Mary Bonauto

Mary L. Bonauto (born June 8, 1961) is an American lawyer and civil rights advocate who has worked to eradicate discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and has been referred to by US Representative Barney Frank as "our Thurgood Marshall." She began working with the Massachusetts-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, now named GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) organization in 1990. A resident of Portland, Maine, Bonauto was one of the leaders who both worked with the Maine legislature to pass a same-sex marriage law and to defend it at the ballot in a narrow loss during the 2009 election campaign. These efforts were successful when, in the 2012 election, Maine voters approved the measure, making it the first state to allow same-sex marriage licenses via ballot vote. Bonauto is best known for being lead counsel in the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health which made Massachusetts the first state in which same-sex couples could marry in 2004. She is also responsible for leading the first strategic challenges to section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). On April 28, 2015, Bonauto was one of three attorneys who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges arguing state bans on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional. This much-publicized case determined that state bans against same-sex marriage are unconstitutional and is considered one of the most important civil rights cases which came before the U.S. Supreme Court in modern history. Biography Bonauto was born in 1961 and grew up in Newburgh, New York in a Roman Catholic family. She graduated from Hamilton College and Northeastern University School of Law. In 1987, after graduating from law school, she entered private practice in Maine, where she was at the time one of three openly gay private practice lawyers in the state. She lives in Portland with her spouse Jennifer Wriggins, who is a professor at the University of Maine School of Law. The couple were married in Massachusetts. They have twin daughters. Bonauto has litigated widely in areas such as job and public accommodations discrimination, securing domestic partner benefits and relationship protections, establishing second parent rights and de facto parent status, vindicating First Amendment protections, and challenging anti-gay harassment and violence. She has worked on public policy in all six New England states, and occasionally writes for legal publications.