Victory for LGBTQ Families: Illinois passes Equality for Every Family Act

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Congratulations to our partners at Equality Illinois and GLAD Law for their successful efforts to expand protections in Illinois for LGBTQ families and all families formed through assisted reproduction and surrogacy! In doing so, Illinois is the 15th state to modernize their parentage laws to ensure that all children, regardless of what their families look like or how they were conceived, can secure legal ties to their parents.

Parental Recognition Laws

For both LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people alike, families are made in many different ways, and so there need to be multiple ways for the parent-child relationship to be legally .

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In 2025 alone, three states (Hawaii, Oregon, Illinois) have updated their laws to protect all children and all families. This incredible progress didn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of the hard work of lawyers, advocates, families who shared their stories, and policymakers who recognized the need to act. For years, MAP has been powering their work with reports, legislative tracking, and tested strategies for how to talk about the diversity of today’s families and need for change.

Illinois joins a growing number of states with laws ensuring that any parent — regardless of their marital status, gender, sexual orientation, or genetic relationship to the child — can sign a form at the hospital and have their parental relationship legally recognized and protected at no cost. This allows all families to access the vital protections of a legal parent-child relationship. The updates to Illinois’ laws also establish a uniform and streamlined adoption process throughout the state for children born through assisted reproduction. Eleven other states have enacted similar confirmatory adoption statutes.

These updates reflect what we’ve always known: that love makes a family, and the law should recognize and protect that truth. From streamlining paths to legal parentage to ensuring equitable treatment for LGBTQ families at their most important moments, these changes will have a profound impact on the lives of countless parents and children.

▸▸ Learn more

For additional information on parental recognition laws, view our Equality Maps.
Read our 2023 report released in partnership with COLAGE, Family Equality, GLAD Law, and NCLR.