as the first rulings at the appellate level since the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Since that historic decision almost a year ago, a total of 14 federal courts have ruled in favor of marriage equality as a result of litigation in various states in addition to four state courts in New Mexico, New Jersey, Arkansas and Texas, which makes a total of 18 rulings.

The most recent decisions came late last month. Over the course of two days, U.S. District Judge Michael McShane, who’s gay, struck down Oregon’s ban on same-sex marriage, and U.S. District Judge John Jones III struck down the ban in Pennsylvania.

All in all, more than 70 cases are estimated to have been filed throughout the country seeking to strike down state bans on same-sex marriage. The only state without a pending marriage equality lawsuit is North Dakota, although litigation is expected soon there.

It’s only a matter of time before one of these cases reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, which could issue a nationwide ruling on marriage equality. At the rate that cases are advancing through the federal judiciary, observers predict the high court will take up a case at the start of its next term in the fall, and make a decision in June 2015.

In the days and weeks ahead, numerous district and appellate courts are poised to make rulings on same-sex marriage, either because they’ve completed oral arguments or they’ve been asked to issue judgment in the cases.

Appeals courts may soon deliver rulings

The most prominent among those cases are those before four federal appeals courts because they’ll be the first federal appeals court rulings on marriage after the Supreme Court decision against the Defense of Marriage Act.

At any time, the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals could hand down rulings in the case challenging Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage, Kitchen v. Herbert, and the case challenging Oklahoma’s ban, Bishop v. Smith. The court heard arguments for the Utah case on April 10 and the Oklahoma case on April 17.

Much like the marriage cases that were before the Supreme Court last year, the appeals court could decide to issue a ruling on the technical basis of standing.

In Utah, the standing issue is the result of the Salt Lake City clerk being named as a defendant in the lawsuit, but not appealing the lower court ruling against the marriage ban. As a result, Gov. Gary Herbert and Attorney General Sean Reyes had to show that they have standing to appeal the decision.

In Oklahoma, the standing issue stems from whether the already-married plaintiff couple in the case has standing to challenge the non-recognition of their marriage given because they only sued Tulsa County Clerk Sally Howell Smith, whom the district court held has nothing to do with recognizing marriages, instead of a state official who denied recognition.

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said while standing is a “real issue” in the Oklahoma case, he doesn’t think it’s significant in the Utah litigation.

“In contrast to Oklahoma, where there is a real question whether the married couple has standing to sue a county clerk, there really is not much question that the AG and the governor were proper defendants,” Minter said. “Unlike Oklahoma, where county clerks are judicial officers, in Utah the county clerks are under the direct supervision and control of the executive branch (e.g., AG and governor).”

It would seem that a ruling on standing grounds would be beneficial for marriage equality in the Utah case, but adverse for same-sex couples in the Oklahoma case. But it’s hard to say what the results of a standing ruling would mean, especially if the companion lawsuit in the other state is decided on the merits.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who’s defending the marriage law in court along with Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, appears eager to be the face of anti-gay marriage forces if the case reaches the Supreme Court. During a news conference last month, he criticized attorneys general in other states who’ve elected not to defend state bans on same-sex marriage.

“For elected officials, governors or attorneys general, to pick and choose what laws (they) will enforce I think is a tragedy, and is the next step to anarchy,” Herbert said. “We have an obligation as a state to defend those laws.”

In the same news conference, Herbert suggested that he believes being gay is a choice, saying “what you choose to do with your sexual orientation” is different from other characteristics such as race.

“What your attraction may be is something else, but how you act upon those impulses is a choice,” Herbert said.

Also expected to rule soon is the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which at any time could decide on Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage, Bostic v. Schaefer. In that case, oral arguments took place before the appeals court on May 13.

Rulings in other cases before the appeals courts aren’t quite so imminent. One case before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that has recently seen movement is the case challenging Idaho’s ban on same-sex marriage: Latta v. Otter.

The Ninth Circuit issued a stay prohibiting same-sex weddings from taking place in Idaho following the district court ruling against the state marriage law, but pledged to consider the case on an expedited basis and scheduled oral arguments for the week of Sept. 8.

The court was already hearing a challenge to Nevada’s ban on same-sex marriage, Sevick v. Sandoval. The court has granted a request to hear the case on expedited basis and will hear arguments in September.

Notably, the Ninth Circuit is also continuing to hear a case seeking marriage equality in Hawaii, Jackson v. Fuddy, even though the state already legalized gay nuptials through the legislative process. The Hawaii Family Forum, an anti-gay group allowed to intervene in the case, has asked the court to issue a ruling on the constitutionality of banning same-sex marriage in the event Hawaii decides to repeal marriage equality. Briefings in that case are set to conclude on June 25.

Another appeals court that isn’t as far along is the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court is considering DeLeon v. Perry a challenge to the Texas ban on same-sex marriage. Oral arguments in the case aren’t yet scheduled, but last week the court set the briefing schedule for the case.

The situation with another appeals court, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, is unique because it’s the only federal appeals court ever to consider at the same time a marriage case from each state within the circuit. Officials in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky have each appealed rulings against same-sex marriage bans in their states to the Sixth Circuit.

The only case among those four seeking marriage equality is the Michigan case, DeBoer v. Snyder. The Tennessee case, Tanco v. Haslam, is seeking recognition of same-sex marriage within the state. The Kentucky case, Bourke v. Beshear, is also seeking recognition of same-sex marriage within the state, but the case was amended at the district court level by same-sex couples seeking the ability to wed within the state.

The Ohio litigation is the consolidated case of Obergefell v. Himes and Henry v. Himes. The former was a case seeking state recognition of same-sex marriage for the purposes of birth certificates; the latter was a case seeking recognition for the purposes of death certificates. The cases were consolidated on May 20.

The Sixth Circuit hasn’t scheduled oral arguments in any of these cases yet, but briefings are expected to conclude by the end of this month.

Wisconsin among potential district court rulings

The vast majority of the marriage equality lawsuits are still pending at the district court level and have the potential for imminent rulings striking down same-sex marriage bans in other states.

In at least three states, rulings on the merits of state bans on same-sex marriage could come at any time because the briefing is complete and the judges haven’t given any indication they want to hear oral arguments before making a ruling. Those lawsuits are before federal courts in Wisconsin, Indiana and West Virginia.

With a ruling imminent in the Wisconsin case of Wolf v. Walker, Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican facing re-election this year, uncharacteristically seemed to back away from support of the marriage ban when asked whether he thinks it violates the U.S. Constitution.

“Any federal judge has got to look at that law not only with respect to the state’s constitution but what it means in terms of the U.S. Constitution, as well.” Walker said. “Again, I’m not going to pretend to tell a federal judge in that regard what he or she should do about it.”

His administration is apparently bracing for a ruling from the judge against the current law. Last week, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen took the unusual step of asking for a stay ahead of the ruling in the event the judge overseeing the case decides to strike down the ban.

A ruling in Indiana could come down imminently from any of three cases where briefings have been complete: Fujii v. Governor, Love v. Pence or Baskin v. Bogan. In West Virginia, the fully briefed case seeking marriage equality is McGee v. Cole.

In Nebraska, arguments were also recently completed before the state Supreme Court in the case of Nichols v. Nichols, clearing the way for a ruling at any time. However, plaintiffs in the case are seeking the right to divorce as opposed to the right to marry. While initially considered a marriage case, justices reportedly indicated during the arguments they might focus their ruling on divorce rights without altering the state ban on same-sex marriage.

In other states, motions for preliminary or permanent injunction motions have been fully briefed, so decisions here could also come imminently that allow same-sex couples to wed without definitively deciding the merits of the constitutionality of the bans. These states are Florida, Indiana, Kentucky and Texas.

Close on the heels of rulings in these cases may be a decision in a Colorado case filed in state court: Brinkman v. Long. A hearing has been set for June 12. It’s different from other cases because it’s a state lawsuit, not a federal lawsuit, so a ruling here would be along the lines of the litigation that brought marriage equality to Arkansas before the State Supreme Court stayed the ruling.

Briefings are also fully complete for lawsuits seeking marriage equality in Louisiana, Robicheaux v. George and Forum for Equality Louisiana v. Barfield, but a ruling won’t happen soon because oral arguments are scheduled for June 25.

In another state, North Carolina, a briefing is completed in the consolidated case of Fisher-Borne v. Smith and Gerber v. Cooper. On Monday, the magistrate in the case has indicated the case would be stayed until a decision in the Virginia case. Both Virginia and North Carolina are in the same circuit, so a ruling against the Virginia ban would make the North Carolina ban vulnerable.

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Honoring the legacy of New Orleans’ 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire

Why the arson attack that killed 32 gay men still resonates 50 years later

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Fifty years ago this week, 32 gay men were killed in an arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans. (Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

On June 23 of last year, I held the microphone as a gay man in the New Orleans City Council Chamber and related a lost piece of queer history to the seven council members. I told this story to disabuse all New Orleanians of the notion that silence and accommodation, in the face of institutional and official failures, are a path to healing.  

The story I related to them began on a typical Sunday night at a second-story bar on the fringe of New Orleans’ French Quarter in 1973, where working-class men would gather around a white baby grand piano and belt out the lyrics to a song that was the anthem of their hidden community, “United We Stand” by the Brotherhood of Man. 

“United we stand,” the men would sing together, “divided we fall” — the words epitomizing the ethos of their beloved UpStairs Lounge bar, an egalitarian free space that served as a forerunner to today’s queer safe havens. 

Around that piano in the 1970s Deep South, gays and lesbians, white and Black queens, Christians and non-Christians, and even early gender minorities could cast aside the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the times to find acceptance and companionship for a moment. 

For regulars, the UpStairs Lounge was a miracle, a small pocket of acceptance in a broader world where their very identities were illegal. 

On the Sunday night of June 24, 1973, their voices were silenced in a murderous act of arson that claimed 32 lives and still stands as the deadliest fire in New Orleans history — and the worst mass killing of gays in 20th century America. 

As 13 fire companies struggled to douse the inferno, police refused to question the chief suspect, even though gay witnesses identified and brought the soot-covered man to officers idly standing by. This suspect, an internally conflicted gay-for-pay sex worker named Rodger Dale Nunez, had been ejected from the UpStairs Lounge screaming the word “burn” minutes before, but New Orleans police rebuffed the testimony of fire survivors on the street and allowed Nunez to disappear.

As the fire raged, police denigrated the deceased to reporters on the street: “Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.” 

For days afterward, the carnage met with official silence. With no local gay political leaders willing to step forward, national Gay Liberation-era figures like Rev. Troy Perry of the Metropolitan Community Church flew in to “help our bereaved brothers and sisters” — and shatter officialdom’s code of silence. 

Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. “It’s high time that you people, in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union,” Perry said. 

Two days later, on June 26, 1973, as families hesitated to step forward to identify their kin in the morgue, UpStairs Lounge owner Phil Esteve stood in his badly charred bar, the air still foul with death. He rebuffed attempts by Perry to turn the fire into a call for visibility and progress for homosexuals. 

“This fire had very little to do with the gay movement or with anything gay,” Esteve told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I do not want my bar or this tragedy to be used to further any of their causes.” 

Conspicuously, no photos of Esteve appeared in coverage of the UpStairs Lounge fire or its aftermath — and the bar owner also remained silent as he witnessed police looting the ashes of his business. 

“Phil said the cash register, juke box, cigarette machine and some wallets had money removed,” recounted Esteve’s friend Bob McAnear, a former U.S. Customs officer. “Phil wouldn’t report it because, if he did, police would never allow him to operate a bar in New Orleans again.” 

The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. “How dare you hold your damn news conferences!” one business owner shouted. 

Ignoring calls for gay self-censorship, Perry held a 250-person memorial for the fire victims the following Sunday, July 1, culminating in mourners defiantly marching out the front door of a French Quarter church into waiting news cameras. “Reverend Troy Perry awoke several sleeping giants, me being one of them,” recalled Charlene Schneider, a lesbian activist who walked out of that front door with Perry.

(Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Esteve doubted the UpStairs Lounge story’s capacity to rouse gay political fervor. As the coroner buried four of his former patrons anonymously on the edge of town, Esteve quietly collected at least $25,000 in fire insurance proceeds. Less than a year later, he used the money to open another gay bar called the Post Office, where patrons of the UpStairs Lounge — some with visible burn scars — gathered but were discouraged from singing “United We Stand.” 

New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August 1973. Gay elites in the city’s power structure began gaslighting the mourners who marched with Perry into the news cameras, casting suspicion on their memories and re-characterizing their moment of liberation as a stunt. 

When a local gay journalist asked in April 1977, “Where are the gay activists in New Orleans?,” Esteve responded that there were none, because none were needed. “We don’t feel we’re discriminated against,” Esteve said. “New Orleans gays are different from gays anywhere else… Perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment.” 

(Photo by H.J. Patterson/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

An attitude of nihilism and disavowal descended upon the memory of the UpStairs Lounge victims, goaded by Esteve and fellow gay entrepreneurs who earned their keep via gay patrons drowning their sorrows each night instead of protesting the injustices that kept them drinking. 

Into the 1980s, the story of the UpStairs Lounge all but vanished from conversation — with the exception of a few sanctuaries for gay political debate such as the local lesbian bar Charlene’s, run by the activist Charlene Schneider. 

By 1988, the 15th anniversary of the fire, the UpStairs Lounge narrative comprised little more than a call for better fire codes and indoor sprinklers. UpStairs Lounge survivor Stewart Butler summed it up: “A tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.” 

Finally, in 1991, at Stewart Butler and Charlene Schneider’s nudging, the UpStairs Lounge story became aligned with the crusade of liberated gays and lesbians seeking equal rights in Louisiana. The halls of power responded with intermittent progress. The New Orleans City Council, horrified by the story but not yet ready to take its look in the mirror, enacted an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and public accommodations that Dec. 12 — more than 18 years after the fire. 

“I believe the fire was the catalyst for the anger to bring us all to the table,” Schneider told The Times-Picayune, a tacit rebuke to Esteve’s strategy of silent accommodation. Even Esteve seemed to change his stance with time, granting a full interview with the first UpStairs Lounge scholar Johnny Townsend sometime around 1989. 

Most of the figures in this historic tale are now deceased. What’s left is an enduring story that refused to go gently. The story now echoes around the world — a musical about the UpStairs Lounge fire recently played in Tokyo, translating the gay underworld of the 1973 French Quarter for Japanese audiences.

When I finished my presentation to the City Council last June, I looked up to see the seven council members in tears. Unanimously, they approved a resolution acknowledging the historic failures of city leaders in the wake of the UpStairs Lounge fire. 

Council members personally apologized to UpStairs Lounge families and survivors seated in the chamber in a symbolic act that, though it could not bring back those who died, still mattered greatly to those whose pain had been denied, leaving them to grieve alone. At long last, official silence and indifference gave way to heartfelt words of healing. 

The way Americans remember the past is an active, ongoing process. Our collective memory is malleable, but it matters because it speaks volumes about our maturity as a people, how we acknowledge the past’s influence in our lives, and how it shapes the examples we set for our youth. Do we grapple with difficult truths, or do we duck accountability by defaulting to nostalgia and bluster? Or worse, do we simply ignore the past until it fades into a black hole of ignorance and indifference? 

I believe that a factual retelling of the UpStairs Lounge tragedy — and how, 50 years onward, it became known internationally — resonates beyond our current divides. It reminds queer and non-queer Americans that ignoring the past holds back the present, and that silence is no cure for what ails a participatory nation. 

Silence isolates. Silence gaslights and shrouds. It preserves the power structures that scapegoat the disempowered. 

Solidarity, on the other hand, unites. Solidarity illuminates a path forward together. Above all, solidarity transforms the downtrodden into a resounding chorus of citizens — in the spirit of voices who once gathered ‘round a white baby grand piano and sang, joyfully and loudly, “United We Stand.” 

(Photo by Philip Ames/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of “Tinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.”

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New Supreme Court term includes critical LGBTQ case with ‘terrifying’ consequences

Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings

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The U.S. Supreme Court is to set consider the case of 303 Creative, which seeks to refuse design services for same-sex weddings. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Supreme Court, after a decision overturning Roe v. Wade that still leaves many reeling, is starting a new term with justices slated to revisit the issue of LGBTQ rights.

In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the court will return to the issue of whether or not providers of custom-made goods can refuse service to LGBTQ customers on First Amendment grounds. In this case, the business owner is Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado who wants to opt out of providing her graphic design services for same-sex weddings despite the civil rights law in her state.

Jennifer Pizer, acting chief legal officer of Lambda Legal, said in an interview with the Blade, “it’s not too much to say an immeasurably huge amount is at stake” for LGBTQ people depending on the outcome of the case.

“This contrived idea that making custom goods, or offering a custom service, somehow tacitly conveys an endorsement of the person — if that were to be accepted, that would be a profound change in the law,” Pizer said. “And the stakes are very high because there are no practical, obvious, principled ways to limit that kind of an exception, and if the law isn’t clear in this regard, then the people who are at risk of experiencing discrimination have no security, no effective protection by having a non-discrimination laws, because at any moment, as one makes their way through the commercial marketplace, you don’t know whether a particular business person is going to refuse to serve you.”

The upcoming arguments and decision in the 303 Creative case mark a return to LGBTQ rights for the Supreme Court, which had no lawsuit to directly address the issue in its previous term, although many argued the Dobbs decision put LGBTQ rights in peril and threatened access to abortion for LGBTQ people.

And yet, the 303 Creative case is similar to other cases the Supreme Court has previously heard on the providers of services seeking the right to deny services based on First Amendment grounds, such as Masterpiece Cakeshop and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In both of those cases, however, the court issued narrow rulings on the facts of litigation, declining to issue sweeping rulings either upholding non-discrimination principles or First Amendment exemptions.

Pizer, who signed one of the friend-of-the-court briefs in opposition to 303 Creative, said the case is “similar in the goals” of the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation on the basis they both seek exemptions to the same non-discrimination law that governs their business, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA, and seek “to further the social and political argument that they should be free to refuse same-sex couples or LGBTQ people in particular.”

“So there’s the legal goal, and it connects to the social and political goals and in that sense, it’s the same as Masterpiece,” Pizer said. “And so there are multiple problems with it again, as a legal matter, but also as a social matter, because as with the religion argument, it flows from the idea that having something to do with us is endorsing us.”

One difference: the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation stemmed from an act of refusal of service after owner, Jack Phillips, declined to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple for their upcoming wedding. No act of discrimination in the past, however, is present in the 303 Creative case. The owner seeks to put on her website a disclaimer she won’t provide services for same-sex weddings, signaling an intent to discriminate against same-sex couples rather than having done so.

As such, expect issues of standing — whether or not either party is personally aggrieved and able bring to a lawsuit — to be hashed out in arguments as well as whether the litigation is ripe for review as justices consider the case. It’s not hard to see U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to lead the court to reach less sweeping decisions (sometimes successfully, and sometimes in the Dobbs case not successfully) to push for a decision along these lines.

Another key difference: The 303 Creative case hinges on the argument of freedom of speech as opposed to the two-fold argument of freedom of speech and freedom of religious exercise in the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation. Although 303 Creative requested in its petition to the Supreme Court review of both issues of speech and religion, justices elected only to take up the issue of free speech in granting a writ of certiorari (or agreement to take up a case). Justices also declined to accept another question in the petition request of review of the 1990 precedent in Smith v. Employment Division, which concluded states can enforce neutral generally applicable laws on citizens with religious objections without violating the First Amendment.

Representing 303 Creative in the lawsuit is Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that has sought to undermine civil rights laws for LGBTQ people with litigation seeking exemptions based on the First Amendment, such as the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, wrote in a Sept. 12 legal brief signed by her and other attorneys that a decision in favor of 303 Creative boils down to a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment.

“Colorado and the United States still contend that CADA only regulates sales transactions,” the brief says. “But their cases do not apply because they involve non-expressive activities: selling BBQ, firing employees, restricting school attendance, limiting club memberships, and providing room access. Colorado’s own cases agree that the government may not use public-accommodation laws to affect a commercial actor’s speech.”

Pizer, however, pushed back strongly on the idea a decision in favor of 303 Creative would be as focused as Alliance Defending Freedom purports it would be, arguing it could open the door to widespread discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“One way to put it is art tends to be in the eye of the beholder,” Pizer said. “Is something of a craft, or is it art? I feel like I’m channeling Lily Tomlin. Remember ‘soup and art’? We have had an understanding that whether something is beautiful or not is not the determining factor about whether something is protected as artistic expression. There’s a legal test that recognizes if this is speech, whose speech is it, whose message is it? Would anyone who was hearing the speech or seeing the message understand it to be the message of the customer or of the merchants or craftsmen or business person?”

Despite the implications in the case for LGBTQ rights, 303 Creative may have supporters among LGBTQ people who consider themselves proponents of free speech.

One joint friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court, written by Dale Carpenter, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who’s written in favor of LGBTQ rights, and Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment legal scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues the case is an opportunity to affirm the First Amendment applies to goods and services that are uniquely expressive.

“Distinguishing expressive from non-expressive products in some contexts might be hard, but the Tenth Circuit agreed that Smith’s product does not present a hard case,” the brief says. “Yet that court (and Colorado) declined to recognize any exemption for products constituting speech. The Tenth Circuit has effectively recognized a state interest in subjecting the creation of speech itself to antidiscrimination laws.”

Oral arguments in the case aren’t yet set, but may be announced soon. Set to defend the state of Colorado and enforcement of its non-discrimination law in the case is Colorado Solicitor General Eric Reuel Olson. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would grant the request to the U.S. solicitor general to present arguments before the justices on behalf of the Biden administration.

With a 6-3 conservative majority on the court that has recently scrapped the super-precedent guaranteeing the right to abortion, supporters of LGBTQ rights may think the outcome of the case is all but lost, especially amid widespread fears same-sex marriage would be next on the chopping block. After the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against 303 Creative in the lawsuit, the simple action by the Supreme Court to grant review in the lawsuit suggests they are primed to issue a reversal and rule in favor of the company.

Pizer, acknowledging the call to action issued by LGBTQ groups in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, conceded the current Supreme Court issuing the ruling in this case is “a terrifying prospect,” but cautioned the issue isn’t so much the makeup of the court but whether or not justices will continue down the path of abolishing case law.

“I think the question that we’re facing with respect to all of the cases or at least many of the cases that are in front of the court right now, is whether this court is going to continue on this radical sort of wrecking ball to the edifice of settled law and seemingly a goal of setting up whole new structures of what our basic legal principles are going to be. Are we going to have another term of that?” Pizer said. “And if so, that’s terrifying.”

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Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman, named president of Human Rights Campaign

Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

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Kelley Robinson (Screen capture via HRC YouTube)

Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman and veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, is to become the next president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading LGBTQ group announced on Tuesday.

Robinson is set to become the ninth president of the Human Rights Campaign after having served as executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and more than 12 years of experience as a leader in the progressive movement. She’ll be the first Black, queer woman to serve in that role.

“I’m honored and ready to lead HRC — and our more than three million member-advocates — as we continue working to achieve equality and liberation for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people,” Robinson said. “This is a pivotal moment in our movement for equality for LGBTQ+ people. We, particularly our trans and BIPOC communities, are quite literally in the fight for our lives and facing unprecedented threats that seek to destroy us.”

Kelley Robinson IS NAMED as The next human rights Campaign president

The next Human Rights Campaign president is named as Democrats are performing well in polls in the mid-term elections after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving an opening for the LGBTQ group to play a key role amid fears LGBTQ rights are next on the chopping block.

“The overturning of Roe v. Wade reminds us we are just one Supreme Court decision away from losing fundamental freedoms including the freedom to marry, voting rights, and privacy,” Robinson said. “We are facing a generational opportunity to rise to these challenges and create real, sustainable change. I believe that working together this change is possible right now. This next chapter of the Human Rights Campaign is about getting to freedom and liberation without any exceptions — and today I am making a promise and commitment to carry this work forward.”

The Human Rights Campaign announces its next president after a nearly year-long search process after the board of directors terminated its former president Alphonso David when he was ensnared in the sexual misconduct scandal that led former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign. David has denied wrongdoing and filed a lawsuit against the LGBTQ group alleging racial discrimination.

Kelley Robinson, Planned Parenthood, Cathy Chu, SMYAL, Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders, Amy Nelson, Whitman-Walker Health, Sheroes of the Movement, Mayor's office of GLBT Affairs, gay news, Washington Blade
Kelley Robinson, seen here with Cathy Chu of SMYAL and Amy Nelson of Whitman-Walker Health, is the next Human Rights Campaign president. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
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