PRACTITIONER BLOG
Read our analyses of developments in Impact Litigation and stay current on class action law
Watching a Juris Doctor Save Lives: Partnering with Lambda Legal to Fight for Healthcare for All
Together with Lambda Legal and Walt Auvil of the Employment Law Center in West Virginia, my firm Nichols Kaster filed suit against West Virginia Medicaid on behalf our clients Christopher Fain and Shauntae Anderson. In that case, Fain v. Crouch, we challenged the state Medicaid program’s categorical exclusion of gender affirming surgical care under the Equal Protection Clause, the Affordable Care Act, and the Medicaid Act.
Impact Fund Supports Groundbreaking Class Action Litigation For Colorado's Transgender Prisoners
In Colorado’s prisons, trans women have been fighting to survive and fighting for their rights for years. Kandice Raven lives with permanent injuries that she sustained in multiple severe beatings carried out by groups of transphobic men. Jane Gallentine has been trafficked, treated as property and repeatedly sexually abused, including by one man who tattooed his name on her neck to convey “ownership,” and by another man employed as a prison guard. Amber Miller has again and again requested officials’ help in escaping her abusers and found that the only way to get a response is to break prison rules or engage in self-harm to keep herself safe. In response to their fearless self-advocacy, the Colorado prisons have responded by transferring Kandice, Jane, and Amber to a series of more and more restrictive—and more and more dangerous—prisons and prison units.