In October 1987, about 750,000 people gathered in Washington, DC for what was called the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Our community had lost about 50,000 of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters to AIDS; the vast majority were young gay men in their 20s and 30s. A group of lawyers was at that march in Washington, helping these young men create wills and plan for their deaths as pro bono volunteers in their practices. They decided to form a national organization for LGBTQ attorneys, and so the National LGBT Bar Association was born in that moment of crisis.
Although we have seen gains over the last 60 years in terms of LGBTQ rights, we’re really at an inflexion point. There is so much left to do to achieve full equality for LGBTQ citizens and individuals, but there are also additional hurdles being erected – sometimes it feels like daily.
At the federal level, we continue to face an environment where there are no federal legal protections regarding discrimination against LGBTQ individuals – in the workplace, in financial decisions, in public accommodation and even on jury service. Worse yet, at both the federal and state level, policies are being put into place not just to disadvantage, but specifically targeting members of the LGBTQ community – primarily transgender men and women.
A Credit Suisse report a few years ago revealed that 41% of LGBTQ workers in the US said they had not come out openly at work. Even more shockingly, for senior LGBTQ executives in a corporate environment, that number was 72%. With the amount of progress that we as a movement have made over the last 30 years, it can be pretty easy to forget the complicated layers that many people, including attorneys, face when making a decision about when and how to come out. And it’s even more complicated for those in our community who are navigating multiple minority identities.
D&I leadership really needs to be a daily agenda item. I have a sign that hangs above my computer that asks, ‘What good shall I do this day?’. That’s really how I look at it: what can I do to advance the issue in both big and small ways on a daily basis. It can be as simple as ensuring that the language we use in our policies, in our forms, in everything that we do, is fully inclusive. It can include asking more challenging questions, like who is at the table when decisions are being made and why are certain types of people being excluded from that decision-making team?
The National LGBT Bar Association is the largest provider of LGBTQ legal education programs through both our annual Lavender Law Conference, which is now in its 31st year, as well as a year-round, web-based lecture series that we provide to our members. We offer networking opportunities and career development for individuals, and we also have the largest careers fair for LGBTQ law students in the country.
We also engage in advocacy. The Equality Act, passed by the House of Representatives in May 2019, included a provision that the National LGBT Bar Association had been a long-time leader on, which would prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ jurors – individuals who are stricken from the jury because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. For over ten years we have also been the leading organization advocating the ban of what is known as the gay and trans ‘panic’ defense, which is used to excuse violent assaults – and even murder – because the perpetrator alleged that they couldn’t prevent themselves from committing the crime when they found out that the victim was LGBTQ. Sadly, this often comes into play when trans men and women are assaulted or murdered. This year alone, we’ve had five states (CT, NY, HI, ME, NV) enact that ban, adding to the three states (RI, IL, CA) that had previously banned this heinous defense. We also have a bicameral, bipartisan bill that was introduced in June here in Washington DC.
The problem in law firms and corporate legal departments is that the actions to advance diversity are often far too little, and the progress we’re making is far too slow. I think we’ve realized now that there’s no single policy, program, or practice that is going to solve the lack of diversity within the legal community, or the lack of LGBTQ representation within the legal community.
Diversity is not a destination that we reach one day, it’s a journey with multiple milestones. What we need to do is create an ecosystem where diverse individuals can grow and thrive and achieve success and, to do that, there are some foundational requirements. You need inclusive policies that clearly protect all diverse individuals – so you need clear anti-discrimination policies that protect on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, and you need parity in benefits, which should include both married same-sex couples and couples who are in a domestic partnership.
In order to create diversity within corporate legal departments and law firms, we need to expand the talent pool and look at law schools that large law may have historically overlooked, because clearly going to the same pool of law students is not having a dramatic impact on the number of attorneys who are female, of color, or LGBTQ at the partnership ranks of the AM Law 100. This is a complex issue and we need to address it like a complex issue, in a multi-dimensional way, throughout the career trajectory of an attorney from the law school and recruiting stage to the executive committee decisions that are made regarding partnership in a law firm, and regarding the allocation of credit for clients.
My former general counsel, Denise Keane, was one of the few female general counsel in the Fortune 150, and always had a passion for diversity and inclusion. She formed a law department diversity committee many years before the company itself formed employee resource groups, so I have seen the value of being a part of an organization that has placed a huge emphasis on diversity and inclusion when the rest of the organization wasn’t as passionate about it.
Our law department diversity committee is made up of individuals throughout the department at varying levels. It includes educational programming that allows myself and my colleagues to hear from speakers who might not look like us or have the same background as us, and helps expand the base of understanding of our entire law department. A little over a year ago, we implemented a reverse mentoring program, which made sure that our leadership team in the law department receives differing perspectives in a way that will helpfully impact its overall outlook and activity.
Altria’s law department is also one of the founding members of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD), which provides a year-long leadership program for diverse attorneys. It is not only a great professional development program, but exposes those of us who have been fellows – as I was, in 2014 – to a vast network of other diverse lawyers that we can reach out to when we have concerns, need help, or even when we have a legal issue that we’re looking to hire for. Another professional development scheme that I and a few others in the law department have participated in is the Stanford Graduate School of Business week-long LGBTQ executive leadership program, which is geared to helping LGBTQ individuals expand the leadership ranks of their organizations.
A number of my colleagues and, of course, myself are involved in external organizations that place a focus on diversity and inclusion issues. My general counsel, Murray Garnick, does a great job of ensuring that when members of the law department are participating in those activities, it’s seen as part of our responsibility on D&I issues – and we’re not just permitted, but encouraged and supported, in our work in that space.
Last year, Altria signed on to the Business Statement for Transgender Equality. Before that point, we had not taken a public stand on any legislative LGBTQ issue and, since then, we were one of 200 companies that signed on to the Business Coalition for the Equality Act. In July, Altria submitted its own amicus brief to the US Supreme Court on three cases involving LGBT workplace discrimination. Those cases will be heard this coming October.
None of those huge shifts in very prominent public pronouncements about equality would have happened but for the foundations laid previously, which permitted my current general counsel and others to have the power, freedom and strength to say: ‘This is the time to do this and we can do this.’ So that’s exciting, and energizing. You can’t overstate the impact, not just from an external perspective but from an internal perspective, when a corporation takes a bold stand for diversity, inclusion and equality.
I’m a firm believer that there are ways to reach almost everyone. At a basic level, every single person knows what it feels like to be excluded. Some of us have been excluded more than others based on the color of our skin, who we are or who we love. But I think we can build on those individual experiences to show people who may not be as far along as we would like, exactly why D&I matters.