(Washington, DC – February 4, 2020) Tonight, after President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union Address, Sharon McGowan, Chief Strategy Officer and Legal Director at Lambda Legal, issued the following statement:

“At tonight’s State of the Union Address, President Trump doubled down on his agenda of hate and division. Filled with blatant lies and race-baiting rhetoric, tonight’s speech must be a call to action for all people who believe in our shared humanity and the right of every person to equal justice and dignity under law. By weaponizing religious liberty arguments, this administration has relentlessly attacked not only the LGBT community, but also women, communities of color, and religious minorities. And by using tonight’s State of the Union to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh, President Trump displays his utter disdain for the overwhelming majority of our country who neither look like him nor share his cynical world view.

“As we expected, the president bragged about his Federalist Society-inspired packing of our courts, including the Supreme Court, with judges with long records of anti-LGTBQ bias. These judges are already wreaking havoc on sacred constitutional protections, and will undermine the legitimacy and integrity of our judicial system for generations to come. Like this President, many of these new judges do not even attempt to hide their disdain for LGBT rights, and as demonstrated in a recent case involving a Trump judge, their disrespect for the very identity of transgender people. Sadly, there is no reason for us not to expect more of the same for as long as Donald Trump is the President and Mitch McConnell controls the Senate.

“The president, again, has laid down a marker. We at Lambda Legal, again, will do likewise. We will continue to fight this administration in the courts and in partnership with our allies in the U.S. Congress. We will continue our legal battles to overturn the ban on transgender military service and to block the effort to discharge service members living with HIV. We will continue to fight the pernicious effort to invite health care workers to deny care to LGBTQ patients at their most vulnerable moments. And we will continue to work to ensure all the rights, responsibilities and benefits of marriage, so long denied, are fully extended to LGBTQ couples and their families.

“The times demand no less.”