Search Results for: sexual orientation

Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys reached a settlement on Monday over the state law dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.” The parties came to an agreement after two years of litigation and an appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. This agreement paves the way for students and teachers in Florida [...]

Alabama’s House of Representatives approved two bills on Thursday, including one that would restrict public funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The other bill passed by the Republican-led house would restrict absentee ballot assistance by charging individuals for helping others with absentee voting. The first bill, SB-129, sponsored by Senator Will Barfoot (R), [...]

Reports of bias incidents in New Jersey increased by 22 percent from 2022 to 2023, according to preliminary data released by the state’s attorney general Thursday. The preliminary data shows there were 2,699 bias incidents reported to New Jersey law enforcement in 2023. Anti-black and anti-Jewish bias remained the most common motivations for racial and [...]

Iowa lawmakers declined to advance a piece of legislation on Wednesday that would have removed gender identity as a protected class under the state’s civil rights law. In a 3-0 tally, a subcommittee of the Iowa legislature’s Judiciary Committee voted against moving the bill forward. Although the bill sought to add a new category to [...]

Russian LGBTQ+ rights organization SOS Crisis Group reported on Wednesday that Rizvan Dadaev, a Chechen who was detained due to his sexual orientation, managed to escape from Russia with assistance from the organization after being tortured. LGBTQ+ people have a history of persecution in Russia and its Chechnya region. Dadaev, a resident of Chechnya’s capital [...]

West Virginia State Senator Mike Azinger introduced a slew of bills targeting transgender people on Wednesday, including a bill to classify transgender people as “obscene matter” and a bill banning gender-affirming care for people under the age of 21. Senate Bill 195 amends the state’s indecent exposure law to criminalize engaging in “obscene matter.” It [...]

Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in an interview with a state-run television channel on Wednesday that the government would shortly submit legislation allowing same-sex civil marriages, despite reservations from the Orthodox Church and some lawmakers.  Mitsotakis vowed to eliminate any discrimination based on sexual orientation in marriages. He added that “marriage equality has already [...]

LGBTQ rights group Lambda Legal announced a lawsuit Monday seeking to block enforcement of a Louisiana ban on gender-affirming procedures for transgender youth. The civil rights organization prepared the lawsuit, along with the Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation of Harvard Law and a Louisiana law firm, on behalf of five Louisiana minors and [...]

US federal Judge Stephen Locher on Friday blocked key provisions of SF 496, an Iowa law prohibiting school libraries from distributing books containing LGBTQ+ and gender identity issues. Judge Locher stated that the law “sweeps so broadly,” that more than 500 books, including literary classics and self-help books, faced removal. Iowa claimed that the selection [...]

A UK government report released Wednesday detailing the discriminatory policy used to decide which asylum seekers can be housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge was subsequently deleted from the government website. Although the policy discriminated against asylum seekers on the grounds of age and sex, the government stated this discrimination was justified under provisions in [...]