Sep. 13, 2012
Tara L. Borelli
See more on Tara L. BorelliLambda Legal Los Angeles Litigation Specialty: civil rights
Borelli entered UC Berkeley School of Law in 1998, hoping to join the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights movement and knowing there was a lot to do.
The U.S. Supreme Court had opened the door for states to criminalize private oral and anal sex in 1986, and that remained the law of the land. The Constitution, wrote Justice Byron White, did not confer "a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy."
Fourteen years later, the landscape has changed dramatically, in part with Borelli's help as a staff attorney at Lambda Legal in Los Angeles.
Her advocacy as lead attorney for Karen Golinski, a staff lawyer at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who is challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act to seek health insurance for her female spouse, won a landmark ruling in February.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White of San Francisco declared the law unconstitutional because it violated a legally married lesbian's right to the equal protection of the law.
Now that decision is on track to gain direct review by the U.S. Supreme Court, bypassing the 9th Circuit entirely, because it is "an issue of imperative and exceptional national public importance," as Obama administration lawyers put it in a petition to the high court. The court could grant review in October.
When she started law school, "It was a very different time for LGBT people," Borelli said, and I knew I wanted to be part of the work to improve the law for same-sex couples."
Borelli interned with Lambda Legal in Los Angeles after her first year in law school. "I was immediately hooked," she said. "I spent the rest of my law school career plotting how to get hired at the organization, and as you can see, my secret plan worked."
Along with Golinski, three other gay rights cases have kept Borelli, 35, busy this year.
In April she persuaded the 9th Circuit to deny en banc review of a decision Lambda Legal had won in favor of keeping health benefits in place for lesbian and gay state employees in Arizona. Diaz v. Brewer, 2012 DJDAR 4314.
She also is litigating a first-of-its-kind effort to develop a new theory for transgender people to access transition-related care through their employee health plans in Oregon state court.
And she is trying to overturn Nevada's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. A federal judge allowed that case to proceed in August.
- JOHN ROEMER
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