By Siena Hohne
This month the LGBT Bar is excited to promote the Stonewall Bar Association of Georgia (SBA) in our new affiliate spotlight blog series!
SBA was founded in 1995 after the Bar’s three founders attended another Bar association’s convention and realized that they wanted to bring the same sense of community for LGBTQ+ lawyers to Georgia. SBA has thrived since its founding, and is now one of the most active state bar associations in the United States run entirely by dedicated volunteers. SBA connects and supports LGBTQ+ legal professionals, including lawyers, paralegals, legal assistants, other legal professionals, and local law students as well as undergraduates interested in pursuing law. Barret Broussard, the current President of SBA, states that “[SBA] has been growing over time. As LGBTQ+ rights have expanded and become more acceptable in the mainstream, Stonewall’s gravitas has grown in the state.”
SBA’s goal is to promote the interests of LGBTQ+ people in the legal profession and the judiciary throughout Georgia. SBA translates this goal into meaningful action by ensuring that law firms respect LGBTQ+ people in the workplace, training judges on how to use pronouns appropriately for trans and nonbinary people and cultural plus legal competency regarding LGBTQ+ jurors, promoting information to the profession about cases involving name changes, connecting members across the state to build influence and create safety in numbers, and helping law student members find employment opportunities. SBA awards the Kay Young Scholarship to highly accomplished law students in Georgia every year to assist with covering the costs of attending the National LGBT Bar Association’s Lavender Law® Conference and Career Fair. SBA also partners with other organizations in the state including Georgia Equality, Lambda Legal, the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, and Legal Aid to provide pro bono legal services. The group has recently founded a new subcommittee within its Public Interests committee to identify pro bono opportunities within the state, which they will then promote to their members.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly limited the scope of what SBA does in a normal year, it also provided SBA an opportunity to reflect on how to give back to the community while promoting racial justice. Following the murder of George Floyd last summer, the leadership of SBA thought hard about how to contribute to the movement for racial equality, ultimately deciding to create the Stonewall Racial Justice Grant. While many Bar associations struggled financially this past year, SBA decided that all money received through sponsorships in 2020 would be put towards the Stonewall Racial Justice Grant and awarded to organizations focused on helping Black trans people. SBA raised over $33,000 for the grant and received a total of seventeen applications from organizations in Georgia focused on championing the Black trans community. SBA chose to award the grant to the Trans Housing Atlanta Project, Ubuntu Inc., and the Dr. Annise Mabry Foundation, all of which are dedicated to promoting the Black trans community in housing, healthcare, and education in Georgia. Given the amazing success of the program this year, SBA has decided to make the Stonewall Racial Justice Grant a part of its yearly programming, and has founded an exploratory committee to research how to continue giving back to racially diverse members of the LGBTQ+ community in Georgia while centering the program on marginalized people themselves.
SBA primarily meets its fundraising goals through dues payments and sponsorships from law firms. SBA is proud to continue to be financially healthy despite the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession. Broussard attributes this to the organization being run by volunteers with a Board of 21 people, allowing them to spread out priorities widely without any individual members feeling overwhelmed. Stonewall has several levels of sponsorships that provide various amounts of benefits. Rainbow sponsors—the highest level sponsorship—enjoy full tables at the annual gala (which typically has over 400 attendees), advertisements at all Stonewall events, and the opportunity to host a Stonewall event at its office. Stonewall enjoys sponsorships from large law firms like Alston & Bird and King & Spalding, as well as corporate sponsors like the Coca-Cola Company and AT&T. Additionally, Stonewall has many small firm sponsors that contribute to Stonewall’s important work.
Member outreach is one of the top priorities of SBA, which has a membership of about 500 legal professionals and a mailing list of over 1,000 people. SBA primarily conducts member outreach via social media, newsletters, and event calendars. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a unique challenge to ensuring that SBA’s members stay connected, causing the organization to experiment with digital forms of engagement including digital CLEs and forums. In 2020, SBA hosted the first-ever judicial forum for all judicial candidates in the Metro Atlanta area, co-sponsored by a variety of local organizations including the the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys, the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Gate City Bar Association, the Georgia Association of Women Lawyers, and the Georgia Hispanic Bar Association. The forum allowed for questioning of candidates about their views on specific marginalized groups. SBA has also dabbled with social virtual events to engage members in a more relaxed environment, including a trivia night. For its law student members, SBA has a mentorship program that partners law students and recent graduates with experienced attorneys to ensure that they can navigate the profession and have someone to go to for advice. The leadership of SBA hopes to use their newfound understanding of virtual event programming to begin livestreaming their annual dinner (typically held in Atlanta) to expand the event to cities throughout the state. SBA also plans to start chapters of the organization in cities throughout the state, which would allow it to further expand programming to its members outside of the Metro Atlanta area. SBA likewise has made efforts to recruit board members across the state to ensure that all members throughout Georgia are served.
Congratulations to the Stonewall Bar Association on a long history of supporting Georgia’s LGBTQ+ legal community!