Impact Litigation

Through our impact litigation, we seek to change discriminatory policies affecting LGBTQ and HIV-positive people. In these cases, we may only represent a small group of people, but our aim is to get rulings that are far-reaching and improves the lives of our community on a large scale.

“Death to Asylum Rule” Impact Litigation

In the summer of 2020, the Trump administration issued proposed federal regulations designed to end the asylum system in the United States. If they had gone into effect, the regulations would have resulted in the denial of most or all LGBTQ claims across the nation.  

Immigration Equality and 80,000 other entities and individuals submitted public comments demanding sweeping changes to the rule. After only four months, the administration claimed to have reviewed all the comments, and made almost no changes. They announced the rule would go into effect in 30 days.

In response, Immigration Equality and Lambda Legal sued the Trump administration on behalf of the plaintiffs, Immigration Equality, Oasis, TransLatina Coalition, Transgender Law Center, and the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project.

We argued the case in early January 2021, and were able to secure a nationwide temporary restraining order against the regulations in their entirety!

Family Impact Litigation

The State Department treats children born abroad to married U.S. citizens as born “out of wedlock,” denying them U.S. citizenship. We sued the government on behalf of four families who are leading the fight to change this discriminatory, unconstitutional policy⁠—not only for themselves but for all LGBTQ families.

Because of our impact litigation, three of the families have secured permanent U.S. birthright citizenship for their young children. The fourth case, for the Zaccari-Blixt family, is still underway.

Impact Litigation Family Stories

• 

• 

• 

•