LGBTQ Rights

The ACLU works to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, & queer people belong everywhere and can live openly and authentically without discrimination, harassment, or violence.

The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in 1936. What is now the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project was founded in 1986 and renamed in 2021. Today, the ACLU brings more LGBTQ rights cases and advocacy initiatives than any other national organization does. In fact, the ACLU has been counsel in seven of the nine LGBTQ rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided — more than any other organization. With our reach into the courts and legislatures of every state, there is no other organization that can match our record of making progress both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.

The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and violence toward transgender people, to close gaps in our federal and state civil rights laws, to prevent protections against discrimination from being undermined by a license to discriminate, and to protect LGBTQ people in and from the criminal legal system.

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For non-LGBTQ issues, please contact your local ACLU affiliate.

The ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project seeks to create a just society for all LGBTQ people regardless of race or income. Through litigation, lobbying, public education, and organizing, we work to build a country where our communities can live openly without discrimination and enjoy equal rights, personal autonomy, and freedom of expression and association.