Leading LGBTQ Civil Rights Litigators Shannon Minter and Jennifer Levi to Receive 2024 Spirit of Justice Award

Leading LGBTQ Civil Rights Litigators Shannon Minter and Jennifer Levi to Receive 2024 Spirit of Justice Award Oct. 25

GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders will honor attorneys Shannon Minter and Jennifer Levi, who have long been at the forefront of the contemporary LGBTQ+ legal movement, crafting legal strategies to secure the civil rights of transgender people, successfully advocating for marriage equality and security for LGBTQ parents, establishing protections for LGBTQ+ youth, and advancing and defending nondiscrimination protections

BOSTON - New England-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law), one of the nation's leading LGBTQ+ legal rights organizations, will present its 2024 Spirit of Justice Award to Shannon Minter and Jennifer Levi, two of the foremost LGBTQ+ civil rights attorneys and experts on transgender rights litigation in the country. Minter and Levi will receive the award at the annual Spirit of Justice Award Dinner Oct. 25 in Boston. This event is sold out.

"As we confront significant and growing threats to the fundamental rights of LGBTQ+ people, more than ever we need bold defenders of our equality and humanity in state legislatures, mobilizing in their communities, and fighting in the courts," said Ricardo Martinez, GLAD Law's Executive Director. "Through their visionary legal work, Shannon Minter and Jennifer Levi have secured - and continue to win - essential court victories that tangibly improve the lives of LGBTQ+ people and provide a foundation on which others in our movement have built. We're tremendously proud to honor each of them with this year's Spirit of Justice Award."

Minter is Legal Director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR). Levi is Senior Director of Transgender and Queer Rights at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders. Over legal careers spanning more than three decades, Minter and Levi have, both individually and in partnership, contributed to the development of legal strategies that have shaped the landscape of LGBTQ+ rights jurisprudence.

Minter and Levi have been long-time collaborators at the forefront of legal efforts to secure and defend the civil rights of transgender people, including early foundational victories for transgender students, establishing employment protections, and in cases laying the groundwork to ensure transgender people are protected under laws prohibiting sex discrimination. They co-led the successful legal fight against former President Trump's 2017 transgender military ban and are currently challenging multiple state laws banning health care for transgender adolescents or restricting care for transgender adults.

In addition to their groundbreaking transgender legal rights work in litigation, legislation and public policy, they have each litigated cases securing marriage equality for same-sex couples, establishing protections for LGBTQ youth, parents, and families, and enforcing non-discrimination protections. In 1993, Minter started the nation's first Youth Project at an LGBTQ legal organization, at NCLR. Levi litigated her first transgender rights case at GLAD Law in 1999 and formally founded the first Transgender Rights Project at an LGBTQ legal organization in 2008.

"I have had the good fortune to work side by side with Shannon and Jennifer as they have fought to advance the rights of transgender and queer people. Our movement couldn't have come this far without the legal and policy strategies they pioneered, individually and as collaborators," said Chai Feldblum, legal scholar, LGBTQ activist, and former Commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "It has been the litigation and policy work that Jennifer and Shannon have done over the past many, many years that has provided the real protection for transgender and queer people."

The Spirit of Justice Award Dinner is GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders' flagship event, now in its twenty-fifth year. Past Spirit of Justice honorees include Nadine Smith, Tony Kushner, Governor Deval Patrick, Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall, Bishop Gene Robinson, Phill Wilson, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Jose Antonio Vargas, Chai Feldblum, and Kylar Broadus. The 2023 honorees were the plaintiffs in the landmark Goodridgev. MA DPH case that made Massachusetts the first state where same-sex couples could legally marry, in recognition of the 20^th anniversary of that historic ruling.

The 2024 Spirit of Justice Award Dinner is co-chaired by Jamie Bergeron, Gavin Alexander, and Jean-Phillip Brignol. More details are available at glad.org/events/2024SOJ