Jennifer Tobits and Sarah Ellyn Farley married in Toronto in 2006. Two weeks after their wedding, Ellyn was diagnosed with cancer. The Chicago couple fought the disease together for their entire marriage, until Ellyn passed away in September 2010. Because Ellyn’s parents had never accepted her marriage to Jennifer, they feared that Ellyn’s parents would make legal claims to their property and generally attack Jennifer’s status as Ellyn’s spouse.

In 2001, Diane Alexis Whipple was killed by two dogs in the hallway of her apartment building in San Francisco where she lived with her life partner, Sharon Smith. NCLR and co-counsel  represented Ms. Smith in a wrongful death case. The defendants argued that Ms. Smith could not pursue a wrongful death claim since the couple was unmarried. In a historic ruling, San Francisco Superior Court Judge A. James Robertson II held that Ms. Smith was a “surviving spouse” and that any other reading of the law “has no place in our system of government” and would “unduly punish Ms. Smith for her sexual orientation.”