Resources for Reporters:
LGBTQ-related Supreme Court Decisions

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to release three decisions with significant consequences for LGBTQ people, families, and allies.

GLAAD urges reporters to elevate facts and LGBTQ voices in all coverage of the decisions. Fact sheets and interviewee suggestions below. 

This June is also the fifth anniversary of the Bostock decision, which affirmed that civil rights protections protect LGBTQ workers from discrimination on the basis of sex, with the majority decision written by Justice Neil Gorsuch. This June is the tenth anniversary of the Obergefell decision, legalizing marriage equality nationwide. A near-record high of 68% of Americans support marriage equality.

Stories about LGBTQ people should include LGBTQ voices. GLAAD can connect reporters to sources for more accurate stories about the Court’s decisions and impacts.

2025 LGBTQ-inclusive Supreme Court Cases

U.S. v Skrmetti: the highly anticipated decision focuses on Tennessee’s ban on health care for transgender youth, care that is prescribed to non-transgender (cisgender) youth without restriction.The ACLU argued this unequal treatment is discrimination and a direct violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

• Skrmetti fact sheet here
• Background on longtime anti-LGBTQ groups fighting to ban health care
• Interviews available: parents of transgender and nonbinary youth; medical providers of transgender people and youth; transgender young adults who can share inspiring stories of how this care has changed their lives for the better
• Quotes from plaintiff families here, via ACLU.
• Statements from every major medical association in the world in support of health care for transgender people and youth, here.
• Movement Advancement Project facts and stats about LGBTQ people and recent protections and bans on access to essential health care, here.
• The Skrmetti case has already made history, with the ACLU’s Chase Strangio arguing before the Court in December. Strangio is the first out transgender lawyer to argue before the justices.
• GLAAD’s 2025 Accelerating Acceptance Survey found nearly eight in ten non-LGBTQ Americans agree that LGBTQ people are seeking the same things in life as everyone else. Three in four non-LGBTQ adults support equal rights for LGBTQ people.

Mahmoud v Taylor:  a late addition to the Supreme Court calendar brought by six parents (three couples) looking to opt out their children from classrooms with LGBTQ-inclusive books in Montgomery County, Maryland.

• Mahmoud fact sheet here.
• Authors and illustrators of LGBTQ inclusive children’s picture books at the heart of the case are available for interviews. LGBTQ authors and parents are also available. GLAAD can connect you.
• Joint statement from authors and illustrators here: “We stand in support of the Montgomery County School District. We oppose censoring or segregating books, like ours, that feature LGBTQ+ people. All families deserve to be seen and heard. To act otherwise is harmful and sends a devastating message to students: that their lives and families are so offensive and dangerous that they can’t even be discussed in school… Children want to see themselves in books; all children need to see many different kinds of people in books.”
• PEN America’s “Cover to Cover” report found that during the 2023-2024 school year 25% of the more than 4,000 books banned in U.S. public schools included LGBTQ people or characters.
• Plaintiffs are represented by The Becket Fund, which fights for the legal right to discriminate against LGBTQ workers and against LGBTQ people from becoming adoptive parents in the Supreme Court’s Fulton case (2021). Southern Poverty Law Center describes Becket and others as “hardline religious-right groups that have long relied on the use of demonizing falsehoods to justify discrimination against LGBT people” that now “create a dangerous new narrative that portrays Christians who object to homosexuality on biblical grounds as victims of religious persecution.”
• GLAAD’s latest Accelerating Acceptance Survey found 90% of non-LGBTQ Americans believe bullying should not be tolerated in schools.

Kennedy v Braidwood: challenges the Affordable Care Act’s preventive care requirements, objecting specifically to covering HIV prevention medication PrEP. The plaintiffs used false and defamatory rhetoric about LGBTQ people to justify their objections. The case threatens all preventive care coverage including screenings for cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

• Braidwood fact sheet here.
• Facts about PrEP here: there is no vaccine for HIV. PrEP is 99% effective in preventing transmission of HIV.
• It is estimated that the loss of full coverage for PrEP would lead to thousands of people acquiring HIV in the first year who wouldn’t do so otherwise.
• 84% of adults oppose denying health care to LGBTQ people based on religious beliefs. (Williams Institute/NORC)
• The owner of the conservative Christian health care firm Braidwood Management, Steven Hotze, has spread disinformation and rhetoric against LGBTQ people for decades. The Guardian reported that Hotze supported housing discriminating against gay people in 1982, backed anti-LGBTQ candidates for Houston city council in 1985 (all eight lost), and used similar defamatory rhetoric to challenge marriage equality. Hotze was recently charged with aggravated robbery, assault, and organized crime charges in funding voter fraud conspiracy theories that led to an innocent man being run off the road and held at gunpoint. The charges against Hotze were dropped.
• The Guardian reports Hotze has been represented by America First Legal, the rightwing legal group co-founded by Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s advisor who has spread disinformation about transgender people and immigrants.