Blog Posts for Vermont
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.
Know Your Rights: What is ‘heightened scrutiny’ and why is it important?
Courts have found that laws that discriminate against certain groups of people are more likely to reflect prejudice against that group than they are good public policy. Rather than being assumed to be constitutional, such laws need to be justified with exceptionally good reasons. This is called “heightened scrutiny” and has, for example, been used in cases where a racial group is being discriminated against. GLAD has consistently argued in the courts that sexual orientation deserves “heightened scrutiny.” So it was an enormous breakthrough last week when the President and the Department of Justice (DOJ) agreed with GLAD on that point- and because of that also agreed that DOMA is unconstitutional.
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: DOJ Decides DOMA Is Unconsitutional, But DOMA Continues To Be Enforced
Given the breaking news that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will no longer defend Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), I wanted to let you know what that really means to the two lawsuits GLAD currently has in the federal courts trying to overturn DOMA—Gill and Pedersen .
Know Your Rights: An Introduction to GLAD’s Legal InfoLine
Legal InfoLine Manager Bruce Bell begins a regular weekly blog post today.
2010 Census - It’s Personal and Political
It’s not just Uncle Sam - GLAD wants you to take part in the 2010 census!
This is an historic opportunity to show who we are as families. For the first time, the census will count married same-sex couples, in addition to counting same-sex couples living in the same household.