Jennifer C. Pizer, Legal Director and Arnold D. Kassoy Senior Scholar of Law

Jennifer C. Pizer comes to the Williams Institute after a very successful career at Lambda Legal, where she was Senior Counsel and the National Marriage Project Director, focusing on family law issues affecting same-sex couples and their children, and sexual orientation discrimination in health care, employment, education and housing.  Pizer co-authored California’s broad domestic partnership law, which has become a model for other states, and frequently advises federal, state and local policymakers on LGBT issues.  Before joining UCLA, she taught as an adjunct professor at USC Law School, Loyola Law School, and Whittier Law School.  In addition to writing about marriage, domestic partnership and parenting issues, Pizer’s publications have addressed the relationship between discriminatory family law rules and unequal access to insurance, how prohibitions against sex stereotyping should apply to workplace dress codes, and school officials’ duty to protect LGBT students against bullying.  Pizer is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law, where she received an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellowship.  After law school she served as a judicial clerk to the Hon. Ann Aldrich of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, was Legal Director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, and practiced intellectual property and business torts litigation.   Pizer has commented extensively on LGBT legal developments for national print and broadcast media and the legal press.  She has received numerous professional achievement and community service awards, including being named seven times as among the top women litigators in California by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal, and as a “Woman of the Year” by the California Assembly in 2005.