LaRon Charles, Jon Russ and Steven Apilado had been playing softball together in the San Francisco Gay Softball League for years. Their team had competed in the Gay Softball World Series organized by the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA), but had never finished better than fourth place. At the 2008 World Series in Seattle, the team made it all the way to the championship game, when they were shocked to learn that their eligibility to play was being challenged based on a NAGAAA rule limiting the number of non-gay players who could play on a World Series team.

NCLR and other groups filed a friend of the court brief in a groundbreaking case that finally put a stop to Louisiana’s longstanding practice of imposing harsh criminal penalties on people accused of soliciting certain types of sexual conduct with a person of the same sex.

Vanessa Adams is a transgender woman who was diagnosed by Federal Bureau of Prison (BOP) medical professionals with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in 2005 while she was incarcerated in a BOP prison. Over the next few years, she made at least 19 written requests asking for medical treatment for GID. The BOP denied all of her requests outright based on its so-called “freeze frame” policy in which treatment for any person with GID is kept frozen at the level provided at the time he or she entered BOP custody. In Ms. Adams’ case, this meant that because she had not received treatment for GID before being incarcerated, BOP would not provide her with medically necessary care even though its own doctors diagnosed her with GID, told her about treatments available for GID, and knew about the seriousness of her medical condition. As a result of these denials of treatment, Ms. Adams attempted suicide multiple times and engaged in other avenues of self- treatment in an attempt to live more consistently with her gender identity.

S.H. is a lesbian from Bosnia who came to the United States in 2006 to escape the oppressive and abusive conditions she faced because of her sexual orientation in her home country. She learned about an exchange program and was able to leave Bosnia in 2006. She submitted an asylum application on her own, but was referred to the Immigration Court, where she was granted asylum.

E.G. is a young gay man from Uganda who came to the United States in order to pursue higher education. As a child and young adult, he was often verbally abused by his family members for behaving in a way that seemed too different from other boys. As he grew older, he learned to hide his sexuality for fear of being arrested by the police on the basis of his sexual orientation. E.G. hid from government operatives who hunt down men who are suspected to be gay, and then once arrested, are often tortured.

Saul Martinez is a gay man from Guatemala who was beaten, sexually assaulted, and threatened by Guatemalan Congressman and repeatedly harassed by the Guatemalan police because of his sexual orientation. He fled to the United States and applied for asylum. However, in 1992, when he initially applied for asylum without an attorney, the U.S. had not yet recognized sexual orientation as a ground for asylum.