: The two lawyers, who had previously gone head-to-head in the Bush v. Gore election case, teamed up together to lead the legal team to victory against Proposition 8 in California.
Mary Bonauto:
Chad Griffin:
Jim Obergefell:
Bonauto is an American lawyer who has been deeply involved with some of the country’s most crucial cases involving the right to marry in Maine and Massachusetts as well as leading the first strategic challenges against 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, which led to a victory for marriage equality nationwide.
Chad Griffin is the President of Human Rights Campaign (HRC). After Prop 8, Griffin helped found the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), which led the legal campaign to re-legalize marriage in Califronia. In 2012, he left AFER for the HRC.
Obergefell was the lead plaintiff for the Supreme Court case that led to marriage equality nationwide. In 2013, Obergefell’s partner of 20 years, John, was in hospice care in Cincinnati. After flying via medical charter to Baltimore to legally wed, they found out that when John passed, his death certificate would state unmarried because Ohio did not recognize their union. They filed a suit against the state of Ohio that ended up in the Supreme Court alongside cases from Tennessee, Kentucky and Michigan.
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Photo credits: Evan Wolfson, freedomtomarry.org; Edie Windsor, photo by Donna Aceto; President Obama, whitehouse.gov; Ted Olson and David Boies, New Hampshire Public Television; Jim Obergefell, LGBT Weekly; Chad Griffin, photo by Todd Franson; Mary Bonauto, photo by John D. and Catherine T. for MacArthur Foundation; Ken Mehlman: NPR
Ted Olson and David Boies