Freedom for All Americans Education Fund

Activities

LGBT University

Freedom for All Americans created “LGBT University,” a year-long apprenticeship program that served to train and deploy new campaign staffers and movement leaders. The program covered topics including campaign organizing, communications, staff management, and voter data and targeting. ⁵ Along with this initiative, FFAA worked to organize and disseminate transgender spokespeople across the United States in an effort to show policy makers that sexual orientation and gender identity “must always move together; no exceptions.” ⁶

Equality Act

The Equality Act of 2015 sought to extend nondiscrimination law in areas including public accommodations, public education, employment, housing, federal funding, jury service, legal protections, and credit to lesbian, gay, transgender, and other sexual-minority Americans. It would have amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity. ⁷

After the election of President Joe Biden and a Democratic-controlled Congress, Democrats failed to overcome a Senate filibuster to move the Equality Act. ^{8  9}

Closure

In early 2023, after eight years of lobbying for the Equality Act, Freedom for All Americans announced it was closing. This ended the largest funded campaign working to pass federal nondiscrimination protections for LGBT Americans. ¹⁰ When the organization disbanded, all remaining funds held by Freedom for All Americans was given to the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund, the political action arm of the National Center for Transgender Equality, which opposed Trump administration rollbacks of social-liberal legal policies. ¹¹ There was minimal information given by FFAA as to why it closed, with no interviews by its board members or staff, and no press conferences, but both FFAA and FFAA Education Fund dissolved as nonprofit entities. ¹⁰

History

Freedom for All Americans was launched in 2015 after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which compelled state recognition of same-sex marriages nationwide. The campaign’s stated goal was to secure federal passage of comprehensive nondiscrimination legislation through the United States Congress and defeat anti-LGBT bills, at a time when, according to the group, 52 percent of LGBT people lived in states without explicit statewide nondiscrimination protections. Anticipating the election of Hillary Clinton to the presidency in 2016, advocates planned to run the campaign for a few months. Donald Trump was elected President and FFAA operated for nearly ten years. ^{10  6}

Funding

When launched, Freedom for All Americans was funded by LGBT-interest-focused donors including Paul Singer, Tim Gill, and Daniel Loeb and organizations including American Unity Fund and the Gill Foundation. ⁶

In June 2021, CREDO members distributed $47,655 to FFAA for an education and lobbying campaign that targeted conservative senators in 11 states with the goal of pressuring 60 senators to pass the Equality Act. ²

The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund was among one of FFAA’s major supporters, granting over $4.4 million from 2016 to 2022. In 2022, the organization granted FFAA a grant specifically to support its “wind-down” to close. That money was later passed on to the National Center for Transgender Equality. ^{12  11}

People

From the beginning, Freedom for All Americans’ leadership was embedded in the broader left-leaning advocacy world. The organization’s board included Courney Cuff, president and CEO of the Gill Foundation; Masen Davis, the former executive director of the Transgender Law Center; and Andy Marra, communications director of the Arcus Foundation, a left-of-center grantmaking foundation associated with billionaire medical device heir Jon Stryker. ¹³