A handful of gay lawyers met in secret in 1993 to discuss their futures in the legal profession in Dallas. They didn’t dare create an official organization or make their plans public for fear of being fired because of their sexual identities and preferences, according to lawyers involved.
“They worried about losing their law license because this was a decade before Lawrence v. Texas,” said Locke Lord lawyer Mario Nguyen, who is president of the Dallas LGBT Bar Association. “Remember, it was still a crime in Texas. They had to keep it hush-hush.”
That is no longer the situation.
In fact, Nguyen and other lawyers say this is an “historic moment” for the lawyers in the LGBT community.
This week, the Dallas Bar Association voted to make the leader of the Dallas LGBT Bar an ex-officio member of its board of directors. The full DBA membership will vote on the measure in November. The organization will have an advisory position to start with hopes of gaining official voting status in the near future.
“This is a great moment for our members and for the legal profession,” said Nguyen, who specializes in white-collar criminal defense law. “Our goal is to become a full voting member. It will take time to show them that we are active.
“Until now, no general bar association in Texas has recognized its local LGBT+ bar association as a sister bar,” he said.
DBA President Robert Tobey said that the board voted unanimously to invite the Dallas LGBT Bar to be a sister bar organization.
“It has been a priority of mine to see this happen,” said Tobey, who is a partner at Johnston Tobey Baruch in Dallas. “I want to see them become a voting member next year. That is my hope and expectation.”
Tobey said he actually invited Nguyen and the Dallas LGBT Bar to seek sister bar status in order to avoid the controversial situation that arose four years ago regarding the debate over adding a slot on the DBA board for the Dallas Women Lawyers Association.
In 2016, the DBA board members created an absolute debacle, according to many Dallas lawyers and judges, when the DBA board declined to give DWLA leaders a voting position on the bar association’s governing body.
The initial decision to give DWLA an advisory-only board slot caused considerable controversy and harsh feelings among many of its members.
A year later, in October 2017, the DBA changed course and granted the DWLA president a permanent voting spot on the board.
“While no one enjoyed the process in 2016, in my opinion the end result worked out well for both DBA and DWLA,” Tobey said. “For example, since DWLA became a Sister Bar in 2016, it has doubled its membership and has worked closely with DBA on numerous programs and projects. The organizations have a close working relationship with each other.”
The Dallas LGBT Bar, which has about 100 members, was officially created as an organization in 1999.
Tobey said he believes the DBA, which has 26 voting members on its governing board, can help the Dallas LGBT Bar increase its memberships, too.