Therese M. Stewart is a California Appellate judge and a champion for marriage equality.
A third-generation San Francisican, Stewart earned her Juris Doctor from UC Berkeley School of Law. She spent the first 20 years of her career at a major San Francisco law firm, becoming a partner in 1988. She was the first openly LGBTQ+ president of the San Francisco Bar Association, where she co-founded a program that mentors San Francisco youth with the goal of enabling them to obtain a college education.
Stewart then served for a dozen years as San Francisco’s Chief Deputy City Attorney. During that time, she represented the city and county of San Francisco in securing a ruling in favor of marriage equality in In re Marriage Cases in the California Supreme Court before Proposition 8, and argued before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. In 2013, her groundbreaking work led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.
Stewart was appointed to the First Appellate District in June 2014 by Governor Jerry Brown as an Associate Justice in Division Two, the first openly lesbian appellate judge. In 2022, Governor Newsom appointed Stewart Presiding Justice of Division Two.
