Kathy Levinson, an economics and psychology graduate of Stanford University, is an advisory board member of the Horizons Foundation in San Francisco and a senior fellow with the American Leadership Forum, a national organization with chapters throughout the United States. Kathy Levinson also engages with a number of professional organizations, including the GLBTQ Advocates and Defenders (GLAD).
Through strategic litigation, public policy advocacy, and education, GLAD works in New England and nationally to create a just society free of discrimination based on gender identity and expression, HIV status, and sexual orientation. GLAD’s bold and effective advocacy has achieved scores of precedent-setting legal victories to end discrimination based on sexual orientation, HIV status and gender identity and expression, benefiting individuals, couples and families across New England and throughout the United States
GLAD recently provided technical support to LGBTQIA Alliance of Vermont members as they worked towards passing a version of the 2017 Uniform Parentage Act. Through the bill, Vermont families are guaranteed access to courts and other forms of legal security regardless of gender identity, marital status, and other aspects of parentage that have been challenged in the past. The original bill was written and passed in response to Sinnott v. Peck, a case in which the Vermont Supreme Court determined that Sarah Sinnot, though never married to her former partner, could not be barred from having a relationship with their child. Following the verdict, the court called for new legislature that recognized the various ways in which a modern family can function. Governor Phil Scott signed the bill into law in early May.
