LGBTQ+ Legal Hero Jon Davidson Hands Civil Rights Torch to New Generation
Davidson on successful AIDS, GSA and Asylum cases. As well as being in a polyamorous relationship.
There are heroes among us in this violent struggle against the demented but planned tyranny of Donald Trump. In cities large and small and rural regions across America, including Los Angeles, “We the People” are standing up, walking out, marching, holding signs and blowing whistles to bravely fight for our neighbors, our freedom, the US Constitution and plain old fairness and human decency.
But for some of us, that fight has been existential for decades – as illustrated through the LGBTQ+ and other Smithsonian Institution historical exhibits Trump wants to hide and erase to make America way more White Supremacist again. (Please see this video to better understand our history and Trump’s promise to “decisively win the culture wars.”)
That’s why it feels like such a loss when a hero leaves or steps back, even for the most logical and human reasons.
Gay attorney Jon Davidson has been such a hero, a leader among the brightest of our warriors, using his humanity, skills and acumen to fight against inculcated oppression and achieve real progress toward first class citizenship.
“It’s impossible to describe how much our movement owes Jon Davidson,” Lambda Legal Executive Director Kevin Cathcart said in 2010 after Jon received the prestigious Dan Bradley Award, the National LGBT Bar Association’s highest honor.
Recently, Jon announced that he is retiring, which - given our tumultuous republic – seems like awful timing. “I’m 70 years old. I’ve been doing LGBTQ civil rights work for 40 years,” he shared during a comfortable Zoom interview on Jan. 28.
“I was a partner in a big Los Angeles law firm [Irell & Manella]; left to go to the ACLU of Southern California; then went to Lambda Legal, where I was for 22 years; then went to Freedom for All Americans, where I was doing lobbying trying to get the Equality Act passed; and then the national ACLU, where I’ve been for the last 4 years,” he says, pausing briefly.
“I really have started to feel like it’s time to let others lead - to get other voices out there and other ideas, especially from younger people, from trans and non-binary people, from people of color. And sometimes that means stepping aside,” Jon continues. “The thing that makes me feel okay about it is I’ve worked with a lot of those people, and I have tremendous confidence that they can do the best job that possibly can be done….None of us are irreplaceable.”
And, Jon adds, “even though I’m stepping down from paid positions, and I’m planning to take some time to take a rest and do the things that I never had time to do.…I doubt I’m really stepping away in the long term and that I will find other ways to contribute without being a full-time working civil rights lawyer.”
He’s keenly aware that resistance is needed.
“It’s a very scary time right now, no question. It’s probably the most frightening period of my long life,” Jon says. “Trump is an ego-driven, unbalanced, narcissist, erratic, mean-spirited, fungus, thin-skin, vindictive, arrogant, corrupt….It’s hard to come up with enough adjectives. But mostly cruel, racist, sexist, transphobic wanna-be dictator….I guess the solace I take from the current period is the extent to which people are protesting.”
It’s not just the legal victories or the cases in which he was co-counsel or a thoughtful coach who will be missed. It’s the example Jon sets as a gay man. He emanates a deep secular/spiritual commitment to justice. He listens to everyone, regardless of class or position, embodying the old saying, “listening is an act of love.” And then he tries to find a way to help.
Jon didn’t just leave Irell & Manella, where he worked in the media and entertainment division after graduating from Stanford University, Yale Law School and working as an attorney for eight years. He and his best friend Sharon Hartmann had convinced the partners to let them represent homeless people pro bono – a new and expensive concept at the time. At Jon’s retirement party, Hartmann said Jon built a team and three years later, in 1987, they won an award for their pro bono work and Jon, 29, made partner, which she called a “pretty good beginning.”
If fact, according to an April 7, 1987 LA Times feature entitled: “Repaying Society: Pro Bono: Renaissance in Legal Aid,” Jon “marshalled 34 lawyers and 46 secretaries and paralegals at Century City’s Irell & Manella to join poverty law firms in aiding the homeless on Los Angeles’ Skid Row.”
“Lawyers in private practice get to have a generally fortunate life. They are highly compensated, have a high status, get a fair amount of deference and respect. Because of all those things you really owe something,” Jon told The Times. “Part of it is, ‘Gee, this is something I really should be doing.’ But another thing is I find it very satisfying to think there are certain people I can help.”
Jon left his Big Law Firm’s half-a-million-dollars-a-year salary to become Lesbian and Gay Rights Project Director at ACLU/SoCal under the extraordinary Ramona Ripston for $50,000. Coming out as a “gay rights activist” during Ronald Reagan’s second presidential term and the horrors of the Second Wave of AIDS was a Big Deal. So was his motivation.
“What initially got me into doing this work was the AIDS epidemic,” Jon tells me during our Zoom conversation. “I had quite a number of people I was close with who were very sick and who were dying. I felt like I was going to funerals every week. And so, even though I was in private law practice, I started doing pro bono work, which means ‘for the good of it’ - but it means ‘not paid,’ also.”
Jon says one of his most important cases was Chalk vs the Orange County Board of Education, a case that got national attention with a slew of other important gay and lesbian attorneys and a slew of amicus briefs, including one from California Attorney General John Van de Kamp.
Vincent Chalk was a beloved certified teacher and Regional Occupational Program coordinator for deaf students at University High and Venado Middle School. In February of 1987, after informing his supervisors that he had AIDS, Chalk was reassigned to an administrative position and barred from teaching. His claim of discrimination and request for an injunction was denied in district court. Jon worked on his appeal, which they won. The Nov. 24, 1987 LA Times headline read: “AIDS Teacher Returns Amid Hugs, Smiles.”
“It was incredibly important to him to keep working because he found it very satisfying,” Jon says. “We won at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which governs California and other Western states, which established that people living with HIV are protected against discrimination….That started to turn [around] some of what had been people being turned away at restaurants and stores and not getting the medical care they needed. That felt very significant.”
Another “really important” issue was helping make Gay Straight Alliances possible.
“I did several cases, one in Salt Lake City and one in Orange County, in which we got it established that federal law requires schools to allow those clubs to meet if they allow other non-curricular clubs to meet on campus. That really seemed to me important in terms of making it possible for young people to feel like it was okay to be out, to establish connections with other LGBTQ people, and to start to do things to change attitudes at the high school level,” Jon says.
“And there are a number of those clubs right now that meet at the junior high school level. My partner was helping run such a program when he was earning his master’s in social work at a middle school for low-income, principally Latino students,” Jon continues. “So that seemed really important in turning things around.”
But, says Jon, the case that “touched me the most emotionally” was where I represented a man from Mexico who fled to the United States after he was threatened with his life by Mexican police - who assaulted him, stole his clothes, and left him in the middle of the desert. He came to the United States, sought asylum, was initially denied asylum by an immigration judge who said, ‘Well, you don’t look gay to me. And so, you can go back to Mexico and just don’t make an issue of it, and you should be fine.’”
Jon appealed and the case was sent back to the same judge - who changed his mind, “in part through the argument that, wait a minute - people who are persecuted in other countries for their religion or their politics are not told, ‘Oh, just don’t make an issue of it. Don’t let other people know.’ Those are grounds for asylum, not for denial of asylum.”
They got a new trial and the judge granted asylum from the bench. “I walked out with my client and he started crying and saying, ‘Wait. Does this mean that I get to stay? That I’m not going to be sent back?’ And it was just feeling so directly like you had really turned somebody’s life around. It felt an honor to be able to do that for someone.”
In 2017, Jon unexpectedly left his job as Legal Director at Lambda Legal, working closely with “work wife” Jenny Pizer. He went to Freedom for All Americans as their Chief Counsel and later he returned to the ACLU as Senior Counsel at National ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project.
Camilla Taylor, Deputy Legal Director for Litigation at Lambda Legal when Jon left, wrote an extraordinary tribute, with stories about and links to some of his hundreds of cases.
“If I had a nickel for every time I’ve witnessed JD up at ungodly hours to work, sifting through legal materials and strategizing with his colleagues about how to conquer a problem or action against our community, mastering every minute detail, we could shut down Lambda Legal, colonize Mars and turn it into the queer utopia of everyone’s dreams.” Taylor wrote.
And that queer utopia includes individuals having the real freedom to determine how they wish to live their lives. Asked why Jon – who helped win marriage equality – has eschewed marriage for himself and his longtime domestic partner, psychotherapist Syd Peterson, Jon says simply: “We won the freedom to marry, not the obligation to marry. And for Syd and me, it was not the way we conceived of our relationship. We always had an open relationship, and certainly some people who are married have. But in more recent years, we’ve had an openly polyamorous relationship.”
But, since he co-drafted with Jenny Pitzer the California Comprehensive Domestic Partnership Law, “I felt some loyalty to it. So that was important to me.”
Jon says he was not open about his relationship with Syd because he anticipated that people would react badly, not understanding how being in a polyamorous relationship worked.
But at some point, the explainer-in-chief came to understand that that was being in the closet again. He felt some responsibility to let people know that it was okay and it can work for some people, not for everyone. He says he just feels important to fight against the lack of understanding and prejudice.
After giving tips on how to have such a successful, compatible, intergenerational relationship, Jon says: “I must admit - I never really thought we’d be together 21 years.”
“People need to figure out a way to survive,” Jon says in parting. “What I would add is for people not to give up hope -then the other side is surely won.”
Please check out our casual but in-depth conversation where we talk about LGBTQ+ people and “strict scrutiny,” as well as the LAPD and more.