Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders

New England’s leading legal rights organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on
sexual orientation, HIV status and gender identity and expression.

Our Work Transgender Rights Project

Transgender Rights Project

Through the Transgender Rights Project (TRP), GLAD puts our litigation, legislative, and educational assets to work in a focused way to establish clear legal protections for the transgender community.

Transgender Rights Project

Surveys

Transgender Family Law Survey GLAD is surveying New England family law practitioners about their experience and knowledge of transgender issues. Our goals are to identify areas of need, and to build more legal capacity to serve transgender clients in the family law area.

Insurance Coverage of Transition-Related Health Care GLAD is collecting stories about people’s experiences with health insurance coverage related to gender transition, to help us determine how we can best address legal concerns in this area.

Video

Everyone Matters: Dignity and Safety for Transgender People

About the Transgender Rights Project

Transgender people face the most basic and blatant discrimination every day - from being denied access to employment, housing, or healthcare, to being physically attacked because of the way they look or dress. In New England, only Rhode Island, Maine, and Vermont provide explicit laws that prohibit discrimination against transgender people, and only Vermont and Connecticut have hate crimes laws that protect them. At the federal level, there are no laws explicitly protecting transgender people in any context.

TRP Director Jennifer Levi is a nationally-recognized expert in transgender legal issues. She serves on the Legal Committee of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and is a founding member of both the Transgender Law & Policy Institute and the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. With GLAD Senior Attorney Ben Klein, she authored the chapter “Pursuing Protections for Transgender People through Disabilities Laws,” in the book Transgender Rights.

TRP priorities include supporting efforts to write gender identity and expression into the anti-discrimination laws of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; advocating for appropriate identity documents and standards for changing gender markers on them; ensuring access to health care; and securing employment protections.

The TRP works closely with state-based transgender advocacy organizations, including the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, ctEquality and TransGender New Hampshire.

Through the TRP, we also work with our allies to raise the profile of transgender people in the public eye. “A lot of transphobia is based on fear and ignorance,” says Levi. “Too many people say they have never met a transgender person. It’s very powerful when trans people tell their stories. It moves hearts and minds.”

Jennifer Levi, Esq.

Jennifer L. Levi is one of our nation’s leading experts on transgender legal issues. During the ten years Jennifer has been with GLAD, she was lead counsel in a number of precedent setting cases establishing basic rights for transgender people. These cases include: Doe v. Yunits, in which Jennifer represented a transgender student denied the right to attend school because of the clothing she wore; Rosa v. Park West Bank, which established key protections for transgender people under federal law; Beger v. DMA, which resulted in a reversal of Division of Medical Assistance’s refusal to cover breast surgery for a transgender woman, among many others. Jennifer was also co-counsel in the case of Goodridge v. Dep’t Public Health which established the right of same-sex couples to marry in Massachusetts.

Jennifer is a Professor of Law at Western New England College. She serves on the Legal Committee of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and is a founding member of both the Transgender Law & Policy Institute and the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.

Jennifer is a graduate of Wellesley College (1985) and the University of Chicago Law School (1992). She has also taught law at the Chicago-Kent Law School and is a former law clerk for Judge Michael Boudin at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Jennifer Levi interviewed in Tapestry Magazine in 2005

Related Cases

O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

Victory • February 02, 2010

Victory! On February 2, 2010, the U.S. Tax Court issued an important… Read More

Freeman v. Denny’s

Pending

In a critical, first-of-its-kind ruling, Androscoggin Superior Court on May 27, 2010… Read More

Doe v. Yunits

Victory • January 01, 2000

GLAD obtained a landmark ruling, in the first reported decision ever in… Read More

Blanchette v. Saint Anselm College

Settled • December 31, 2006

In June 2005, GLAD filed a lawsuit in U. S. District Court… Read More

Barreto-Neto v. Town of Hardwick Police Department

Victory • December 31, 2004

GLAD worked with a police officer in the Town of Hardwick, Vermont,… Read More

Adams v. Bureau of Prisons

Pending GLAD, in conjunction with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Florida Institutional… Read More

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Stories Matter

The more people know their LGBT and HIV+ family, friends, and neighbors, the more likely they are to support our rights and help us work toward full equality. Read More

Transgender Rights Project Founders Circle

Members of the Founders Circle generously contribute $3,000 or more to support the Transgender Rights Project’s work for equality.
Join the Founders Circle

Joanne Herman, Founding Chair
Anonymous
Sandy Anderson & Meg Wallace
Fran & Zinka Benton-Rzeznik
Deborah Bershel, MD
A.M. Clark
Diane Ellaborn, LICSW
Ralph & Miriam Freidin
Joanna Frost, LICSW
Rachel Goldberg, Esq.
Paul T. Hempel
Maureen M. Murphy Esq. &
Jamie L. Mills, Esq.
Catherine Reuben, Esq
Sara Schnorr
Anne E. Stanback &
Charlotte Kinlock
Dana Zircher
Tides Foundation’s State Equality Fund, a philanthropic partnership that includes the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, the Gill Foundation and anonymous donors