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Legal Wrap: Unequal Protection for Transgender Students, and U.S. Army’s First Woman Judge Advocate General

Transgender students continue to face an uneven legal landscape. Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit filed after the close of an Article 32 hearing in a Naval Academy rape case seeks to remove the academy's superintendent from overseeing the investigation, and the U.S. Army now has a woman as its top lawyer.

The U.S. Army now has a woman as its top lawyer: General Flora D. Darpino (pictured above). rutgersalumni / YouTube

Legal Wrap is a weekly round-up of key legal reproductive rights and justice news.

The United States has taken significant strides toward equality for the LGBTQ community, but even after the fall of the Defense of Marriage Act and states embracing marriage equalitytransgender students still face an uneven legal landscape.

At least one hundred women leaders came to Washington, D.C., Thursday and faced arrest to demand Congress pass fair, comprehensive immigration reform that doesn’t happen on the backs of women and families and rely on offensive and dangerous stereotypes.

At the request of the Red River Women’s Clinic, a federal judge has dismissed a legal challenge to a North Dakota law that bans abortions based on the gender of a fetus and for genetic fetal anomaly.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, a federal court has blocked the contraception mandate for a secular, for-profit nursing home as the legal battle over the birth control benefit in Obamacare continues its steady march toward the Supreme Court.

A federal lawsuit filed after the close of an Article 32 hearing in a Naval Academy rape case seeks removal of the Naval Academy’s superintendent from overseeing the investigation and argues that the military system is biased against accusers of sexual assault.

The U.S. Army now has a woman as its top lawyer. The Washington Post asks if she’ll deal with the military sexual assault crisis any differently.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has a reputation for issuing some bad decisions when it comes to reproductive rights, but this latest may be among the worst.

The City of San Francisco has sued the State of Nevada, accusing officials of busing hundreds upon hundreds of former inmates and people with mental health problems to San Francisco.

And lastly, an Illinois woman is suing a medical clinic for medical battery after undergoing a transvaginal ultrasound to determine the source of her abdominal pain, alleging she suffered physical injuries to her vagina and cervix and continues to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Now imagine if instead of consenting to the procedure, the state forced her to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound before further treating her abdominal issues. This is the reality of patients needing abortions in Arizona, Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana.