Motor City Original: Attorney Dana Nessel

Attorney Dana Nessel

In the past half-decade, the marriage equality civil rights movement has swept across the nation with many state legislatures removing laws that prohibited same-sex marriage and with the SCOTUS deciding two landmark cases that hold the right to select whom to marry is a fundamental constitutional right.

One of those cases involved a lesbian couple from Metro Detroit. The April DeBoer case presented a unique twist to the marriage equality movement to the extent that the case involved adoption rather than marriage.

April DeBoer was represented in the federal civil rights suit by Detroit lawyer Dana Nessel. Navigating the case successfully through the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Ms. Nessel then participated in the very interesting appeal to the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

This week, the Detroit lawyer received some much earned recognition when she accepted the "Woman of the Year" award from the Michigan Lawyers Weekly. In accepting the award before a large group of lawyers, Ms. Nessel recognized, as this blog does, that attaining SCOTUS recognition of marriage equality is only the beginning of eliminating discrimination against the LGBT community.

We here at the Motor City Law Blog applaud Ms Nessel's successful efforts in this civil rights struggle.