Litigation

Court cases in the project's archive about laws and policies that affect transgender and other LGBTQ+ people. Each case page links its dockets, its court documents, its opinions and any oral arguments, with the originals on CourtListener. Charts show the cases by issue, year, court and place.

Also: a finding aid to experts who testified for the side defending the laws.

Caption or docket numberCourt levelCourtCircuitIssueStateStatusOutcomeYear fromYear toOrder Clear

28 of 664 cases match.

Cases
Case	Court	Level	Cir.	Year	Issue / type	Outcome	Documents
Allan Josephson v. Toni Ganzel	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2019	Speech & religious objectionsalso Gender-affirming care, Employment	Adverse	6
American College of Pediatricians v. BecerraNo. 1:21-cv-00195	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2021	Health coverage & benefitsalso Gender-affirming care, Speech & religious objections, Federal executive actions		44
Catholic Charities of Jackson v. Gretchen Whitmer	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2025	Conversion therapyalso Speech & religious objections	Adverse	14
Chelsey Nelson Photography LLC v. Louisville/Jefferson County Metro GovernmentNo. 22-5884	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2022	Speech & religious objectionsalso Public accommodations		8
David Ermold v. Kim DavisNo. 24-5524	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2024	Speech & religious objectionsalso Family & parental rights		15
Defending Education v. Olentangy Local School DistNo. 23-3630	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2023	Schools & educationalso Speech & religious objections		15
Dodds v. United States Department of Education	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2016	Schools & educationalso Bathrooms & facilities	Favorable	1
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc.	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2023	Employmentalso Speech & religious objections	Favorable	63
Friends of George's, Inc. v. Steven MulroyNo. 23-5611	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2023	Drag & expressionalso Speech & religious objections		54
Jamie Gray v. Lisa FarmerNo. 26-5262	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2026	Prisons & detention		1
Jane Doe 1 v. William Thornbury, Jr.	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2023	Gender-affirming care	Adverse	29
Johnson v. Fresh Mark, Inc.	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2004	Employmentalso Bathrooms & facilities	Adverse	3
Kayla Gore v. William LeeNo. 23-5669	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2023	Identity documents	Adverse	76
L. W. v. Jonathan SkrmettiNo. 23-5600	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2023	Gender-affirming care	Adverse	90
Maddilyn Marcum v. Cookie CrewsNo. 25-5840	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2025	Gender-affirming carealso Prisons & detention		2
Miranda Stovall v. Jefferson Co, KY Bd of Ed	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2025	Schools & education		1
Nicholas Meriwether v. Francesca Hartop	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2020	Speech & religious objectionsalso Schools & education, Employment	Adverse	17
Parents Defending Educ. v. Olentangy Local Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ.	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2024	Speech & religious objectionsalso Schools & education	Favorable	88
Philecia Barnes v. City of Cincinnati	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2005	Employment	Favorable	7
Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish v. Dana Nessel	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2023	Speech & religious objectionsalso Employment, Public accommodations		1
Sean M. Brookings v. R.R. Denny Clunk, Judge, Stark County, Ohio	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2004	Policing & criminal lawalso Identity documents, Family & parental rights	Adverse	1
Smith v. City of Salem, Ohio	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2004	Employment	Favorable	3
St. Joseph Parish St. Johns v. Dana Nessel	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2024	Speech & religious objectionsalso Schools & education, Employment, Public accommodations	Mixed	10
State of Tenn. v. Linda McMahonNo. 24-5588	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2024	Schools & educationalso Bathrooms & facilities, Federal executive actions		128
State of Tennessee v. Department of EducationNo. 22-5807	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2022	Schools & educationalso Bathrooms & facilities, Athletics, Federal executive actions		57
Traci Greene v. Gayle Bowles, Anthony J. Brigano	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2004	Prisons & detention	Favorable	2
Valerie Kloosterman v. Metropolitan Hospital	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2025	Speech & religious objectionsalso Gender-affirming care, Employment	Adverse	12
Weaver v. Tennessee Army National Guard	6th Cir.	Circuit	6th Cir.	2002	Employmentalso Military	Adverse	1

28 cases

Each case has one main issue and may raise others (shown as “also”); the Issue filter finds a case by either. Choose a column heading to sort by it, and again to reverse the order. A blank cell means the archive has no entry for that case yet.

The outcome is this project's own coding of how a case turned out, made from the court's record; it is not the court's finding. How it is coded, and how to ask for a correction, is on the About page.

Litigation

Court cases about transgender and other LGBTQ+ people · federal & state courts

Cases tracked

Case name Court Level Issue / type Circuit Outcome Year ≥ Year ≤

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Case	Court	Level	Cir.	Year	Issue / type	Outcome	Docs

Every case in the corpus. Click a case name for its overview; click any column to sort, again to reverse. Each case has one main issue and may raise others (shown as "also…"); the Issue filter finds a case by either. Issues were checked case by case in September 2026. Level, circuit and outcome come from the coded caselaw dataset, so some rows are blank where a case hasn't been coded yet.

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Group by

Direct counts from the archive index — instant and exact. Counts are FILINGS (docket entries); the distinct-case figure is shown alongside.

Cases by issue

Every tracked case once, under its main issue, split by the coded direction of its final ruling (the same reading as "Reached a final ruling" below): favorable or adverse to the LGBTQ-rights claim, or mixed. The empty part of each bar is cases with no coded ruling at the trial, circuit or Supreme Court stage yet, which is most of them; it is not a claim that they have no outcome. Choose a bar to list its cases.

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Reached a final ruling

The coded direction at the HIGHEST stage a case reached — trial-level, circuit-court or Supreme Court only. A preliminary-injunction ruling never counts as final, and a "procedural, no direction" or "unclear" coding is excluded rather than shown as an outcome.

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Case duration

Filed to terminated, from real CourtListener docket dates, among cases where EVERY tracked docket has terminated (an open appellate docket alongside a closed district one is pending, not resolved). No stage-by-stage date exists in this corpus, so only this one span is shown; dates cover only the tracked-docket tier — see the coverage note below the numbers.

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Cases by circuit

A real geographic map, states shaded by their circuit's case count relative to the busiest circuit (linear). The Federal Circuit has no state territory of its own (its jurisdiction is subject matter, not geography) and so never paints here, but still appears in the list and the table. Select a circuit below for its final-ruling mix.

Table view (stages, durations and circuits)

Expert witnesses

Filter Appears in

A curated roster of the recurring expert witnesses in this litigation, with every declaration, expert report, affidavit, deposition and trial-testimony document the corpus holds for each, grouped by case. Coverage is limited by what has been pulled: expert material is heavily attachment-borne, so a witness who testified in ten cases may show fewer here, and some documents are marked in a larger filing — the testimony sits inside an appendix or exhibit set rather than as its own entry.

Judges

Filter Appointed by Coded rulings

The record counts how the judge voted, not how the case came out. Dissents and concurrences are parsed from the opinions themselves ("NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge, dissenting"), so a judge who dissented is scored against the panel's result — without that, Judge Niemeyer read 4–3 favorable to trans claimants. Partial dissents are shown but left out of the tally. Votes come from separate-writing headings and from the opinion's own joinder block ("Judge Richardson wrote a dissenting opinion, in which Judge Wilkinson, Judge Niemeyer… joined"), so a judge who joins a dissent without writing one still counts. Judges are resolved to real people against the Federal Judicial Center directory using the deciding court — there are 32 federal judges named Smith, and two Judge Pryors on the Eleventh Circuit. 195 ambiguous name/court pairs were dropped rather than merged, and a case with no opinion text in the corpus keeps the panel result for want of anything better. Small numbers are small numbers: three rulings is not a tendency.