Each year, the National LGBT Bar Association’s Lavender Law® Conference provides a challenging and rewarding learning experience for our attendees and presenters. To cater to our highly diverse demographic of practitioners, legal scholars, members of the judiciary and law students, the latter of whom make up half of the conference attendees, both introductory and advanced content will be presented.
Workshop Schedule
In addition to day-long seminars focused on family law and transgender issues (the LGBT Family Law Institute and the Transgender Law Institute), the 2015 Conference will feature workshops on cutting edge legal issues affecting LGBT individuals, families and the community.
For a complete list of workshops offered in 2014, please click here.
Current Workshop List
Titles, descriptions, times and speakers subject to change:
General Attendance Session One
Session One
Session Two
General Attendance Session Two
General Attendance Session Three
Session Three
Session Four
Session Five
General Attendance Session One
Wednesday, August 5 | 9:00am – 10:30am
Marriage 2015
Location: Salons I/II
By the time our annual conference rolls around, we will have a Supreme Court decision that may settle the issue of marriage equality. The issues presented for the Court are whether states must allow same-sex marriage and whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed outside of their jurisdiction. Speakers from all the major cases, including NCLR, GLAD, Lambda Legal, and the ALCU will discuss this potentially landmark ruling. They will analyze the Supreme Court’s decision, its possible implications for the rights of LGBT as well as religious persons, and the agenda priorities our movement ought to consider as it moves forward.
Speakers: Mary Bonauto, William Eskridge, James Esseks, Shannon Minter, Carole Stanyar, Camilla Taylor
Concurrent Workshops Session One
Wednesday, August 5 | 10:45am – 12:15pm
Selection Bias and LGBT Jurors
Location: Northwestern/Ohio State
In a landmark case between GlaxoSmithKline and Abbott Labs, San Francisco’s Ninth Circuit Court ruled that individuals cannot be removed from a jury due solely to their sexual orientation or gender identity. This panel will discuss the Ninth Circuit ruling in addition to general issues surrounding LGBT-related voir dire, peremptory strikes based on LGBT prejudice, and detecting implicit bias against LGBT jurors. Speakers will present an analysis of the case, a perspective from the judiciary and information about how to best select and communicate with a jury.
Speakers: Hon. Zeke Zeidler, Randy Katz, Lousene Hoppe
Justice at Risk: How the Politics of Judicial Elections are Impacting the LGBT Community and What We Can Do About It
Location: Great America I/II
CLE Ethics Credit Applicable for this WorkshopThis panel will examine how the LGBT community is impacted by the increasing prominent role that politics and special interest money play in state judicial elections. Speakers will assess how cases involving LGBT equality are being used as a means to attack the courts through jurisdiction-stripping legislation, calls for impeachment, recusal motions, and anti-LGBT rhetoric from judges themselves. The panel will explore the benefits of moving away from judicial elections and towards a merit-based system of judicial appointment. Speakers will also discuss ethical conduct under state ethical codes after the Supreme Court’s decision in Williams-Yulee v Florida Bar.
Speakers: Debra Erenberg, Eric Lesh, Jim Reed
CLE Materials 1, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4, CLE Materials 5, CLE Materials 6, CLE Materials 7, CLE Materials 8, CLE Materials 9
Transgender Health Care Exclusions, Present and Future
Location: Purdue/Wisconsin
This workshop will highlight the work being done to challenge individual denials and categorical healthcare exclusions for transgender health care. In this workshop, we will focus on key advocacy strategies that have been successful in individual claim appeals as well as at the system-level with private businesses and government agencies. In the private sector, more and more states are issuing insurance bulletins prohibiting categorical exclusions for transition-related health care in health care plans that they manage. In the public insurance realm, Medicare has removed its exclusion for transgender surgical care and more states are removing exclusions in their state-level Medicaid plans. Unfortunately, private and public insurers are responding to these prohibitions in ways that continue to exclude many critical transition-related health care treatments and are creating unreasonable eligibility requirements. For example, many plans continue to categorically exclude treatments such as breast reconstructive surgery and facial reconstructive surgery for transgender women by applying a vague and ever-changing definition of “cosmetic”. Also, in the wake of the policy changes prohibiting exclusions, many plans have begun proposing or implementing unreasonable eligibility requirements such as mandating transgender people obtain a legal name change or undergo a two year real-life test before providing surgical care. Panelists will discuss the legal strategies that have been used to litigate individual denials in the public and private sector and will discuss the best policies, practices, and resources for challenging individual and categorical exclusions.
Speakers: Daniel Bruner, Sasha Buchert, Jacob Richards, Harper Jean Tobin, Ezra Young
CLE Materials 1, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4
LGBTQ Privacy
Location: Belmont
While LGBTQ individuals continue to gain social equality, privacy and control over how and when to disclose one’s sexual orientation or gender identity remain of critical importance to the LGBTQ community. For example, should the government be permitted to require transgender individuals to publicly disclose whether they have undergone gender confirmation surgery in order to change the gender marker on a government-issued identification? This panel will examine LGBTQ privacy issues such as this, including whether or not there is a constitutional right to limit the government’s ability to out one’s intimate information, whether there is a cause of action against government officials who disclose someone’s sexual orientation/gender identity, and whether statutory privacy regimes can be used to help prevent cyberbullying of LGBTQ teens. The panel will also consider and discuss whether privacy is, in fact, a laudable goal, or whether efforts to promote LGBTQ privacy have the unintended effect of keeping LGBTQ individuals in the closet.
Speakers: Scott Skinner-Thompson, Ari Waldman, Scott A. Schoettes
CLE Materials, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4, CLE Materials 5,
Creating Free Legal Clinics
Location: Addison
CLE Credit Not Applicable for this WorkshopChildren being raised by same-sex couples are twice as likely to live in poverty as those being raised by married, different-sex couples. Same-sex couples raising children tend to be concentrated the most in states which provide them the least legal protections. This workshop will discuss how Family Equality Council, working in partnership with law schools and the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York, worked with volunteer attorneys to create a series of free legal clinics, targeted toward the LGBT community. Attendees will learn how to take these programs back to their schools and/or bar associations in order to create free clinics in their schools or towns.
Speakers: Denise Brogan-Kator, Brett Figlewski, Jennifer Kirby
Trends in Employment, Labor, and Benefit Laws
Location: Clark
This workshop will provide practical practice tips and updates about employment law developments for attorneys who represent employees and employers in human resources disputes, including a discussion of groundbreaking rulings affecting the LGBT community and information about creating inclusive and LGBT-friendly workplaces.
Speakers: Laura Maechtlen, Mark T. Phillis
Teaching Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and the Law: A Roundtable Discussion
Location: Michigan/Michigan State
CLE Credit Not Applicable for this Workshop. All Interested May Attend.
This workshop is intended for individuals who teach, have taught, or will teach Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity courses in law school or undergraduate settings. The workshop will be structured as an informal, facilitated discussion in which participants can share ideas about teaching-related topics. Topics will be participant-generated, but will likely include: 1) overall course structure and philosophy, 2) the use of textbooks versus other reading materials, and 3) how to meet the challenge of keeping pace with doctrinal developments while maintaining a predictable course arc. The workshop welcomes faculty regardless of tenurial status, and especially invites adjuncts to join our discussion.
Facilitator: Leonore F. Carpenter
Concurrent Workshops Session Two
Wednesday, August 5 | 2:00pm – 3:30pm
A Primer on Cyber Attacks and the Emerging Legal Landscape
Location: Belmont
Businesses of all types face an ever-increasing threat that personal information they process or maintain may be improperly disclosed as the result of a data leak or criminal cyber attack. A diverse panel moderated by John Trevino, Regional Privacy Officer at BT Global, including Assistant U.S. Attorney William Ridgway, who serves as the Deputy Chief of the National Security and Cybercrimes in Chicago, Judith Branham, Vice President at Stroz Friedberg, and Michael Ponto, Partner at Faegre Baker Daniels, will begin with a primer on the nature and extent of cybersecurity threats that businesses face in 2015. Panelists will then offer practical advice for those who suffer such incidents, including timely updates on hot topics such as the extent of FTC and other agency authority to regulate cybersecurity, President Obama’s PDNPA and recent executive orders on cybersecurity, and the fast-developing law relating to data breach liabilities.
Speakers: Mike Ponto, Judith Branham, John Trevino, William Ridgeway
LGBTQ Youth in the Juvenile Justice System
Location: Michigan/Michigan State
LGBTQ youth are over represented in the juvenile justice system. Judges, and all related system stakeholders, must understand why this over representation exists, the damage done to LGBTQ youth by criminalizing their survival methods and the unique emotional and physical risks to these youth while in the system, and learn what they are able to do to avoid perpetuation of these circumstances. This program will cover education about LGBTQ youth in the foster care system, the child protection system and the juvenile justice system. The focus of the second part of the program is practical tips on developing techniques for judges to deal with LGBTQ youth and their families.
Speakers: Hon. Beth A. Allen, Hon. Bobbe Bridges (Ret.), Hon. Stuart Katz, Hon. Craig E. Arthur
CLE Materials, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4
Enforcing Federal Civil Rights Laws for Transgender People
Location: Great America I/II
Over the last several years, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has actively enforced federal civil rights laws on behalf of transgender people, including in the education, employment, housing, and criminal justice contexts. This workshop will highlight the Division’s recent enforcement efforts on behalf of transgender individuals under the civil rights statutes enforced by the Division, including investigations, litigation, and amicus participation in federal courts. The panel will also discuss the impact of Attorney General Eric Holder’s December 2014 announcement that the Department of Justice will take the position that the protections against sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to claims of discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity, including transgender status. The panelists on this workshop are current Division attorneys who are members of the Division’s LGBTI Working Group and have worked on these issues.
Speakers: Dwayne Bensing, Diana Flynn, Lori Kisch, Alyssa Lareau, Joseph Wardenski
CLE Materials 1, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4, CLE Materials 5, CLE Materials 6, CLE Materials 7, CLE Materials 2B, CLE Materials 9, CLE Materials 10
Estate Planning Issues for the LGBT Community in a Post-Marriage Equality World
Location: Purdue/Wisconsin
This workshop will address the myriad issues raised by marriage, children, committed unmarried relationships, retirement, and taxes for the LGBT community. These are the issues not discussed in a law school Wills, Trusts and Estate course.
Speakers: Joan M. Burda, Wendy Hartmann, Paula Kohut, Scott E. Squillace
IP Assets (Part II): How to Obtain and Protect Intellectual Property in the Media and Retail Consumer Law Context
Location: Armitage
This workshop will focus on significant changes in trademark, copyright, and patent laws that will affect businesses and private practice in media and retail consumer law context. The panelists include those involved with the recent legislative changes and major IP cases. Discussion will include latest measures to protect intellectual property (IP) in the media and consumer products, and generally how to obtain and protect IP assets.
Speakers: Ross Allen, John Cabeca, Spencer Jones, Julius Towers, William Tran, David Tsai
Open Questions and New Frontiers in the Era of Marriage Equality
Location: Addison
This workshop will explore a range of issues that we expect to become increasingly pressing in the impending age of full marriage equality. Panelists will explain why “live-and-let-live” is not a viable solution to demands for religious accommodation in an age of “sexual civil rights” (such as same-sex marriage, abortion, and access to contraception), offer “a report from the red states,” detailing the work that lies ahead in jurisdictions where the freedom to marry is likely to precede most other forms of LGBT equality, explore the legal implications of consensual non-monogamy, and consider whether access to assisted procreation should be a priority on the LGBT-rights agenda.
Speakers: Professor Michael Boucai, Professor Mary Anne Case, Professor Cliff Rosky, Professor Ed Stein
HIV Advocacy for the Hardest Hit and Hardest to Reach: Working Within Systems that Manage the Marginalized
Location: Clark
This panel will explore the criminal justice and immigration systems as spaces for HIV advocacy efforts that can reach the most marginalized LGBT and HIV-affected individuals in federal and state prisons, and immigration detention facilities. This discussion will be inherently intersectional in nature, and will provide an opportunity to discuss HIV advocacy across systems, settings, and populations. It also brings the spotlight to systematically neglected individuals and communities, and explores new efforts and collaborations across movements to address their needs.
Speakers: Suraj Madoori, Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, Ayako Miyashita, Peter Perkowski, Keren Zwick
Junior Scholars
Location: Ohio State
CLE Credit Not Applicable for this WorkshopThis panel will give junior, up-and-coming scholars the opportunity to present their work.
Coordinator: Courtney G. Joslin
Correction of Discharge Certificate for Transgender Veterans
Location: Northwestern
This workshop will discuss the procedures for requesting a name change to a veteran’s DD-214 and legal arguments supporting such a request. It will also discuss recent developments on this issue.
Speakers: Stephen Lessard, Paula Neira, Bridget Wilson
General Attendance Session Two
Wednesday, August 5 | 3:45pm – 5:15pm
Putting the "T" First! The Trans Agenda
Location: Salons I/II
What are the next issues after marriage? They are already here! In April the White House announced its support to ban conversion therapies. Three states already have protections on the books and more than 18 states are moving on pending legislation, making the potential for national protection legislation “Leelah’s Law” a reality. In military issues, the first openly transgender active duty service member, a highly decorated soldier named Shane Ortega, was beautifully portrayed in the Washington Post highlighting the plight of the hundreds of active duty transgender service members. Attorneys are more and more successfully making the case that denying medical care to inmates because of negative stigma and unfavorable public opinion is unacceptable. Meanwhile the Task Force is presenting new approaches to stopping violence, a new program Stop Trans Murder is focusing on new community-based approaches. And what is likely to be a world-wide game changer, India’s two million transgender people were recognized as a legally protected minority group, a “third gender.” Attend this presentation to begin to become updated on the fast-paced issues of transgender inclusion.
Speakers: John Knight, Professor Kylar Broadus, Jamison Green, Jennifer Levi, Shannon Minter, Paula Neira
General Attendance Session Three
Thursday, August 6 | 9:00am – 10:30am
Religious Freedom or a License to Discriminate?
Location: Salons I/II
The Annual Conference has been featuring these so-called “religious freedom restoration act” laws since at least Lavender Law 2011 – Los Angeles. Last year, RFRA’s became headline grabbing news as Arizona’s mega-RFRA bill was beaten back with high-profile help from local business leaders and national corporations. No such intensity was forth-coming in Mississippi and the anti-LGBT law easily passed. When this issued moved onto Arkansas and Indiana this year, a diversity of national voices began to swell in opposition and even more people took notice. Do these anti-LGBT laws exist despite of or because of historic gains on marriage equality? We will also address pending cases involving “religious freedom” claims under state and federal law, along with a prediction on when we will see this matter next rise to the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Speakers: Professor Tobias Barrington Wolff, Professor Dale Carpenter, Louise Melling, Professor Douglas NeJaime, Jenny Pizer
Concurrent Workshops Session Three
Thursday, August 6 | 10:45am – 12:15pm
Ending Conversion Therapy: Legal & Legislative Strategies
Location: Michigan/Michigan State
So-called “conversion therapy” has served as a cornerstone of anti-LGBT advocates’ strategy to deny our civil rights and has ensnared countless LGBT people – often youth, including transgender youth – with its toxic lies and abusive practices. Join a panel of experts at the forefront of dismantling conversion therapy. Topics of discussion will include the first-ever consumer-fraud lawsuit (a high-profile trial is scheduled for June 2015), nation-wide organizing (including in Illinois) to enact legislation to protect youth from conversion therapy, and other strategies to end the abuse.
Speakers: Samantha Ames, Illinois Representative Kelly Cassidy, Alison Gill, Sam Wolfe
CLE Materials, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4, CLE Materials 5, CLE Materials 6
Using Community Lawyering to Serve Low-Income LGBT Clients
Location: Northwestern/Ohio State
This session will discuss how we can use community lawyering to serve LGBT people living in poverty. There will be an interactive discussion about different models such as medical-legal partnerships serving transgender patients and joint clinics with LGBT Centers or other community organizations.
Speakers: Cathy Sakimura, Lisa Cisneros, Liz Vennum, Amy Williams
LGBT or Q? Prove It: Bias in the Adjudication of Immigration Claims Based on Sexual Orientation
Location: Purdue/Wisconsin
Despite groundbreaking legal strides and greater overall acceptance of LGBT rights, fair adjudication of LGBT immigration claims remains uneven. While some adjudicators are receptive to the experiences of the community, others are ignorant or outright homophobic. This panel will address some of the challenges practitioners have faced in representing LGBT people in immigration cases, both in cases based on marriage and in cases based on a fear of persecution abroad. The panel will also address the crisis that currently exists in the immigration court system where access to legal representation is not guaranteed under the law and where biases can impact LGBT asylum seekers who present their cases without a lawyer.
Speaker: Geoffrey Heeren, Michael Jarecki, Aaron Morris, Keren Zwick
The Affordable Care Act and HIV: How Ensuring Access to Nondiscriminatory Care, Treatment, and Prevention - Including PrEP - Could Pave the Way to an AIDS-Free Generation
Location: Belmont
This workshop will discuss issues at the cutting edge of HIV treatment and prevention – issues that remain critical to the LGBTQ community, particularly gay and bisexual men and transgender women and men. Breakthroughs in drug treatments are giving people living with HIV longer and more productive lives, and hold the promise of dramatic reductions in new infections in our community. The workshop will address these promises, and efforts to combat the continuing stigma and discrimination that impede their realization. Specifically, we plan to discuss the following:
• Continuing discrimination against people with HIV by health care providers, and the continuing efforts of the Department of Justice, Lambda Legal, and others to combat that discrimination.
• The expanded access to affordable, comprehensive health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act, and the challenges to full implementation of the ACA posed by insurance company efforts to design health plans to discourage people with HIV from enrolling, and by the continuing legal challenges to the ACA mounted by its opponents.
• The promise of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis or PrEP to reduce new HIV infections in gay and bisexual men and transgender women and men, and the novel legal questions raised about access, potential discrimination by health care providers, and providing PrEP to GBTQ youth.
• The growing epidemic of Hepatitis C (HCV) and HIV co-infection, the promise of new drug treatments for HCV, and issues of insurance coverage.Speaker: Daniel Bruner, Dylan de Kervor, Allison Rice, Scott A. Schoettes
CLE Materials 1, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4
Beyond Marriage Relationships: Property and Family in the Nontraditional Relationships
Location: Clark
The LGBTQ community has long defied stereotypes regarding traditional relationships and not simply by creating loving same-sex couples. When relationships go beyond the binary or normative definitions the standard protections in law often fail to provide protections or guidelines on how to support families. This panel will explore the practical issues that face attorneys representing individuals and partners in nontraditional relationships, as well as discussing constitutional arguments for protecting non-traditional families and relationships grounded not just in equal protection and due process but also in the First and Fourteenth Amendment freedom of intimate association.
Speakers: Jodi Argentino, Andy Izenson, Nancy Marcus, Jill Mullins-Cannon
CLE Materials 1, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4, CLE Materials 5
Happy and Free LGBT Lawyers: Recovery from and Treatment for Alcoholism, Addiction and Mental Health Challenges
Location: Great America I/II
This panel of lawyers, who are treatment professionals or in recovery, will cover the following topics: stress and life-balance issues; how mental health and substance abuse affects the LGBT legal community, including discipline and disbarment; alcoholism and addiction as a disability under the ADA; and, sources of treatment and support for legal professionals and their family members, including state bar Lawyers’ Assistance Programs, other private efforts, and Twelve Step Recovery Programs. Speakers will focus on issues facing the LGBT legal professional, including the personal and cultural challenges to recovery and treatment specific to the LGBT professional.
Speakers: Robin M. Belleau, Bradd S. Easton, Eduardo Juarez. Hon. Steven Kirkland
Romer and Its Progeny: How It May Be Used in Transgender and Religious Freedom Arguments
Location: Addison
This workshop is coordinated by the International Association of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Judges (IALGBTJ). It will be moderated by Judge Mary A. Celeste (Ret.) and includes Judges and Professors who were either involved in the Romer case, authored articles on “animus”, or are experts on Tangender and Religious Freedom Laws. Speakers will talk about the holding and its important progeny…i.e. Lawrence, Windsor, Perry, Schuette …new marriage cases etc., subjective v. objective theories of animus, and which way Romer cuts in that debate and whether the doctrine of animus, as it has evolved in the same-sex marriage litigation, is good for EP. Panelists will also link Romer’s reasoning and holding to the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, with powerful implications for transgender and intersex as well as lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons and will discuss Romer arguments in Transgender public accommodations issues. The panel will also address Romer and its potential use in Religious Freedom law challenges.
Speakers: Professor Todd Brower, Hon. Mary Celeste, Professor Susannah Pollvogt, Professor William Eskridge
Concurrent Workshops Session Four
Thursday, August 6 | 1:30pm – 3:00pm
B: The Forgotten Letter in LGBT - Not Anymore
Location: Michigan/Michigan State
This panel covers a number of unique issues in the law and legal profession regarding Bisexuality. The areas of law covered include Family Law, Immigration, Employment Law, Public Accommodations, Constitutional Law, Legal Scholarship and Policy. Some topics touch on areas of overlap with transgender and racial issues. One common theme is the invisibility or erasure of Bisexuals throughout the legal world and particularly in LGBT litigation. Two or three of the presenters will start the session with personal testimony about what it means to be bisexual and how it affected their lives and legal careers in order to help the audience understand the experience of bisexuals within the LGBT community and their issues which have gone unexplored in the past. The balance of the program will include legal analysis of bi-erasure, other forms of family, immigration issues faced by bisexuals, and dealing with legal issues faced by bisexual clients, e.g. gender discrimination, non-monogamy, and marriage.
Speaker: Toby Adams, Merisa Bowers, Heron Greenesmith, Andy Izenson, Nancy Marcus, Bill Singer, Ann Tweedy
CLE Materials 1, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4
After Marriage Equality: Protecting the Rights of Same-Sex Parents and Their Children
Location: Northwestern/Ohio State
Does marriage equality mean parentage equality for same-sex parents? How does marriage equality effect same-sex couples in states that do not have comprehensive protections for non-biological or unmarried parents? This panel will examine the risks that same-sex parents face with respect to their parental rights and the best practices for protecting and securing those rights in a post-marriage equality nation. A panel of experienced family law practitioners from around the country will discuss the state of the states and provide case examples.
Speaker: Tiffany Palmer, Professor Nancy Polikoff, Abby Rubenfeld
Managing Partners
Location: Purdue/Wisconsin
Managing partners are often among the most senior and well-respected attorneys in law firms. Along with the title comes diverse and intricate responsibilities ranging from overseeing the firm’s finances to managing committees and developing goals and strategies for employees. Managing partners from some of the largest firms in the United States will discuss their role within the organization as well as the professional path they took to achieve their current title.
Speakers: Rich Segal, Seth Levy, Keith Watts
Don't I Have a Right to Know? Examining the Criminal Law as a Means of Preventing HIV Transmission
Location: Armitage
Thirty- four states and two U.S. territories have laws that explicitly criminalize potential or perceived HIV exposure and alleged nondisclosure. More than 500 people have been charged or convicted under the laws, and many have received draconian sentences for behaviors that pose little to no risk of HIV transmission. At this workshop, panelists will explore the (in)efficacy of a penal approach to a public/sexual health issue; the changing realities of HIV and the legal system’s failure to keep pace; collaborations across social justice movements;and current efforts to reform these laws at the state and federal levels, including within the military.
Speakers: Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, John Knight, Ayako Miyashita, Ari Waldman, Kyle Palazzolo
CLE Materials 1, CLE Materials 2, CLE Materials 3, CLE Materials 4, CLE Materials 5
Diversity and Inclusion, the Final Frontier: Straight Allies
Location: Belmont
An ally is not just a sympathetic listener who supports from behind the scenes, but is someone who proactively advocates for change to improve the quality of life for LGBT people within their organization, their profession, and their lives. It is critical for allies to find/enlist other allies. The brave HR champions in many organizations very much need the help of straight people to keep the organization competitive and progressing on protections that are important to LGBT people. Progress towards more equal protections benefits not only LGBT people, but makes the entire organization more inclusive. Straight allies are more likely to find where resistance to such progress exists, and typically realize that lack of knowledge is a primary problem. Straight allies armed with advocacy and some-self education can reduce resistance, and importantly can identify and enlist new allies.
Speakers: Ted Furman, Jill Jacobson, Katrina Quicker, Asker Saeed, Dee Spagnuolo
Lawyering Toward Equality: How Law Firms Can Support the Legal Needs of Trans Communities
Location: Addison
Transgender rights have come a long way in the last decade, but rights on the books don’t always translate to rights in the world. Luckily as lawyers we can help bridge that gap and also move the law forward. Come to this session to learn about how lawyers and law firms are engaging with trans communities to support their legal needs. Learn about The Name Change Project run by the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, where law firms represent transgender clients pro bono in name change cases, the Trans Legal Services Advisory Council run by the National Center for Transgender Equality, where law firms create legal resources needed by organizations to serve their communities, and the Trans Legal Advocates of Washington, where volunteer attorneys participate in a monthly Name and Gender Change Clinic. Find out how you or your law firm can get involved in advancing lived equality for transgender individuals through your pro bono practice.
Speakers: Arli Christian, Ethan Rice, Brandon Roman, Rachel See
Dodd-Frank at Five Years: Current Status and Unintended Consequences
Location: Clark
Five years after its passage, Dodd-Frank Act continues to dramatically reshape the way that both financial and non-financial companies access the capital markets, serve consumers and manage internal compliance programs. This panel of experts will explore the wide range of impacts Dodd-Frank has had on consumers and capital market participants, focusing on supervision and enforcement, debt collection, consumer reporting and mortgage servicing, protection of customer information, derivatives regulation and new standards for assessing diversity policies and practices of regulated entities.
Speakers: Valerie Hletko, Molly Remes, Sandra Neely, Greg Todd, Donna Wilson, Daniel Winterfeldt
The American Family: Parenting in a Post-Gay World
Location: Great America I/II
Marriage equality may change LGBT people, just as LGBT inclusion has already changed marriage. Those changes will continue in areas like the presumption that both spouses are the legal parents of a child born in their marriage and the general rule that a child can have only two legal parents. States may increasingly recognize three legal parents, a trend that’s started with adoption and de facto parentage. That development could strengthen step-parent rights and duties. If many families- gay and otherwise- include three legal parents, differences between gay and non-gay recede. This panel explores the implications of multiple and sliding-scale parenthood and how abandoning the two-parent model could change what it means to be gay or straight more generally.
Speakers: Martha Ertman, Jennifer Levi, Shannon Minter, Douglas NeJaime
Concurrent Workshops Session Five
Thursday, August 6 | 3:45pm – 5:15pm
Using Policy Advocacy and Litigation to Advance Affordable and Welcoming Housing and other Inputs to Successful Aging for Older LGBT Adults
Location: Northwestern/Ohio State
LGBT older adults still face numerous barriers to successful aging – challenges that won’t dissipate and won’t be solved even with marriage. Facing more pronounced social isolation than their heterosexual and cis-gender counterparts, higher rates of poverty, and a lack of access to culturally competent healthcare, we have an obligation to help those who help paved the way for today’s civil rights victories…. Whether it’s through policy advocacy or litigation, we have the tools to advocate on behalf of LGBT older adults. As a case-in-point, we’ll explore housing. What challenges do LGBT older adults themselves face with respect to housing? What legal and policy challenges do we face? We’ll explore how we can use policy and litigation to create more welcoming and affordable housing – a challenge that has risen to prominence in recent years.
Speakers: Karen Loewy, Hon. Mark Scurti, Aaron Tax, Richard C. Milstein, Larry Chanen
Pathways to the Judiciary
Location: Clark
CLE Ethics Credit Applicable for this WorkshopEach year, members of the judiciary come together to discuss their career trajectory and provide advice to young professionals interested in ascending the bench. Panelists represent a diverse array of judges. Panelists will discuss both the appointed and elected process for judges in different jurisdictions as well as ethical guidelines or standards associated with panelists’ paths to becoming judges or retaining their positions. Additionally, challenges of being an openly LGBT judge, arising especially out of judicial ethics codes, will be a focus as well. Members of the International Association of LGBT Judges will be available during and after the session to talk further with attendees.
Speakers: Hon. Victoria S. Kolakowski, Hon. Linda E. Giles, Hon. James Snyder, Hon. Gary Cohen
Post Supreme Court Marriage Cases: Implications & Challenges for Legal Practitioners in Anti-Equality States
Location: Michigan/Michigan State
This program will focus on navigating the new legal landscape post-marriage equality in states without civil rights protections for LGBT couples. Attendees will learn about pertinent issues still left unresolved by the Supreme Court decisions on marriage equality, such as: employment protections, health insurance, benefits, real property and probate matters. The speakers will provide an overview of potential issues that will arise in all these areas, and how to handle them.
Speakers: Joan Burda, Angie Martell, Kerene Moore, Arlene Zarembka
CLE Materials 1 CLE Materials 2 CLE Materials 3 CLE Materials 4, CLE Materials 5
LGBT Domestic Violence: Not Just a Legal Aid Issue
Location: Purdue/Wisconsin
Domestic and sexual violence in LGBTQ Communities is as common as or more common than among non-LGBT individuals. However, LGBTQ bias and misconceptions about LGBTQ survivors result in an invisibility of the issue and further victimization by the legal process. This training will build upon prior Lavender Law sessions and will move beyond a basic overview of the issues to examine how domestic violence advocacy can and should be integrated into all levels of legal practice, including at the non-profit, private practice and policy levels. The presenters, who reflect each of these legal practice areas, will provide concrete examples of how to engage in this work at each of these levels. This will include a look at ABA advocacy to expand domestic violence legal protections to all 50 states and the implementation of the landmark legislation the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), as well as the on-the-ground advocacy with clients, including within child custody cases.
Speakers: Alana Chazan, Mieko Failey, Terra Slavin, Debra Murphy
Cultural Competency for Lawyers: Understanding Medical Science is Key to Transgender Legal Competency
Location: Armitage
Justice for transgender people is linked to the validation of self-identity – you are who you know yourself to be. The simplistic understanding of sex as two fixed binary categories into which all humans must fit at the moment of birth has long been understood to be medically, scientifically, and factually inaccurate, but still continues to be broadly enforced by the U.S. legal system. In order to effectively represent transgender clients, lawyers must be armed with the most current medical understanding of sex and the importance of gender identity in making legal sex determination.
Speakers: Jamison Green, M. Dru Levasseur
The Evolution of the Practice of Law
Location: Clark
CLE Credit Not Applicable for this Workshop
Our profession is changing whether we like it or not. It’s up to us to embrace it and have the dexterity to meet the challenges ahead. This will be an engaging panel discussion regarding all the ways that we have to prepare ourselves for the new normal in our profession, from business development to legal project outsourcing.
Speakers: Ryan Nishimoto, Jen Olmsted, Ken Sanchez
Fair Housing Rights for LGBT Individuals and People Living with HIV/AIDS
Location: Belmont
Equal access to housing opportunities is one of the most fundamental individual rights. This workshop will explore the fair housing rights of LGBT persons and people living with HIV/AIDS. Panelists will discuss the scope of federal, state, and local fair housing laws and regulations; recent developments that expand fair housing protections for LGBT individuals and those living with HIV/AIDS; and the legal theories behind recent cases enforcing these rights.
Speakers: Tamar Hagler, Jay Kaplan, Liza Cristol-Deman, Marion Mollegen McFadden
Update on Legal and Human Rights Developments Affecting the Intersex Community
Location: Great America I/II
This session will review recent developments in the U.S. and in international human rights bodies affecting intersex rights, including the case of M.C. v. MUSC, the new German law allowing for birth certificates with no sex identification, and the Baby A case in Kenya. We will also take a look at recent human rights statements regarding treatment of children with intersex traits, including statements by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Swiss Bioethics Commission, the World Health Organization, and the Australian Senate.
Speakers: David Dinielli, Chinyere Ezie, Anne Tamar-Mattis