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HRC linked to law firm defending Exxon Mobil against anti-gay allegations
Board member works for Seyfarth Shaw, which maintains perfect 100 rating on HRC index
A board member of the Human Rights Campaign works for a law firm that has defended oil-and-gas giant Exxon Mobil against charges of anti-gay bias, the Washington Blade has learned.
Although his employer asserts he had nothing to do with the defense of Exxon Mobil, his involvement with both the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy group and his international law firm, Seyfarth Shaw, raises questions about why HRC hasn’t publicly rebuked the firm for defending alleged anti-gay bias at the company, such as by docking the company points on the Corporate Equality Index.
Chris Carolan, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., is one of 32 HRC board members. According to HRC’s website, board members make policy, manage finances and coordinate volunteer involvement in addition to having ultimate authority over the organization.
He’s also a partner at the Chicago-based international law firm Seyfarth Shaw. According to his bio on Seyfarth Shaw’s website, Carolan is a partner in the New York office.
His practice, his bio says, focuses on transactional work, including banking and lending, private equity investments, real estate finance, venture financings, mergers and acquisitions as well as bankruptcy and restructuring.
In August, the Washington Blade first reported that Carolan’s law firm, Seyfarth Shaw, was responsible for defending Exxon Mobil against charges of anti-gay bias. That was confirmed in June by the publication of a legal document in the case bearing the name of the law firm.
The LGBT group Freedom to Work filed the complaint before the Illinois Human Rights Department last year on the basis of paired-resume testing in response to a job opening at the company.
For the same job opening, the group submitted two applications: One was from a more qualified applicant who outed herself as LGBT by noting work at the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund; the other was a less qualified applicant who gave no indication about her sexual orientation or gender identity. The less qualified non-LGBT applicant received multiple callbacks, the more qualified LGBT applicant received nothing.
Exxon Mobil offers no explicit protections barring anti-LGBT discrimination in the workplace. Just last month, shareholders for the 17th time rejected a proposal that would have added such pro-LGBT protections to the policy. Only 19.5 percent of shareholders supported the failed resolution, which was sponsored by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
In February 2014, the Illinois Department of Human Rights dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, saying Freedom to Work has no employee-employer relationship with Exxon Mobil. However, Freedom to Work is asking the Illinois Human Rights Commission to review the case. The request is still pending, according to Freedom to Work, which considers the litigation ongoing.
HRC is already on the record in support of the lawsuit against Exxon Mobil. In a May 2013 email blast to supporters, HRC President Chad Griffin called the filing “a brave legal complaint from the equality advocates at Freedom to Work.”
Carolan’s employment at Seyfarth Shaw and membership on HRC’s board raises numerous questions, such as whether he ever voiced objections to his law firm’s participation in the lawsuit or was even aware of it happening. He didn’t respond to the Blade’s request for comment.
Brian Kiefer, a Seyfarth spokesperson, said Carolan had no involvement in the matter at hand when asked by the Blade about the litigation, but declined to comment further.
A secondary question is whether Carolan’s employment at Seyfarth Shaw discouraged HRC from taking against action the law firm after its defense of Exxon Mobil became known.
In August, Michael Cole-Schwartz, then a spokesperson for HRC, told the Washington Blade his organization would dock points from a law firm representing Exxon Mobil in an anti-gay bias lawsuit in HRC’s Corporate Equality Index.
“Yes, we would and have done so in the past,” Cole-Schwartz said at the time. “The firm Foley & Lardner was docked 15 points previously for their work representing organizations trying to stop marriage equality (engagements which have since ended and they are no longer docked), although it should be noted the firm has also had a long history of pro bono support for LGBT causes. For the 2012 CEI, we raised the possible point deduction from -15 to -25.”
But after it was revealed Seyfarth Shaw was the law firm defending Exxon Mobil, no deduction was assessed. A look online at HRC’s Corporate Equality Index as of Friday reveals the law firm still has a perfect score of “100.” Moreover, HRC has made no public statements in regard to Seyfarth Shaw working for Exxon Mobil.
Still, HRC has turned up the heat on Exxon Mobil for its policies. Following the announcement from the White House that President Obama is set to sign an executive order barring federal contractors from engaging in LGBT discrimination, HRC said it solicited a statement from the company asking if it would comply with the directive. The response purportedly from Exxon Mobil was that its policy included protections for LGBT people, even though it doesn’t explicitly mention sexual orientation and gender identity.
In a news statement at the time, Fred Sainz, HRC’s vice president of communications, said Exxon Mobil was lying about protections under the policy, saying the company’s response was “inĀ factĀ aĀ masterclassĀ inĀ doublespeak ā crafted,Ā noĀ doubt,Ā byĀ aĀ teamĀ ofĀ well-paidĀ lawyers.”
HRC’s Sainz offered an extended response to the situation, saying HRC understands that law firms have duties to represent clients ā even in unpopular situations.
“It is the court that is responsible for determining whether a lawyerās client has violated the law based on the facts and law put before it,” Sainz said. “Unless a lawyer takes extreme steps that would harm the larger LGBT community, we, like all Americans, allow lawyers to participate in our adversarial judicial process without necessarily ascribing to them the behavior of their clients.”
Sainz added that at no time did anyone from Seyfarth Shaw consult with HRC about client engagement or engage in any kind of lobbying effort related to the Corporate Equality Index.
David Lat, a law blogger for “Above the Law,” has already raised questions about whether Seyfarth Shaw was compelled to defend Exxon Mobil against anti-gay discrimination.
“Large firms like Seyfarth are arguably too big to handle such controversial cases comfortably; they have too many current and prospective employees and clients who might be upset by their defense of alleged anti-gay bias,” Lat wrote in August. “In contrast, elite conservative boutiques like Bancroft or Cooper & Kirk, which defended Californiaās Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, donāt have such worries. They are small firms, with fewer clients and employees, and many of those clients and workers are social conservatives, who would be unfazed by defending a large corporation accused of anti-gay prejudice.”
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, had no comment on the situation other than to call on Seyfarth Shaw to direct Exxon Mobil to adopt a more pro-LGBT policy.
“We do hope the lawyers at Seyfarth Shaw will urge their client Exxon to update its employment policies to specifically list sexual orientation and gender identity in its workplace protections,” Almeida said. “After years of Exxon management fighting against the shareholder resolution to add LGBT protections, it would also make sense for Seyfarth lawyers to give Exxon managers some training on creating equal opportunity for LGBT employees and applicants.ā
The complete statement from HRC’s Fred Sainz in response to the situation follows:
Like the vast majority of Americans, HRC recognizes that our judicial system requires parties on different sides of a dispute to vigorously advocate for their position before a court based on both the facts and applicable law. Lawyers and their firms have ethical duties to represent clients, even unpopular ones, who are accused of violating the law or otherwise have a need for legal representation. It is the court that is responsible for determining whether a lawyerās client has violated the law based on the facts and law put before it. Unless a lawyer takes extreme steps that would harm the larger LGBT community, we, like all Americans, allow lawyers to participate in our adversarial judicial process without necessarily ascribing to them the behavior of their clients.
In two extraordinary circumstances, HRC has criticized law firms that have taken affirmative steps beyond simple legal representation to advocate anti-LGBT positions and take on matters that would have a significant adverse impact on the larger LGBT community.
In the case of Foley & Lardner, HRC deducted points from the firmās CEI score in 2011 because of the firmās leadership and advocacy on behalf of the National Organization for Marriage, the nationās leading anti-LGBT organization. In particular, we witnessed a firm partner advising community members who made anti-LGBT statements at a public hearing. This partner was also registered as a lobbyist for NOM, and the firm made false and hurtful arguments in legal correspondence to a state agency. In a letter to the firm chairman, we explained why we considered the firmās actions at the time to be outside the scope of its professional responsibilities.
With regards to King & Spalding, HRC criticized the firm for voluntarily accepting taxpayer funds to take up the House Republicansā defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, the law struck down last year as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This highly unusual representation would have had a significant negative impact on LGBT Americans and would have required the firm to make inaccurate and harmful representations about LGBT people. Moreover, the firm had no obligation to take on this new high profile client and matter or to defend a government actor that was capable of providing its own representation.
We take seriously our role in calling out behavior, whether by an individual, corporation or a law firm, that is intended to harm the LGBT community. Over the years HRC has taken the lead in criticizing Exxon Mobil for its lack of commitment to equality, including recently revealing that it lied about its non-discrimination policies. At the same time, we recognize the ethical principles that law firms operate under every day, which include defending their clients against allegations that they may have broken the law.
We do not criticize lawyers and firms for the roles they are expected to play in ensuring the fair application of justice. But we also expect that that they will act within the scope of these ethical obligations and we will hold those that act outside of them in ways that are harmful to the LGBT community accountable for their actions.
At no time did anyone from Shaw consult with HRC about their client engagement nor did they engage in any kind of lobbying effort related to the CEI.
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Honoring the legacy of New Orleansā 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire
Why the arson attack that killed 32 gay men still resonates 50 years later
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 Orleansā 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, āUnited We Standā by the Brotherhood of Man.
āUnited we stand,ā the men would sing together, ādivided we fallā ā the words epitomizing the ethos of their beloved UpStairs Lounge bar, an egalitarian free space that served as a forerunner to todayās 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 ā 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: āSome thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.ā
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 āhelp our bereaved brothers and sistersā ā and shatter officialdomās code of silence.
Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. āItās high time that you people, in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union,ā 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.
āThis fire had very little to do with the gay movement or with anything gay,ā Esteve told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer. āI do not want my bar or this tragedy to be used to further any of their causes.ā
Conspicuously, no photos of Esteve appeared in coverage of the UpStairs Lounge fire or its aftermath ā and the bar owner also remained silent as he witnessed police looting the ashes of his business.
āPhil said the cash register, juke box, cigarette machine and some wallets had money removed,ā recounted Esteveās friend Bob McAnear, a former U.S. Customs officer. āPhil wouldnāt report it because, if he did, police would never allow him to operate a bar in New Orleans again.ā
The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. āHow dare you hold your damn news conferences!ā 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. āReverend Troy Perry awoke several sleeping giants, me being one of them,ā recalled Charlene Schneider, a lesbian activist who walked out of that front door with Perry.
Esteve doubted the UpStairs Lounge storyās 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 ā some with visible burn scars ā gathered but were discouraged from singing āUnited We Stand.ā
New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August 1973. Gay elites in the cityās 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, āWhere are the gay activists in New Orleans?,ā Esteve responded that there were none, because none were needed. āWe donāt feel weāre discriminated against,ā Esteve said. āNew Orleans gays are different from gays anywhere elseā¦ Perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment.ā
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 ā with the exception of a few sanctuaries for gay political debate such as the local lesbian bar Charleneās, 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: āA tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.ā
Finally, in 1991, at Stewart Butler and Charlene Schneiderās 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 ā more than 18 years after the fire.
āI believe the fire was the catalyst for the anger to bring us all to the table,ā Schneider told The Times-Picayune, a tacit rebuke to Esteveās 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. Whatās left is an enduring story that refused to go gently. The story now echoes around the world ā 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 pastās 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 ā and how, 50 years onward, it became known internationally ā 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 ā in the spirit of voices who once gathered āround a white baby grand piano and sang, joyfully and loudly, āUnited We Stand.ā
Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of āTinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.ā
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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
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 ā 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 ā whether or not either party is personally aggrieved and able bring to a lawsuit ā 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. Coloradoās own cases agree that the government may not use public-accommodation laws to affect a commercial actorās 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 Smithās 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
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.
āIām honored and ready to lead HRC ā and our more than three million member-advocates ā as we continue working to achieve equality and liberation for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people,ā Robinson said. āThis 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.”
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 ā and today I am making a promise and commitment to carry this work forward.ā
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.
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