Omar Gonzalez-Pagan is a Senior Attorney in the New York Office of Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of LGBT people and people living with HIV. Gonzalez-Pagan has played an instrumental role in protecting the rights of LGBT people under federal civil rights laws in education, employment, health care, and housing. As counsel for Lambda Legal, Gonzalez-Pagan helped obtain two landmark decisions – the first and second appellate rulings in the country – holding that Title VII covers sexual orientation discrimination in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College and Zarda v. Altitude Express, Inc. And as lead counsel in Smith v. Avanti, he obtained the first court decision in the country holding that the Federal Housing Act’s sex discrimination prohibition covers discrimination against LGBT people. Gonzalez-Pagan has also played a key part in advancing the constitutional rights of LGBT people across the United States. As part of the legal team in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges, he helped secure the freedom to marry for same sex couples and their families across the United States. He is also a key architect behind Lambda Legal’s efforts to secure the ability of transgender people to obtain accurate identity documents, serving as lead counsel in the cases challenging the discriminatory birth certificate policies of Kansas, Puerto Rico, and Tennessee. Presently, Gonzalez-Pagan represents two same-sex couples and their children in two cases (Kiviti v. Pompeo and Mize v. Pompeo) challenging the U.S. Department of State’s policy treating the children of married same-sex couples as non-marital children and denying them birthright citizenship. Prior to joining Lambda Legal, Gonzalez-Pagan worked for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as an Assistant Attorney General, a Special Assistant District Attorney, and an Associate General Counsel to the Massachusetts Inspector General. Gonzalez-Pagan is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Cornell University.