Mari Frank Interviews Therese Stewart, Chief Deputy City Attorney, San Francisco

Since 2002, Ms. Stewart has served as Chief Deputy City Attorney under San Francisco City Attorney, Dennis J. Herrera, overseeing the City and County's civil litigation and representing San Francisco and its officials in key cases. Previously, she was a partner at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin, where she handled complex business litigation in state and federal courts. From February 2004 through May 2008, Ms. Stewart headed a team of deputy city attorneys and private firm lawyers representing Plaintiff City and County of San Francisco in the Marriage Cases, which were litigated in the state trial and appellate courts. She presented oral argument to the California Supreme Court on March 4, 2008, and the high court decision was issued on May 15, 2008. The Marriage Cases consisted of six coordinated cases involving state constitutional challenges to California's laws excluding same-sex couples from marriage. These cases are the first in the nation in which a local government body has joined with lesbian and gay couples to challenge a state's marriage laws. The City and the couples raised claims under the California Constitution's equal protection, liberty, privacy and free association clauses. They prevailed in the Superior Court, lost on appeal, and ultimately won in the California Supreme Court. The May 15, 2008 decision held that the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage unjustifiably discriminates against lesbians and gay men and denies them of fundamental liberty and autonomy privacy interests in entering into a state-sanctioned family relationship equal in dignity to other state-sanctioned family relationships. Ms. Stewart and the City Attorney team also defended Mayor Newsom when his decision to issue marriage licenses to thousands of same-sex couples was challenged in 2004. The California Supreme Court ruled that the Mayor and other City officials lacked the power to refuse to enforce the limitation of marriage to opposite sex couples based on their belief that such limitation violated the Constitution. To learn more about the San Francisco City Attorney's Office go to www.sfgov.org. Ms. Stewart has long represented parties and amicus curiae in LGBT civil rights cases, including the airlines' challenge to San Francisco's Equal Benefits Ordinance, a lesbian police officer discrimination suit against the City of Sacramento, an early equal protection challenge to the State's denial of equal benefits to partners of lesbian and gay employees, and a case challenging the Defense Department's denial of security clearances to lesbians and gay men. In the 1990's, Ms. Stewart served as the first Co-Chair of the Bar Association of San Francisco's Committee on Sexual Orientation, which developed guidelines for legal employers on eliminating sexual orientation discrimination. In the 1980's, she served on the Board of the Lesbian Rights Project (currently known as the National Center for Lesbian Rights), and her firm later assisted NCLR in changing its name and obtaining non-profit status. She also served on the Board of Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom, San Francisco's lesbian and gay bar association. In 1999, Ms. Stewart served as the first openly gay President of the Bar Association of San Francisco. In that capacity, she co-founded BASF's School-To-College Program, which provides mentoring and guidance to inner city high school students to help them prepare for, select, and apply to college. Ms. Stewart currently serves on a Task Force of the California Judicial Council's Commission on Judicial Independence, and the Boards of the Northern District of California Historical Society and the Legal Aid Society/Employment Law Center. She is also a member of the American Bar Association's recently established Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Commission. She has previously been a lawyer delegate for Northern District of California to the Ninth Circuit and a State Bar delegate to the American Bar Association. Ms. Stewart was recognized as a California Superlawyer in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Ms. Stewart received her B.A. with Distinction from Cornell University in 1978 and her J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law in 1981, where she was awarded Order of the Coif and received Am Jur awards in Constitutional and Criminal Law. Ms. Stewart was Editor-in-Chief of Ecology Law Quarterly and a research assistant to Professors Paul Mishkin and William Fletcher. From 1981-1982, she was a law clerk to Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.