All Rise, Here Comes The Judge!

And he is trans!

New York governor appoints the first openly trans male judge in the US

Gay Times

By Jordan Robledo

Governor of New York Kathy Hochul has appointed the United States’ first openly transgender male judge.

On 7 June, the democratic official announced the 11 new appointments and four reappointments of the New York State Court of Claims. 

One of the new individuals to join the aforementioned court is Seth Marnin, who is currently serving as the Director of Training & Education, Equal Opportunity & Affirmative Action at Columbia University. 

Marnin’s appointment makes him the country’s first openly male trans judge and the first trans judge in the state of New York. 

But no the first trans judge! The guys are finally catching up to the gals.

Here is some of our history!

Once a Pariah, Now a Judge: The Early Transgender Journey of Phyllis Frye

The New York Times

By Deborah Sontag

August 29, 2015

Nearly four decades before Caitlyn Jenner introduced herself to the world, Phyllis Randolph Frye came out as a transgender woman in a far less glamorous way. No Diane Sawyer, no Vanity Fair.

It was the summer of 1976. As Bruce Jenner, 26, was celebrating his decathlon victory at the Montreal Olympics, Phillip Frye, 28, was admitting defeat in suppressing his gender identity. He, becoming she, had already lost a lot: He had been forced to resign from the military for “sexual deviation.” He had been disowned by his parents, divorced by his first wife and separated from his son. He had been dismissed from several engineering jobs.

[…]

But this moment — when transition stories are increasingly and empathetically featured in the media, campuses buzz with gender politics and the president condemns transgender persecution in the State of the Union address — did not materialize out of thin air. It evolved over the last quarter-century as Ms. Frye and others built a transgender civil rights movement, fighting dexterously to rebrand a highly marginalized group; demand, and increasingly win, equal protection under the law; and put the T in L.G.B.T.

She is one of our pioneers! She blazed the trail for us.

When I do a workshop on trans history I have these slides on her…

Phyllis Frye

1992: The International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy, Inc.

1994: Phyllis Frye and Karen Kerin go to Washington, DC to attempt to speak before the Senate Hearings on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Transgender people had been omitted from ENDA language

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November, 1996: The next large transgender community meeting with HRC

Allison Laing, Phyllis Dickason, Yosenio Lewis, Gary Bowen, Jon Banks, Stephanie Young, Jamison Green, Janice Galeckas, Shannon Minter, Melissa Dixon, and Phyllis Fry

The NYT article goes on…

At the same time, Ms. Frye was one of the first to act on the need for transgender advocates to develop their own legal theories and agenda. In the 1990s, she convened annual transgender law conferences, where grass-roots activists from around the country first met and developed an aspirational transgender bill of rights. Between events, she helped tether the growing network through group emails she called her “Phyllabusters.”

“Caitlyn Jenner stands on the shoulders of somebody like Phyllis Frye,” said Shannon Price Minter, the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and one of several transgender appointees by the Obama administration. “Phyllis is the grandmother of our movement.”

We are here where we are today because of many of our pioneers we stand on their shoulders but with today’s climate I predict that we will be creating a lot of new shoulders to stand upon.

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Those who want to learn more about our history I recommend:

Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender History. Berkley CA. Seal Press.