Barbara Findlay
Country
Canada
Birth - Death
Description
Barbara Findlay is a noted lesbian feminist lawyer committed to making the law work for everyone. She is particularly noted in her ground-breaking equality rights cases argued at the highest court levels in Canada. She has practised as a labour lawyer, worked for the Legal Services Society doing poverty law, and has been a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia. Barbara is a founding member of the provincial and national queer lawyers' groups in the Canadian Bar Association, called SOGIC (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Conference), and has been a member of LEAF (the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund) as a board member of West Coast LEAF and as a member of the National Legal Committee. In 2001 she became the first openly gay lawyer in Canada to be recognized with a Queen's Counsel designation.
Findlay has represented the queer community in a number of landmark cases, including same-sex marriage in BC and establishing the right of two lesbian mothers to both be registered on their child's birth certificate. She has represented a transgender woman's right to be considered a woman in Nixon v Rape Relief; a lesbian couple's complaint against the Knights of Columbus for refusing to rent them a wedding hall; and an incarcerated transgender woman's right to have sex reassignment surgery and to be housed in a facility for women.
Barbara Findlay is also a grassroots advocate and legal educator for the LGBT community.
