David S. Buckel
Senior Counsel and Marriage Project Director
CONTACT: National Headquarters, 212-809-8585
David S. Buckel is Senior Counsel and the Marriage Project Director for Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people with HIV.
Buckel was lead counsel in the Lambda Legal lawsuit that resulted in New Jersey's highest court requiring the legislature to provide same-sex couples rights and benefits parallel to those provided married couples. In 2006 the national publication Lawyers USA named Buckel one of six Lawyers of the Year. Buckel is also a national leader in fighting antigay harassment and violence in public schools. He authored the first-ever legal guides for preventing and responding to school violence and has lectured widely on the topic to groups such as the American Bar Association and the National Middle School Association. With co-counsel, Buckel represented Jamie Nabozny in a Wisconsin case that established schools can be liable for failing to stop antigay violence; the case later resulted in a nearly $1 million settlement. He is currently co-counsel in a similar New Jersey case.
In another path-breaking case, he represented Arkansas student William Wagner in his administrative complaint under new federal guidelines on sexual harassment of lesbian and gay students, and secured a groundbreaking agreement with the Fayetteville Public Schools on civil rights protections. In the national struggle to defend student groups in high schools, Buckel created the first legal resource guide on the topic. He was co-counsel in a landmark Salt Lake City lawsuit that resulted in full recognition of a gay-straight alliance. The National Education Association recognized Buckel's work by honoring him with the NEA's Award for Creative Leadership in Civil Rights.
In other work for youth, Buckel was co-counsel in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Lambda Legal's lawsuit that sought to have the Scouts live up to its pledge that it is open to all boys, including gay youth. In a case sparked by the needs of gay children of military personnel in Japan, he served as advocate in Gay Youth Support Group v. Pentagon, which led to a military policy change allowing gay youth counseling groups in U.S. civilian schools worldwide.
Extending his work beyond youth and marriage, Buckel was the lead attorney in a case that led to a unanimous ruling from the Nebraska Supreme Court in Brandon v. Richardson County holding a county sheriff accountable for his failure to protect Brandon Teena, who was raped and murdered by two men after they discovered Brandon's biological sex was female. Brandon Teena's story was memorialized in the award-winning film Boys Don't Cry.
In another case, Buckel compelled a Philadelphia cemetery to honor the wishes of a lesbian's deceased partner, who wanted to honor their relationship on her headstone. He also represented a Delaware lesbian who had sought court protection from domestic abuse only to have the judge throw her out of the courtroom, deriding her because of her lesbian relationship. On behalf of a Rhode Island support group for lesbians with cancer, Buckel successfully challenged bias by the IRS, which tried to condition the group's tax-exempt status on changing its lesbian-focused mission; the agency decided to conduct field office trainings nationwide that addressed antigay bias.
Before joining Lambda Legal in 1995, Buckel was a supervising attorney at Harlem Legal Services, Inc., where he represented low-income people with disabilities. Before receiving a J.D. from Cornell Law School in 1987, he worked as a hospice aide for terminally ill people and then as a counselor in a home for mentally ill people.
