The Fight for Gender Justice, Part I: Protecting Gender Identity & Expression for America’s Youth Online Program

The Fight for Gender Justice, Part I: Protecting Gender Identity & Expression for America’s Youth
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
6:00-7:15 p.m. EDT

Join the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network; the Ms. Foundation for Women; and OUTLaw for The Fight for Gender Justice, Part I: Protecting Gender Identity & Expression for America’s Youth on Tuesday, October 19, 2021. This event is free and open to the public; kindly register via Zoom. Attendees will receive a confirmation email with the Zoom link and password after registering.

Panelists

• Melissa Murray (Welcome Remarks), Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network, NYU Law
• Sam Ames (Introduction), Director of Advocacy & Government Affairs, The Trevor Project
• Ruth McFarlane (Moderator), Chief Advancement Officer, Ms. Foundation for Women
• Taylor Brown, Staff Attorney, LGBTQ & HIV Project, ACLU
• Hayley Gorenberg ’92, Legal Director, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest
• Andy Marra, Executive Director, Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund
• Asaf Orr, Senior Staff Attorney/Transgender Youth Project Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights
   

Continuing Legal Education (CLE)

This event has been approved for 1 New York State CLE credit in the category of Areas of Professional Practice. The credit is both transitional and non-transitional; it is appropriate for both experienced and newly admitted attorneys. Out-of-state CLE: NYU School of Law is an accredited provider of CLE in New York State. If you are seeking CLE credit for a different state, we recommend you consult with your state’s CLE Board to ascertain regulations on reciprocity.

CLE Affirmation and Evaluation Form

For a password-protected link to the PDFs of the CLE written materials, please email womensleadership@nyu.edu. Materials are linked to their original source below.

CLE Written Materials

• Motion for Preliminary Injunction filed by the National Center for Lesbian Rights et al. in D.T. v. Christ, No. CV-20-00484-TUC-JAS, 2021 WL 3419055 (D. Ariz. Aug. 5, 2021)
• Marie-Amélie George, Framing Trans Rights, 114 Nw. U. L. Rev. 555 (2019)
• Shayna Medley, (Mis)Interpreting Title IX: How Opponents of Transgender Equality Are Twisting the Meaning of Sex Discrimination in School Sports (March 29, 2021). New York University Review of Law & Social Change (Forthcoming)
• You may also be interested in: Erin BuzuvisLaw, policy, and the participation of transgender athletes in the United States, 24 Sport Management Review 439 (2021)

Panelist Bios

Opening Remarks

Melissa Murray is the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at NYU and the Faculty Director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network. Professor Murray is a leading expert in family law, constitutional law, and reproductive rights and justice, whose work has been published in numerous law journals. She is an author of Cases on Reproductive Rights and Justice, the first casebook to cover the field of reproductive rights and justice, and a co-editor of Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories. She has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, and provides commentary for popular media outlets, NPR, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, PBS, and the Strict Scrutiny podcast, of which she is a co-host. Professor Murray is an honors graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School, where she was notes development editor of the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, Murray clerked for Sonia Sotomayor, then of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Stefan Underhill of the US District Court for the District of Connecticut. Prior to joining the NYU faculty, Professor Murray was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she was the recipient of the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction. From March 2016 to June 2017, she served as interim dean of the Berkeley Law.

 Introduction

Sam Ames is currently the Director of Advocacy & Government Affairs at the Trevor Project. A civil rights attorney, author, and national LGBTQ rights advocate, they served as interim executive director at both Our Family Coalition and Trans Lifeline, as a staff attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and as the founder of the Born Perfect campaign. Sam is a consultant on LGBTQ issues nationwide and has testified in state legislatures, on Capitol Hill, and at the United Nations. They are a member of TRUUsT and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, George Washington University Law School, and UC Santa Cruz.

Panelists

Ruth McFarlane (Moderator) is Chief Advancement Officer at the Ms. Foundation for Women. Most recently, Ruth McFarlane served as the Director of Development and Community Engagement at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) in San Francisco and the Director of Programs at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center and the Director. Prior to working in the nonprofit sector, McFarlane practiced law as an associate at Norton Rose Fulbright in Dallas and Linklaters in New York. McFarlane holds an MSW. from the University of California Berkeley, and a JD from Cornell Law School. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Indiana Wesleyan University. She sits on the board of Health Access Foundation, an organization that aims to provide quality, affordable health care for all in the state of California, and has previously served on the boards of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Homeownership SF, and City of Refuge United Church of Christ Oakland.

Taylor Brown  is a Staff Attorney with the LGBT & HIV Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. At the ACLU, Taylor works to protect and expand the civil liberties of all LGBT people & people living with HIV through impact litigation, policy advocacy, and community engagement. Prior to joining the ACLU, Taylor spent over two and a half years with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the oldest and largest legal organization dedicated to advancing the full civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people living with HIV. Before becoming a staff attorney with Lambda Legal, Taylor served as the Tyron Garner Memorial Law Fellow at Lambda Legal, pursuing litigation, policy advocacy, and public education addressing inequities in law and policy for African American LGBT people and African American people living with HIV. Taylor began her career at Lambda Legal as a legal intern in the Transgender Rights Project in Lambda Legal’s New York City headquarters. Taylor’s legal work at Lambda Legal focused on access to healthcare and education equity for transgender people and the intersection of LGBT/HIV status with race and socio-economic status. During her time at Lambda Legal, Taylor litigated a number of cases expanding and solidifying federal civil rights protections for LGBT people. Taylor served as lead counsel in Kadel v. Folwell, a federal lawsuit challenging the categorical exclusion of all transition-related healthcare in the North Carolina state employee health plan, counsel in Fletcher v. State of Alaska, a federal lawsuit challenging the State of Alaska’s exclusion of transition-related surgical care in its state employee health plan, Briteramos v. King’s of Cuts, a lawsuit brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act challenging a barbershop’s denial of service based on HIV status, as well as defending Lambda Legal’s win on appeal in Adams v. The School Board of St. Johns County, securing equal protection and Title IX protections for transgender students. Taylor received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. At UNC-Chapel Hill, Taylor was a Carolina Covenant Scholar. At Cardozo, Taylor was a Nathaniel E. Gates Scholar.

Hayley Gorenberg ’92 is the Legal Director of NYLPI, where she guides the organization’s litigation and advocacy. Before joining NYLPI in 2018, Hayley was General Counsel and Deputy Legal Director of the national civil rights organization Lambda Legal, where she litigated landmark cases advancing the rights of LGBTQ+ people, including a range of pathbreaking matters involving disability rights, health access and discrimination against communities fighting marginalization. Prior to that she ran a citywide task force at Legal Services for New York City, creating legal advocacy campaigns and training other lawyers and advocates to achieve high-impact results for low-income New Yorkers living with HIV. Hayley was named 2017 OUTLaw Alumna of the Year by New York University School of Law and received a 2018 Forger Award from the American Bar Association for “sustained excellence” advocating for the rights of people living with HIV, and in 2019 received the New York City Bar Association’s Arthur S. Leonard Award for outstanding advocacy work for the LGBT community in New York. She has served as a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard and sits on Princeton University’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Advisory Council. She was selected to serve on the inaugural New York State Council on Women and Girls. Hayley earned her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, her law degree from New York University School of Law, and a certificate in change leadership from Cornell University.

Andy Marra (Andrea “Andy” Hong Marra) is executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF). Prior to TLDEF, she spent five years leading external communications at the Arcus Foundation; managed public relations at GLSEN, a national organization focused on LGBTQ issues in K-12 education; was co-director at Nodutdol for Korean Community Development; and served as a senior media strategist at GLAAD. Andy currently serves as Board Chair of the Freedom for All Americans Education Fund. She has previously served on the boards and advisory councils of Chinese for Affirmative Action, the Funding Exchange, Human Rights Campaign, Just Detention International, and the National Center for Transgender Equality. Andy has been honored by the White House and the City of New York for her contributions to the LGBTQ community, profiled in The Advocate’s “Forty Under 40,” and listed as one of The Huffington Post’s “Most Compelling LGBT People.” She is also a past recipient of the GLSEN Pathfinder Award, the National LGBTQ Task Force Creating Change Award, NQAPIA Community Catalyst Award, and the Colin Higgins Foundation Courage Award.

Asaf Orr joined the National Center for Lesbian Rights CLR in 2012 after years of representing students with disabilities and people living with HIV/AIDS. As a Senior Staff Attorney and Director of NCLR’s Transgender Youth Project, Asaf works to safeguard the rights of transgender and gender-expansive youth to be affirmed and supported for who they are. By changing the life trajectories of transgender and gender-expansive youth through litigation, public policy, and advocacy, Asaf hopes to create a future where all children can thrive. For nearly a decade, Asaf worked to advance the rights of the little “t” in LGBT. During that time, he represented transgender youth and their families in a wide range of legal matters including discrimination in schools, child custody disputes, child abuse and neglect, and access to affirming medical and mental health care. He was the lead attorney in Student v. Arcadia Unified School District, which resulted in a historic resolution acknowledging that Title IX protects transgender kids from discrimination in schools and led to transgender student guidance released by the Obama Administration in May 2016. He also worked behind the scenes to increase inclusion of transgender athletes in all levels and types of sport; expanded access to transition-related care for Medicaid recipients, including puberty-delaying medications and facial feminization surgery; and supported attorneys representing affirming parents in custody disputes around the country. Asaf has authored a number of resources on issues affecting transgender youth. Most recently, he was a lead author of Schools in Transition: A Guide to Supporting Transgender Students in K-12 Schools, a publication that assists parents, school administrators, and other stakeholders to collaborate and create a school environment that affirms and supports transgender students. The publication was co-authored by a number of groups, including the National Education Association, Gender Spectrum, ACLU, and HRC. After graduating magna cum laude from Rutgers School of Law in Newark in 2008, Asaf clerked for The Honorable Virginia A. Long on the Supreme Court of New Jersey.