Blog Posts for Rhode Island
DOMA and Taxes: Filing Now and Preserving Your Rights
If DOMA is overturned and you are in the process of appealing a previous tax return, you may be eligible to receive a refund on the extra taxes you paid. The IRS allows you to file amended income tax returns up to three years after the original return was filed. For example, in most cases you can still file an amended return for the 2009 tax year provided the IRS receives it before this April’s filing deadline. Read on for more information from our Legal InfoLine Manager, Bruce Bell.
Know Your Rights: Transgender Rights in New England
We’ve come a good way towards establishing legal protections for transgender people in New England in the past several years. In 2011, both Connecticut and Massachusetts added gender identity to their anti-discrimination laws, joining Rhode Island (2001), Maine (2005) and Vermont (2007) in providing protections in employment, housing and credit, and, in all but Massachusetts, public accommodations (like restaurants, bars, parks, stores, hospitals, shelters, etc.). But there is still work to do.
Know Your Rights: Protections Against Employment Discrimination
One of the great things about living in New England is that all six states offer anti-discrimination protections for LGBT employees and workers who are living with HIV. Most workers are “employees at will” and can be fired or discriminated against by their employer for any reason or no reason at all. However, states have identified “protected characteristics” and made it illegal to fire or discriminate against an employee just because they possess, or are perceived to possess, one or more of those characteristics. For lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) workers, the protected characteristic is “sexual orientation,” for workers living with HIV, “disability,” and for transgender workers, “gender identity.”
When Love Doesn’t Make a Family
This week, GLAD, the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and NCLR’s National Family Law Advisory Council released a revised version of Protecting Families: Standards for LGBT Families, a set of 10 guidelines aimed at reminding LGBT people how important it is to legally protect the families they create and to caution parents against wielding anti-LGBT laws against their partner should their relationship break-up. Basically, we’re calling on the members of our community—and their lawyers—to fight fairly and to do their best to avoid damaging custody disputes. As GLAD’s Mary Bonauto writes in her introduction to the standards, “We believe that, even in the midst of the emotional upheaval that inevitably accompanies the end of the adult relationship, families can do a great deal to resolve their differences in a manner that puts their children first.”
It’s Tax Time: Good News/Bad News
It’s everyone’s favorite time of year. At least there is some good news for transgender tax payers this year. But still the same bad news for married same sex couples.
Reality Check: The Big Lie About Catholic Charities, Adoption and Marriage Equality
Last month’s marriage equality hearing in Rhode Island left me feeling a little like Congressman Joe “You Lie!” Wilson. Wilson, you’ll recall, shouted his infamous exclamation at President Obama after the president stated in a speech to Congress that his health care legislation would not provide free health coverage for illegal immigrants, despite what vocal opponents of the healthcare bill were saying. As I watched Austin Nimocks of the anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund testify without blinking that marriage equality in Massachusetts “forced” Catholic Charities of Boston out of the adoption business, it was all I could do not to let loose a “You Lie!” right there in the marbled halls of the Rhode Island State House.
Something On Which GLAD & NOM Agree! Courts Have a Role to Play in the Real World
On the heels of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) announcement last week that it would no longer defend DOMA against legal challenges by GLAD and other organizations, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) issued an action alert urging members to immediately call their congressional reps to demand they defend the odious law.
“It’s a constitutional outrage,” NOM President Brian Brown wrote in the alert. “Why do we even have courts if the President himself gets to decide which laws are constitutional?” (Emphasis added).
Know Your Rights: An Introduction to GLAD’s Legal InfoLine
Legal InfoLine Manager Bruce Bell begins a regular weekly blog post today.
Marriage Momentum in Rhode Island
The momentum for marriage equality was palpable at the Rhode Island State House yesterday! The sight inside warmed my heart, as I was greeted by a throng of mostly marriage equality supporters holding colorful pro-equality signs (“Vote for Love!” “Love Thy Constituent,” “Grandparents for Marriage Equality”) aloft in the Rotunda, beneath a massive banner emblazoned with the words Gov. Lincoln Chafee spoke at his inauguration last month: “When marriage equality is the law in Rhode Island we honor our forefathers who risked their lives and fortune in the pursuit of human equality.”
Rhode Island Supports Marriage Equality
Today, the Rhode Island Marriage Coalition (RIMC) released the results of a new poll showing that 59 percent of Rhode Island voters support allowing same-sex couples to legally marry in the state.