Obama Nominates Out Lesbian As Federal Judge

Alison Nathan, has becomes Obama's first
 out lesbian federal judicial nominee

The Obama administration has nominated the third openly LGBT person to the federal bench: Alison (Ali) Nathan. Nathan, a former associate White House counsel, joins J. Paul Oetken and Edward Dumont as openly gay Obama judicial nominees. Currently, there is currently one openly gay federal judge on the bench, African American lesbian Deborah Batts.

Here is what the official White House announcement of the Nathan judicial nomination looked like:

Alison J. Nathan:  Nominee for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New YorkAlison J. Nathan currently serves in the Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York as Special Counsel to the Solicitor General, a position she has held since 2010.  From 2009 to 2010, Nathan served as a Special Assistant to President Obama and an Associate White House Counsel.  Prior to joining government service, she spent a number of years as an academic, first as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Fordham University Law School from 2006 to 2008 and later as a Fritz Alexander Fellow at New York University School of Law from 2008 to 2009.  From 2002 to 2006, Nathan was an associate in the New York and Washington, D.C. offices of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.  Nathan served as a law clerk for the Honorable John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States from 2001 to 2002 and as a law clerk to the Honorable Betty B. Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from 2000 to 2001.  Nathan received her J.D., magna cum laude, in 2000 from Cornell Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell Law Review.  She received her B.A. in 1994 from Cornell University.

It should be noted that these are some of the only openly LGBT judicial nominees in history. J. Paul Oetken is the first openly gay man to be nominated for the federal judiciary, which are lifetime appointments. None of these appointments are at the appellate court level, yet, but hopefully that will happen soon, or at the very least during Obama's second term.