Lavender Rights Project (LRP)

Background

Lavender Rights Project was incorporated in 2016, initially operating primarily as a legal aid clinic offering civil rights and employment discrimination services to low-income LGBT residents in Washington State. The organization’s revenue that year totaled $41,989. By 2019, annual revenue had grown to $630,453. ^{4 4}

Around 2020, the organization underwent a significant internal restructuring, shifting from a predominantly white-led legal-services organization to one with majority Black transgender leadership. Jaelynn Scott, who had previously used the organization’s legal services to sue a former employer for discrimination, was hired by LRP and became executive director in 2020. ^{5 1}

The group also absorbed the Washington State Black Trans Task Force (WA-BTTF), an informal organizing network that had operated as a project within the organization since 2019. That network became integrated into LRP’s formal staff structure, with the task force’s leadership described as now constituting “in essence, Lavender Rights Project.” ⁶

Activities

Legal Services and Criminal Justice Advocacy

Lavender Rights Project operates a legal clinic that provides free civil legal assistance to Black and Indigenous clients in Washington state. From 2022 to 2026, the group reported serving more than 103 clients with legal aid services. ⁷

The organization runs a far-left “Decriminalization Department” that advocates for reducing the policing and incarceration of LGBT and Black individuals. On its website, the group has stated an explicit position in favor of prison abolition, publishing that it is “committed to the fight to abolish all cages in WA” and asserting that the criminal justice system “serves to protect the systems of white supremacy, gender-based violence, colonialism, and capitalism” and that no reforms could change its “original and currently intended purpose: to carry out systematic violence.” ²

In 2021, the organization co-led a campaign to redirect $16 million from King County Jail’s operating budget toward Black-led housing programs in Seattle, a political effort the group described as a “diversion” of jail funding. ⁷

Housing

In April 2023, LRP and the Chief Seattle Club were jointly selected by King County as co-operators of a 35-unit permanent supportive housing building in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, funded through King County’s Health Through Housing program and reserved for residents described in the group’s materials as “QT2BIPOC” (queer, transgender, Two-Spirit, Black, Indigenous, and people of color). ⁸

The group has also operated a small-scale guaranteed income pilot program, distributing $1,000 per month to five individuals beginning in July 2022, and has publicly called on state and local governments to fund similar programs more broadly. ⁹

Legislative Advocacy

The organization endorsed and claimed a role developing the federal “Transgender Bill of Rights” proposal introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) in June 2022 and reintroduced in March 2023 alongside Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA). The legislation, which stalled in Congress, would have amended the Civil Rights Act to include gender identity and sex characteristics as protected classes, expanded access to sex-change procedures, and codified abortion access. ^{10 11}

In Washington State, the group claimed credit for successfully advocating for $2 million in state budget funding earmarked for transgender youth and for passage of a “Shield Law” protecting those seeking gender-affirming procedures from legal repercussions. ⁷

The Lavender Rights Project was among over 200 LGBT-related left-of-center organizations that criticized Target, and other companies such as Anheuser-Busch, after Target “reluctantly decided last week to pull some Pride Month merchandise from its shelves.” The coalition of groups, led by the Human Rights Campaign, urged Target to “provide necessary security for employees, restore Pride merchandise to its shelves, and stand by its commitment to the values it has long professed.” ¹²

Funding

The organization publicly lists its funders on its website. Institutional funders include the Gates Foundation; King County’s Department of Community and Human Services; King County Health Through Housing; King County’s Office of Equity, Racial and Social Justice; the Northwest Area Foundation; the Satterberg Foundation; the Pride Foundation; the Seattle Foundation; the Social Justice Fund Northwest; the Groundswell Fund; Borealis Philanthropy (Fund for Trans Generations); the Black Feminist Fund; the Kataly Foundation; the Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation; the Emergent Fund; Progress Alliance of Washington; the Norcliffe Foundation; and the Black Future Co-op Fund. ¹³

Leadership

As of 2026, Jaelynn Scott was the executive director of Lavendar Rights Project, earning $142,226 in compensation in 2023 and $179,045 in 2024. Scott was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, and attended the University of Southern Mississippi before working briefly as a flight attendant. Scott had previously been a client of LRP after suing a former employer for employment discrimination. In 2026, Scott announced a campaign for the Washington state House of Representatives in the 37th Legislative District. ^{4 14 5}