News & Commentary written by Joshua Block

Joshua Block is a senior attorney with the National ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Projects. He has won landmark cases protecting the rights of transgender people, including Grimm v. Gloucester County, the first federal court of appeals decision recognizing that Title IX protects the rights of transgender students to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity. Josh was a member of the legal team that litigated Obergefell v Hodges and United States v. Windsor before the Supreme Court, and he has litigated cases seeking marriage for same-sex couples in Kansas, Missouri, Utah, and Virginia.
Josh also leads the LGBTQ Project’s work on freedom of speech and expression, including challenges to the censorship of LGBTQ library materials and bans on drag performances. The rest of his litigation docket covers a wide range of issues, including employment discrimination, attempts to use religion to discriminate, access to healthcare for transgender people, and military service. Josh's litigation against former President Trump's ban on military service for transgender people was featured in the award-winning documentary The Fight. In 2012, he was named one of the “Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40″ by the LGBT Bar Association. He has also served as a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School where he taught the school’s LGBT Rights Litigation Seminar. Josh is a graduate of Amherst College and of Yale Law School. He clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Second Circuit.