Matt Coles

Bio

Before joining the UC Law SF faculty, he was Deputy National Legal Director at the ACLU, responsible for the organization’s work on race, voting, disability and immigration. Before that, from 1995 until 2010, he was Director of the ACLU’s national LGBT Project. In that position he was one of the lead attorneys on Evans v. Romer, which resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision striking down Colorado’s amendment 2, which banned gay rights laws. He argued cases challenging the military’s so called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, bans on LGBT student groups, and Florida’s law banning adoption by gay people. And under his guidance, the ACLU won a crucial victory for a transgender former special forces colonel denied a job by the library of Congress.

Coles was the primary drafter of Winning Marriage, the LGBT movement’s 2005 strategic plan for winning the fight for marriage for same-sex couples. He spearheaded development of the ACLU’s “integrated approach” to public interest litigation, which calls for structuring and litigating cases in a way that will win the battle for public opinion as well as change through courts and legislatures.

Coles was a staff lawyer at the ACLU of Northern California from 1987 to 1995 where he handled cases on freedom of speech, the death penalty, jail and prison conditions, and treatment of health care workers and inmates with HIV. He was one of the lawyers who set up the case which successfully challenged the use of the gas chamber in California. Coles also helped defeat three statewide ballot initiatives aimed at quarantining people with HIV in the 80s, and three city wide initiatives aimed at getting rid of the city’s domestic partnership law in 1989 and the early 90s.

After graduating from Hastings in 1977, Coles taught Constitutional law here for one year as a teaching fellow. While in private practice, he wrote San Francisco’s law against LGBT discrimination for Harvey Milk, and its law protecting people with HIV. He also wrote the nation’s first domestic partnership laws (in San Francisco and Berkeley). He handled cases on race, sex and sexual orientation discrimination against defendants as varied as Hilton Hotels, the I.R.S. and the City of San Francisco.

Selected Litigation

U.S. Supreme Court

LGBT Equality/Privacy

• Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)*
• V.C. v. M.J.B., 163 N.J. 200 (2000) cert den, 531 U.S. 926 (2000)
• Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996)
• Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592 (1988)*

Voting Rights

• Evenwell v. Abbott, 577 U.S. 937 (2016)*
• Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, 574 U.S. 1147 (2015)*
• Ohio State NAACP v. Hustead, 573 U.S. 988 (Mem)(2014)(on stay application)

Affirmative Action

• Fisher v. University of Texas, 579 U.S. ___, 136 S.Ct. 2189 (2016)*
  570 U.S. 297 (2013)*

Freedom of Expression

• Rumsfeld v. F.A.I.R., 547 U.S. 47 (2006)*
• Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000)*
• Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group, 515 U.S. 557 (1995)*

Disability

• Chevron U.S.A. v. Echazabal, 536 U.S. 73 (2002)*

State and lower federal courts

 LGBT Equality/Privacy

• Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F.Supp.2^nd 921 and 702 F.Supp.2^nd 1102 (N.D. Cal. 2010)*
• Cook v. Gates, 528 F.3d 42 (1^st Cir. 2008)*
• Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning, 455 F.3d 859 (8^th Cir. 2006)(on petition for rehearing)
• Lofton v. Secty, 358 F.3d 804 (11^th Cir. 2004) rhng en banc denied, 377 F.3d 1275.
• Levin v. Yeshiva Univ., 96 N.Y. 2^nd 484 (2001).
• Hyman v. City of Louisville, 132 F.Supp.2^nd 528 (W.D.Ky. 2001).
• Pedreira v. Kentucky Baptist Home for Children, 186 F.Supp.2d 757 (W.D.Ky. 2001)
• Air Transport Association v. San Francisco, 992 F.Supp. 1149 (N.D. Cal. 1998), affd.266 F.3d 1064 (9^th Cir. 2001)*
• S.D. Meyers v. San Francisco, 253 F.3d 461 (9^th Cir. 2001)*
• Baker v. State, 170 Vt. 194 (1999)*
• Weaver v. Nebo School Dist., 29 F.Supp.2^nd 1279 (D.Utah 1998).
• Able v. United States, 880 F.Supp. 968 (E.D.N.Y. 1995), vacated, 88 F.3d 1280 (2^nd Cir. 1996),   on remand 968 F.Supp. 850 (E.D.N.Y. 1997), reversed,155 F.3d 628 (2^nd Cir. 1998).
• Gryzcan v. State, 283 Mont. 433 (1997)*
• Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Alliance v. Pryor, 110 F.3d 1543 (11 Cir. 1997).
• Philips v. Perry, 106 F.3d 1420 (9^th Cir. 1997).
• Thomasson v. Perry, 80 F.3d 915 (4^th Cir. 1996)*
• Baehr v. Lewin, 74 Haw. 530 (1993)*
• Delaney v. Superior Fast Freight, 14 Cal.App.4^th 590 (1993)*
• Jantz v. Muci, 976 F.2d 623 (10^th Cir. 1992)*
• Nancy S. v. Michelle G., 228 Cal.App.3d 831 (1991)*
• High Tech Gays v. Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office, 895 F.2d 563 (9^th Cir. 1990)*
• Johnetta J. v. Municipal Court, 218 Cal.App.3d 1285 (1990)*
• In Re Reed, 33 Cal.3d 914 (1983)*
• Brinkin v. S.P. Transportation Co. 572 F.Supp. 236 (N.D.Cal.1983).

Disability

• McNeil v. Time Ins. Co., 205 F.3d 179 (5^th Cir. 2000)*
• Doe v. Attorney General of the United States, 723 F.Supp. 452 (N.D.Cal. 1989), affd in part, revd in part, 941 F.2d 780 (9^th Cir. 1991), on remand, 814 F.Supp. 844 (N.D. Cal. 1992), affd. 34 F.3d 781 (9^th Cir. 1994), superseded by 44 F.3d 715 (9^th Cir. 1995), revd by 62 F.3^rd 1424 (1995), cert grntd, vacated by 518 U.S. 1014, on remand 95 F.3d 29 (9^th Cir. 1996).
• Gates v. Rowland, 39 F.3d 1439 (9^th Cir. 1994)

Freedom of Expression

• Bay Area Peace Navy v. United States, 914 F.2d 1224 (9^th Cir 1990)

Death Penalty

• Fierro v. Gomez, 790 F.Supp. 966 (N.D. Cal. 1992) and 865 F.Supp. 1387 (1994)

Other cases

• Smith v. FEHC, 12 Cal.4^th 1143 (1996)*
• Duke v. Langdon, 695 F.2d 1136 (9^th Cir. 1983) and 701 F.2d 768 (9^th Cir. 1983)

* Friend of the Court.

Education

• UC Law SF College of the Law
  J.D. 1977

• Yale University
  B.A., History 1973

Selected Scholarship

• The Profound Political but Elusive Legal Legacy of Justice Anthony Kennedy's LGBT Decisions
  70 Hastings L.J. 1199 2018

• Reinhardt is Right; Perry is a Case About California
  NYU Review of Law and Social Change 2013

• The Right Forum, the Right Issue: Initiatives and Family Values
  Berkeley Journal of Gender Law and Justice 2013

• Lawrence v. Texas & the Refinement of Substantive Due Process
  Stanford Law and Policy Review 2005

• Try This At Home; A Do-it-yourself Guide to Winning Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights
  The New Press, New York 1996

• Equal Protection and the Anti-Civil-Rights Initiatives: Protecting the Ability of Lesbians and Gay Men to Bargain in the Pluralist Bazaar
  Ohio State Law Journal 1994

• The Case for Gay Rights
  Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy 1988