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.
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Current Issues
The ACLU believes that sexual orientation and gender identity should not affect a person’s legal ability to be a parent. We are fully supported in this belief by reputable child welfare experts and social scientists who study LGBTQ parenting. We therefore advocate for LGBTQ people to have equal opportunities to build the kinds of families that they feel are most meaningful to them.
The ACLU believes that LGBTQ people, like everyone else, should have the freedom to build the kinds of personal, intimate relationships most meaningful to them without risking that their families will be disregarded or harmed by the state.
We’re working to make public schools safe and bias-free for LGBTQ students, defending students' free speech in school, and helping students start gay-straight alliance clubs. Check out our information for students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Learn about your rights, download resources, and get support here.
For over 80 years, the ACLU has included LGBTQ people in its vision of civil rights and civil liberties for all. We still have much more work to do to achieve lasting legal and social change. That’s why we’re fighting in the legislatures, courts, and streets for nondiscrimination laws that specifically protect LGBTQ people.
The ACLU champions transgender people’s right to be themselves. We’re fighting against discrimination in employment, housing, and public places (including restrooms) by seeking to add clear transgender protections to the law and bringing cases under the laws that already exist.
As part of our work to combat the relentless expansion of the criminal justice system, the ACLU works to ensure that LGBT people and people living with HIV/AIDS who have contact with law enforcement are treated fairly and are not singled out for violence or discrimination.
