List of the first LGBT holders of political offices in the United States


This is a list of the first openly LGBT people to have held political office in the United States.

Congress

Overall firsts

Constitutional officers

As of the 2018 elections, the legislatures of 46 states have had at least one openly LGBT member; the first out person to serve in each of those states is listed here. The four remaining states that have never had an openly LGBT state legislator are Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Nationwide firsts

The first openly gay judge in the United States was Stephen M. Lachs, appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1979. Before leaving office in 1981, Brown appointed three more gay and lesbian judges to the California courts, including the nation's first openly lesbian judge, Mary Morgan, who served on the San Francisco municipal court.
In 1994, Thomas R. Chiola became the first openly gay judge in Illinois when voters elected him to the Circuit Court of Cook County.
Deborah A. Batts was the nation's first openly LGBT federal judge. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote in 1994.
Batts was the sole openly LGBT judge on the federal bench for seventeen years, until Barack Obama appointed a series of gay and lesbian judges to the district courts: J. Paul Oetken ; Alison J. Nathan ; Michael W. Fitzgerald ; Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro ; Pamela K. Chen ; Michael J. McShane ; Darrin P. Gayles ; Staci Michelle Yandle, and Judith Ellen Levy.
Obama also appointed the first openly LGBT judge of a federal court of appeals, Todd M. Hughes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The first openly LGBT justice of a state supreme court was Rives Kistler, appointed to the Oregon Supreme Court in 2003, and retained by voters the following year. The next gay or lesbian state supreme court justices were Virginia Linder ; Monica Márquez ; Barbara Lenk ; Sabrina McKenna ; Beth Robinson. In 2017, Paul Feinman became the first openly gay judge to sit on the New York Court of Appeals.
Benjamin Cruz of Guam was the first openly gay judge of a territorial supreme court; he came out in 1995 and was appointed to the Supreme Court of Guam in 1997. Cruz served as associate justice from 1997 to 1999 and as chief justice from 1999 until his retirement in 2001.
The first openly bisexual judge in the United States is Mike Jacobs, a state court judge in DeKalb County, Georgia, who came out publicly in 2018.