The Miami-Dade Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce & GALLA presents its monthly networking program tailored for attorneys, judges, and legal professionals.  This free webinar will be conducted via Zoom and is open to both GALLA members and to the community at large.  Participate and network with fellow legal and business professionals as well as people interested in the topic of surrogacy.

Our guest speaker will be attorney Elizabeth Schwartz whose family formation practice includes surrogacy and adoption, with a focus on building LGBTQ families.  Among the topics she will be addressing are:
- An overview of adoption and surrogacy options
- Florida is very surrogacy friendly.  What does that mean?
- Legal outlook for LGBTQ people doing surrogacy
- Impact of COVID on surrogacy

We will also count with the participation of a local gay couple who will share their experience, insights, and the steps they took in starting their family through surrogacy.  Additional participants and resources (to be confirmed soon) will also add value to this engaging and informational dialogue.



Elizabeth Schwartz, Esq is board certified by the Florida Bar in Adoption Law, is a fellow of the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys and the Florida Adoption Council, and serves as an adoption intermediary helping make forever families of all kinds. Elizabeth has handled surrogacy for almost 20 years, assisting intended parents, gestational carriers and egg and sperm donors with their legal needs. She is the author of "LGBT Issues in Surrogacy" in the Handbook of Gestational Surrogacy, ed. E. Scott Sills (Cambridge University Press, 2016).  Elizabeth served as counsel on the victorious cases challenging Florida's marriage ban brought by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) on behalf of six same-sex couples and members of the Equality Florida Institute seeking the right to marry (Pareto v. Ruvin) and suing Florida for fair issuance of birth certificates to same-sex married couples (Chin). She also served as counsel in several cases that helped overturn Florida's bigoted 1977 ban forbidding gays and lesbians from adopting children.