A Beginner’s Guide to the Endgame: What You Need to Know about the LGBTQ Supreme Court Cases

And Why You Should Care

Demonstrations rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on October 8, 2019, as the court holds oral arguments for three cases that may determine the fate of workplace rights for LGBTQ employees. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty

The week of October 8 is a complicated one for a lot of queer people. Between Sunday and Saturday, we honor the days Matthew Shepard struggled for his life. Friday is National Coming Out Day. Wednesday is the Day of Atonement. And, of course, Tuesday is one of the most significant days for LGBTQ civil rights in the history of the Supreme Court.

When I first started out in the legal profession, before I’d even graduated from law school, I clerked in the policy office of National Center for Lesbian Rights (which back then was a fancy way of saying three of us squished into a few square feet at the National LGBTQ Task Force building in Washington, DC). The NCLR legal team is the very definition of unsung heroes in this movement. Somewhere in the historic work that I got to contribute my small intern pieces to, there was this one still relatively obscure area of caselaw I became obsessed with.

Whenever I wasn’t working on another project, I was gathering old transcripts of floor debates and unpublished decisions, filling a 6-inch accordion folder that stopped fitting in my backpack after the first 3 months. I wrote my second-year law journal article on it. I wrote a memo about it to the EEOC. The Legal…