Court Cases

In an important victory in our JK v. HK case, the Hawai'i Supreme Court held that an unmarried woman who is not the biological parent of a child can still establish parental rights by holding out the child as her own. A lower court had previously decided that this standard only applied to unmarried men, but not to unmarried women in the identical situation. This issue primarily comes up in situations like that of our client involving an unmarried same-sex couple who are co-parenting a child. This ruling is a major win for LGBTQ couples in Hawai'i and is a necessary clarification of the law.

In December 2018, the ACLU of Hawaiʻi, together with Legal Aid at Work and Simpson Thacher & Barlett, filed a Title IX class action lawsuit on behalf of brave Campbell High School female student-athletes against the Hawaiʻi DOE and the OIA seeking gender equity in school athletics.