FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | May 18, 2004

Shannon Minter Will Receive an Honorary Degree from the City University of New York School of Law

(San Francisco, CA, May 18, 2004) — On May 21, 2004, Shannon Minter, transgender attorney, activist and scholar, and currently Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, will receive an Honorary Degree from the City University of New York School of Law.

CUNY School of Law has previously awarded honorary degrees to several prominent members of the GLBT legal community including Michael Hardwick (1987), litigant in Bowers v. Hardwick, Deborah Batts (1998) Africa-American lesbian United States District Judge, Urvashi Vaid (1999), GLBT activist and author, and Helen Zia (2000), feminist-lesbian activist for Asian-American rights. This year, along with Minter, the law school will also honor Sister Helen Prejean, whose anti-death penalty work was featured in "Dead Man Walking," Wallace Mqoqi, City Manager of Cape Town, South Africa and anti-apartheid activist, and Diane C. Yu, the first Asian American woman to Chair the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and the first woman of color to chair the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.

Shannon Minter has been at NCLR for the last 11 years. He now oversees national impact litigation in the areas of family, youth, employment, elder, immigration and asylum law. His work in community service is equally prolific: he was a founder and currently serves on the Board of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, and was a founding board member of the Transgender Law Center, a new statewide legal advocacy organization for transgender people in California. A founding member of the San Francisco/Bay Area Lesbian & Gay Immigration Rights Task Force, he is also an advisory board member of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission and serves on the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association Legal Committee.

In the tradition of CUNY School of Law, Minter's scholarship and litigation are both deeply committed to furthering social justice. He has litigated and written in the areas of transgender rights, custody and adoption rights of sexual minorities, immigration and political asylum for sexual minorities, and sexual minority youth.