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 joins NAACP LDF Amicus Brief defending standing in ADA discrimination case
The brief calls out Acheson’s attempts to argue the merits of Ms. Laufer’s case as a distraction to the straightforward standing inquiry at hand. Standing is a threshold issue that requires plaintiff’s allegations be taken as true. This low bar is cleared by the mere allegation of a concrete injury. Arguments about the merit of Ms. Laufer’s case including whether she experienced the “right type of discrimination” that warrants ADA protection and the degree of emotional harm she suffered are inappropriate to the threshold matter of standing and subject to review in future motions. In summary, Ms. Laufer alleges that she personally experienced discrimination, a harm in itself sufficient for standing, so Ms. Laufer has standing.
West Virginia Can No Longer Discriminate Against Transgender Medicaid Participants
On August 2, 2022, federal District Court Judge Robert C. Chambers granted affirmative summary judgment for Plaintiffs in Fain et al. v. Crouch et. al, and ruled that West Virginia could no longer discriminate against transgender Medicaid participants by excluding coverage for gender-confirming surgical care. In their complaint, Plaintiffs alleged that West Virginia state health insurance plans deprive transgender people of essential, and sometimes life-saving, health care.
Impact Fund and NAACP Legal Defense Fund to SCOTUS: Don’t Rewrite Typicality
The Impact Fund and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of ourselves and twenty-four civil rights organizations. We argue that Ramirez indisputably satisfied typicality, as every class member in the case presented the same claims, were subject to the same conduct, and sought the same relief as Ramirez did. “TransUnion seeks to turn Rule 23 typicality on its head, asking the high court to rewrite the rule to protect defendants rather than absent class members,” declared Impact Fund’s Executive Director Jocelyn Larkin. “Nothing in the language or purpose of the rule supports TransUnion’s approach.”
Introducing Impact LGBTQ: Impact Fund’s Newest Initiative for Social Justice
Our twenty-five years of litigating civil rights cases, training plaintiffs’ attorneys in complex and impact litigation, and supporting innovative social justice cases have given us a unique understanding of what it will entail to enforce the laws protecting LGBTQ people. That’s why we are launching Impact LGBTQ.
Transgender Vets Left Out In The Cold - Impact Fund & Allies File Amicus Brief
Last month, Lambda Legal and Transgender Law Center appealed the Secretary’s denial of the petition to the Federal Circuit, arguing in part that the denial of coverage for sex reassignment surgeries is sex discrimination that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment. We agree. Standing in solidarity, we have authored an amicus brief.
Speaking Out Against Unlawful Sex Stereotyping of Transgender People in North Carolina’s H.B. 2
Earlier this year, the North Carolina legislature passed a sweeping anti-LGBT bill, H.B. 2, which requires public schools and agencies to discriminate against transgender people by prohibiting them from using sex-segregated restrooms according to their gender identity. Plaintiffs Joaquín Carcaño, the ACLU of North Carolina, and others filed a lawsuitchallenging H.B. 2 as unlawful discrimination against transgender individuals under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.