LGBTQ+ and Two Spirit Rights

The ACLU works to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two Spirit people belong everywhere and can live openly and authentically without discrimination, harassment, or violence.

Collage celebrating LGBTQ rights

The ACLU works to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two Spirit people belong everywhere and can live openly and authentically without discrimination, harassment, or violence.

The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ+ and Two Spirit community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in 1936. What is now the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project was founded in 1986 and renamed in 2021.

Today, the ACLU brings more LGBTQ + and Two Spirit rights cases and advocacy initiatives than any other national organization does. In fact, the ACLU has been counsel in seven of the nine LGBTQ+ and Two Spirit rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided — more than any other organization. With our reach into the courts and legislatures of every state, there is no other organization that can match our record of making progress both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.

The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and violence toward transgender people, to close gaps in our federal and state civil rights laws, to prevent protections against discrimination from being undermined by a license to discriminate, and to protect LGBTQ+ and Two Spirit people in and from the criminal legal system.

The Latest


News & Commentary
ACLU Election Conversation Guide

Let's Talk About It!

ACLU 2026 Election Conversation Guides
News & Commentary
A bookshelf.

‘Quiet’ book bans threaten freedom of expression in North Dakota libraries

Censorship isn’t freedom. North Dakotans need to reject continued attempts from behind closed doors to challenge and ban books.
Press Release
ACLU Press Statement

Banned Books Week: A Conversation with the ACLU and Nico Lang

Efforts to censor and ban books are growing across the country. It’s happening in North Dakota, too.
Resource
Placeholder image

Home

Cases, Campaigns & Legislation


Legislation
Mar 12, 2025

House Concurrent Resolution 3013

House Concurrent Resolution 3013 would urge the United States Supreme Court to establish marriage as between a man and a woman.
Status: Defeated
Position: Oppose
Legislation
Feb 11, 2025

House Bill 1217

House Bill 1217 would repeal the North Dakota law that criminalizes the willful transfer of body fluid containing the HIV virus.
Status: Won: new law
Position: Support
Legislation
Feb 11, 2025

House Bill 1144

House Bill 1144 would prevent K-12 public schools from having all-gender bathrooms, including those that are single occupancy. Schools that don’t comply with the law, should it pass, would be fined $2,500 per violation.
Status: Passed both chambers
Position: Oppose