Tranaliance will hold their upcoming March 24th meeting as virtual meeting, or webinar. Register for this meeting using the link at the end of this page.
Mark Purpura will be the featured speaker. Mark will be talking about what policies may be best for schools in Delaware to protect transgender students. He will be telling us about his organization and their efforts to protect the LGBTQ community.
Mark Purpura is the President of the Board of Directors of Equality Delaware Foundation, and is a member of the Board of Directors of Equality Delaware, Inc., CAMP Rehoboth, Inc., and the ACLU of Delaware. He is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Southern California and received his law degree with honors from the University of North Carolina School of Law. Mark is also a Director of Richards, Layton & Finger, P.A., in Wilmington, Delaware, where he practices corporate, trust and financial institutions law.
Mark has advocated for LGBTQ civil rights in Delaware for over a decade, including drafting and co-leading the advocacy and educational campaigns for Delaware's civil union, marriage equality and gender identity nondiscrimination acts. In 2016, he was awarded the Order of the First State, Delaware’s highest honor for meritorious service, by Governor Jack Markell in recognition of his service in support of LGBT equality. Also in 2016, he was honored by the Delaware State Bar Association’s LGBT Section for his exceptional commitment to improving the legal services afforded to members of Delaware’s LGBT community and to the advancement of the legal interests of LGBT Delawareans. In 2014, he received the Delaware Distinguished Service Medal from the Adjutant General of the State of Delaware for his pro bono legal service to the Delaware National Guard. In 2012, he received the Delaware State Bar Association President's Award for his advocacy for equality for all Delawareans.
From 2017-2018, Mark served as a member of the Delaware Department of Education’s Development Team to create proposed Regulation 225, which as originally drafted and proposed, would have explicitly prohibited discrimination against students in Delaware schools based on their gender identity or expression.
Mark has successfully worked to protect transgender Delawareans from discrimination in insurance (including private insurance and state insurance coverages for transition related healthcare), to ease restrictions for name-changes and gender marker changes on birth certificates and drivers licenses, to prohibit the practice of conversion therapy on Delaware youth, to modernize assisted reproduction laws for the benefit of LGBTQ Delawareans, and to protect transgender inmates from discrimination in prisons.
Mark has been recognized for excellence in law in Chambers USA, The Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers and Delaware Today magazine.