Shannon Minter is the legal director for the national center for lesbian rights. Shannon, a transgender man, was lead counsel for same-sex couples in the landmark California marriage equality case which held that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry and that laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation are inherently discriminatory and subject to the highest level of constitutional scrutiny.

Minter was counsel to other successful challenges to state marriage bans in Alabama, Florida, Idaho, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. He represented same-sex couples from Tennessee in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision striking down state laws barring same-sex couples from marriage. In 2010, Minter was also NCLR’s lead attorney in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding student group policies prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and rejecting the argument that such policies violated a student group’s rights to freedom of speech, religion, and association. NCLR represented Hastings Outlaw, an LGBTQ student group who intervened to help defend the nondiscrimination policy.

We hope you can join us for coffee and this inspiring speaker!  Please complete the registration form to join. We also hope you will share this message with other faculty, staff and students who look to the LGBT Resource Center for connection and inspiration.