Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund

The Elevate Prize would be a transformative form of recognition and support for TLDEF’s development in becoming the preeminent transgender rights organization in the United States. TLDEF is on the early cusp of realizing this vision and the Elevate Prize would serve as a powerful catalyst.

While TLDEF’s legal advocacy is a part of our DNA, it remains crucial for our organization to embed storytelling and culture change strategies into our work to safeguard and advance legal and policy protections. If selected as an Elevate Prize winner, TLDEF would invest in the expansion of our communications capacity with a specific focus on investing in culture change efforts that would shift and reimagine the public conversation about transgender people. We broadly envision the opportunity to leverage both the Elevate Prize and its suite of resources in service of increasing our base of informed supporters while shaping the public dialogue about the legal and lived experiences of transgender people in the United States.

The Elevate Prize would provide a crucial intervention not only to the current legal and political context but would also directly address needed public education work that is needed for the long-term success of the transgender rights movement.

Since high school I committed myself to LGBTQ advocacy and got my start in organizing that resulted in the later passage of the Dignity for All Students Act. Upon graduation, I moved to New York City to attend college and deepen my activism where my 18-year career has been in preparation for my current role. In 2018, I was appointed Executive Director of TLDEF, which was a historic moment: I am the first transgender woman of color to ever lead a national LGBTQ organization.

I joined TLDEF at a time when the organization was confronted by a number of intensified threats to roll back legal and policy protections severely impacting transgender people. By accepting the appointment, I committed to establishing TLDEF as the preeminent transgender legal advocacy organization that would remove the structural barriers preventing transgender people from having access to a bright and lasting future. In short order, TLDEF’s budget has grown from $831,000 to having raised more than $2.5M and expanded from a team of four to a team of 16 by the end of 2021. To provide greater focus, we have invested in both a strategic plan and a brand refresh to guide our next chapter.

TLDEF advances its mission through impact litigation, direct legal services, policy advocacy, and public education efforts. TLDEF has focused its legal advocacy on those most pushed to the margins, including but not limited to Black and Brown transgender women, transgender youth, poor transgender people, and the intersections found among these populations. In 2020, among the 613 clients who sought TLDEF’s legal assistance, more than 53% identified as people of color, with over 30% explicitly identifying as Black or African American. Approximately 62% reported living below the federal poverty line ($12,760) and 47% reported receiving public assistance to meet their daily living needs. In focusing on these populations, TLDEF has lifted up critical and fundamental issues impacting the most marginalized transgender and non-binary people – violence and safety, health care and employment, access to services and public accommodations.

TLDEF’s work in service of the most marginalized in our community has benefitted from the coalitions we are part of. TLDEF is actively convening and/or participating at more than 13 local, state, and national tables focused on health care access, poverty, criminal justice, and gender recognition. Further, TLDEF has also built relationships with nearly 100 local and state transgender groups across the country. 

TLDEF intentionally elevates issues within the transgender community at the intersections of racial, gender, and economic justice. As such, TLDEF is invested in a “by and for” model with more than two-thirds of staff who identify as either transgender or non-binary and more than half identify as people of color. TLDEF has also largely focused its impact in states and regions where legal and policy protections are either limited or non-existent, including places such as Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia.

For every $100 awarded by U.S. grantmaking foundations only .04 cents supports the transgender community. In light of this reality, TLDEF has focused on harnessing the power of pro bono counsel to expand its legal capacity. Over the years TLDEF has worked “on the inside” with law firms and in-house counsel to build and increase transgender legal competency. TLDEF actively maintains relationships with more than 60 law firms and in-house counsel at Fortune 500 corporations. To support this work, TLDEF trains and provides ongoing technical assistance to attorneys across the country to ensure pro bono counsel are equipped to best support transgender and non-binary clients. In 2020, TLDEF conducted more than 60 trainings and presentations.

TLDEF has worked to advance equality for transgender and non-binary people, championing cases that are likely to safeguard or advance legal precedent with an eye for racial, economic, and gender justice.

TLDEF has secured groundbreaking wins, such as the first-of-its-kind ruling from the Colorado Civil Rights Division mandating that K-12 transgender students be allowed to use school facilities consistent with their gender identity, and has had sweeping impact, such as our challenge against 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East that made transgender-inclusive health insurance benefits available to more than 400,000 union workers. TLDEF has also fought against discriminatory policies around legal identification, reaching a landmark settlement in a federal lawsuit against South Carolina’s DMV for denying a license to a non-binary 16-year-old, and employment, reaching a settlement against Amazon for workplace discrimination against a transgender employee at their Kentucky shipping facility.

In recent months, TLDEF has secured a historic settlement that established one of the strongest jail policies in the country protecting the rights of transgender, non-binary, and intersex people in custody. TLDEF also worked with Aetna – a health insurance company serving 22.1 million members – to announce expansion of coverage for gender affirming care across its commercial plans. 

In 2020, TLDEF’s legal programs including its Name Change Project, Impact Litigation Project, and Trans Health Project conducted 857 intakes and served nearly 600 clients. TLDEF provided technical assistance to almost 700 volunteer attorneys who supported these efforts and donated over 12Khours. TLDEF’s public education program served approximately 3K attendees at CLEs, trainings, workshops, and other events.

TLDEF selects client cases that would create or affirm legal and policy precedents to advance justice and equity for transgender communities, ensuring that our work has an impact beyond the individuals we serve. In2020, TLDEF succeeded in removing blanket exclusions for transgender-related surgery from a health plan covering 350K railroad employees and their families and expanding coverage of gender-affirming surgery to include breast augmentation for transfeminine members of Aetna’s 22.1M policy holders.

TLDEF’s federal lawsuits in NC and GA seek to end transgender-related health insurance exclusions, and favorable outcomes at the circuit court level would impact coverage in AL, FL, GA, MD, NC, SC, VA, and WV. Half a million transgender adults live in the South (U.S. 1.4M), making the potential policy implications considerable.

In 2022, the number of clients directly served by TLDEF will increase by at least 10% across all programs.

TLDEF’s long-term goal is to increase and safeguard the number of legal and policy protections for transgender people in the U.S., particularly where limited protections exist, by (indicators in parentheses):

Expanding legal recognition of transgender people through name and gender marker changes, thereby reducing and preventing acts of violence (16.1.1, 16.1.3, 16.1.4) and improving access to economic opportunity (1.2, 1.3, 4.5). Measure: increase in pro bono partnerships and expansion of Name Change Project sites, which impact the number of clients we can serve.

Advancing law and policy for transgender equality (5.1, 5.c, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4) by setting precedent or strengthening state and federal protections. Measure: policy changes achieved through legal action on behalf of our clients (16.3).

Eliminating transgender-related health insurance exclusions (3.8) and ensuring that individuals, providers, LGBTQ+ organizations, and health advocates can successfully appeal denials of coverage. Measure: number of health plans that drop transgender-related insurance exclusions.

Building a coordinated and informed movement for transgender equality in partnership with local and state-based organizations. Measure: number of partnerships established and leveraged to advocate collectively for state or federal policies that promote transgender equality or against state or federal policies that would deny equality to transgender people (16.6.2, 16.7.2, 16.b.1).

Trans communities receive under a penny for every $100 of all foundation funding (Funders for LGBTQ Issues). In contrast, anti-transgender groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Federalist Society, and Heritage Foundation are part of a well-funded, highly coordinated effort to derail progress by demonizing transgender people. Their efforts have reached an alarming crescendo this year: nearly 150 anti-transgender bills in over 30 states, the majority of which would ban transgender students from K-12 school sports, criminalize gender affirming care to transgender minors, or both. These groups annually raise a combined $229MM and employ hundreds to fuel their harmful agenda. Meanwhile, TLDEF and the broader transgender rights movement is severely outnumbered with the three national transgender organizations collectively raising only 4% of our opponents’ budget and employing a fraction to defend and advance trans-inclusive legal and policy protections.

TLDEF would invest the Elevate Prize in the expansion of our communications capacity, focusing on culture change efforts to shift and reimagine the public conversation about transgender people. The Prize would provide a crucial intervention to the current legal and political context and support needed public education work for the long-term success of the transgender rights movement.

The demand for TLDEF’s legal and policy expertise has grown significantly under Andy Marra’s leadership. But the organization continues to suffer from less visibility and awareness due to its outdated brand and limited communications infrastructure. As a direct intervention, TLDEF is in the early stages of conducting both a strategic plan and brand refresh, including a website redesign. This significant body of work is projected for completion by the end of 2021.

If awarded the Elevate Prize, TLDEF would invest the financial support to build the organization’s communications capacity. The Prize would increase TLDEF’s credibility by serving as a powerful validator for our mission and goals and enable the organization to reach a broader audience of potential supporters. Additional in-kind support in the form of increasing TLDEF’s brand recognition and growing its base of stakeholders would strategically complement our aim to build a robust and responsive communications shop. As a result, TLDEF anticipates that it would be strongly positioned to counter false and dangerous narratives, equip new and compelling messengers with accurate information, and drive the national conversation about the need for full legal and lived transgender equality. We also anticipate this effort would result in growth among new supporters.

Of TLDEF’s nine-person board, 44% (including our board co-chairs) are trans-identified, 22% identify as trans people of color, and 67% identify as women; our board also includes a parent of a trans child. The executive, legal, and development directors comprise TLDEF’s leadership team, all of whom self-identify as people of color. Moreover, Marra is the first transgender woman of color to either helm a national transgender or LGBTQ+ organization. In light of TLDEF’s rapid growth, Marra recently secured support from the Leaders Trust to build and strengthen policies and practices with an explicit DEI lens applicable to both staff and board. 

The most successful social justice organizations reflect their community, and we are deeply invested in a “by-and-for” model. TLDEF is a trans-led and trans-serving organization that applies an intersectional lens to its gender justice work. TLDEF’s commitment to serving the most marginalized transgender people is grounded in both racial and economic justice lens for determining how we direct our resources to have the greatest impact; we focus our efforts not only on transgender people of color, but especially those who are low income – i.e., those impacted by multiple forms of discrimination and systemic barriers to equity.

TLDEF’s staff is representative of those we serve, with more than two-thirds identifying as transgender/non-binary and more than half identifying as people of color, including the leadership team. As a transgender woman of color who has faced violence and discrimination, Andy has personally experienced the unique challenges confronting transgender people, especially those of color; and over the last 20 years, Andy has worked on staff at GLAAD, GLSEN, and Arcus Foundation and on boards/advisory councils at Freedom for All Americans, National Center for Transgender Equality, and Human Rights Campaign. Her lived experience and career positioned her to lead TLDEF out of crisis by fixing inherited broken systems, rebuilding programs and teams, and developing the relationships needed to ensure TLDEF realizes its potential to make a deep impact.

Andy joined a staff of four in December 2018, and TLDEF closed the year with $831,823 in revenue – an organizational highwater mark. TLDEF exceeded $2MM in revenue in 2020 and expanded to a team of 11, with five hires planned in 2021. The impact of the added capacity and resources is reflected in the legal advocacy we can undertake, the litigation we can manage, and the expansion of our public education efforts.

In November 2018, TLDEF’s Board of Directors appointed Andy Marra as executive director, and she took the helm a month later. She inherited an organization that was confronted by several challenges including staff departures that left one part-time attorney in charge of TLDEF’s impact litigation, low morale among both board and staff, reduced financial support, weakened partnerships, and the possibility of the organization’s permanent closure. Andy immediately implemented a 90-day plan to stabilize the organization and articulate TLDEF’s future direction. In her first three months, Andy met 1:1 with the staff and board to identify concerns and solutions to improve morale and conducted more than 60 external meetings with donors, funders, and partners to rebuild the organization’s credibility. She also kicked off hiring processes to rebuild the organization’s staff and identified a series of priorities to improve the organization’s financial and operational health.

In Andy’s first year, TLDEF exceeded its 2019 projected budget and brought on five new staff and three new board members. TLDEF also increased its programmatic impact by filing four new lawsuits in GA, NY, NC, and PA while engaging in federal advocacy in direct response to the Trump Administration’s assault on federal protections for transgender people. 

Public speaking engagements listed in alphabetical order:

• American Bar Association – Intersection of Identities: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and the Asian American and Pacific Islander Experience (link leads to landing page, including video)
  
• Commonwealth Club of California - Black, API, and Trans Solidarity

• #DecisionDay National Rally - Bostock v. Clayton County (starts at 53:07)

• Korean American Story - Legacy Project

• Lambda Legal - From Fear to Fighting Back

• New York Times - Transgender Today

• Snap Judgment - The Birth Dream

• Successful Nonprofits - 6 Ways Your Nonprofit Can Be More Trans-Inclusive

• TLDEF - Pride & Joy: Stories for Trans Youth(starts at 2:07)

• TransLash - Lives at Stake

• UCLA Law - Are We There Yet? LGBTQ Rights and Bostock Decision
  

The Elevate Prize would support needed public education work for the long-term success of the transgender rights movement.

TLDEF and the two other national transgender rights organizations maintain a combined total of four full-time communications professionals compared to our top five anti-transgender opponents that possess more than 60 communications staff and 4.5M+ Facebook followers and 777K+ Twitter followers. The need for a strong counter narrative to the opposition’s messaging is both urgent and long overdue, and TLDEF is currently investing in its initial communications work by undergoing a brand refresh and website redesign and hiring its first-ever communications director. This is only the beginning, however.

TLDEF would leverage the Prize and its suite of resources to expand our communications capacity with a specific focus on culture change efforts to shift and reimagine the public conversation about transgender people: digital strategies to amplify our programmatic work and increase brand-awareness; original program-related content to inform and engage our stakeholders; and/or press strategies to engage reporters and journalists with our work. This would allow TLDEF to achieve its goals by providing the additional investment needed to complement and support our public education, advocacy, and litigation work and increase our base of informed supporters.

TLDEF has built relationships with transgender and ally organizations to identify needs and opportunities for public education, policy, and litigation, promoting their participation in our legal advocacy and ensuring that the narrative of our cases authentically reflects the lives of transgender people.

TLDEF enlisted TRANScending Barriers, Southerners on New Ground, and Equality Georgia to advocate for our client, a sheriff’s deputy whose health plan excludes medically necessary transgender-related health care. TLDEF convened transgender-led organizations to oppose proposed anti-transgender regulations by the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Housing & Urban Development, including Arianna’s Center, Casa Anandrea, Colectivo Transgrediendo, Marsha’s House, Metro Trans Umbrella Group, Princess Janae Place, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and Translatinx Network. During the 2020 elections, TLDEF signed up over 60 trans-led organizations demanding all votes be counted, including TRANScending Barriers and LaGender Inc. (GA), Ministries Beyond Welcome and House of Pentacles (NC), and Trans Education Network of Texas, and Trans Pride Initiative (TX). 

TLDEF currently participates at more than 13 tables including LGBTQI Health Policy Roundtable; Freedom & Opportunity for All; National LGBTQ Anti-Poverty Network; NY State Gender Recognition Act coalition; Title IX Regulations Recommendation Working Group; and Trans State Medicaid Working Group.