richard SAENZ

Richard Saenz (he/him) is Counsel and the Criminal Legal System Strategist at Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people and those living with HIV. He focuses his work on the criminal legal system, coordinating litigation and policy work on behalf of incarcerated people and against the criminalization and policing of LGBTQ+ people.

Currently, Richard is lead counsel in Levy v. Green, et al. a challenge to Maryland Department of Public Safety’s denial of gender affirming surgery and commissary items for Ms. Levy and its discriminatory housing practices. He is lead counsel in Roe v. Foley, et al. on behalf of Ms. Roe, a formerly incarcerated transgender woman living with HIV, who was put in solitary confinement for over six years due to an unconstitutional and discriminatory policy against people living with HIV. Richard was counsel in Hicklin v. Precythe, a successful challenge to Missouri’s DOC’s “freeze frame” policy denying appropriate health care to transgender people in its custody, in one of the first court decisions to rule specifically that “freeze-frame” policies are unconstitutional as they are in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The court ordered that Ms. Hicklin have access to hormone therapy, permanent body hair removal, and access to gender-affirming canteen items.

Additionally, Richard is the project manager and co-author of Protected & Served? 2022, Lambda Legal’s groundbreaking community survey on the experiences of LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV with the criminal legal system. The report is available at http://www.ProtectedAndServed.org He is the author of “A Crisis Behind Bars: Legal Issues Impacting Transgender People in Prisons” the featured article for the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Magazine, Winter 2023. He is a frequent speaker on the impact of the criminal legal system on LGBTQ+ people including at national conferences and at law schools across the country.

In 2024, Richard was selected as a Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School. The program recognizes exemplary lawyers who have distinguished themselves in public interest work and who can advise students who are considering similar career paths. Additionally in 2024, he received Fordham Law School’s Public Interest Resource Center’s Lefkowitz Award recognizing his contributions to public service. He is the recipient of the LGBT Bar Association of New York’s 2022 Community Excellence Award. And, he has been named a Hispanic National Bar Association’s Top Lawyers Under 40 and a National LGBTQ Bar Association’s Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40.

A native Houstonian, who now calls New York his home, Richard received his Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law, where he was a Stein Scholar for Public Interest Law and Ethics. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University.