James P. Madigan
Staff Attorney, Legal
CONTACT: Midwest Regional Office, 312-663-4413
Jim Madigan is a Staff Attorney in the Midwest Regional Office of Lambda Legal, the largest and oldest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV.
Madigan is Lambda Legal's lead counsel in Mitchell v. Bremen Community High School District No. 228, where a superintendent was fired because he is gay and suffered retaliation when he attempted to enforce his rights under Illinois and Cook County law, which prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Additionally, Madigan was lead counsel in Lambda Legal's successful lawsuit on behalf of Noble Street Gay Straight Alliance in Chicago, the first case in the country brought under the federal Equal Access Act against a charter school. In 2006 he successfully represented Fair Illinois, an organization founded to counter a proposed antigay referendum for the Illinois ballot.
In Indiana, Madigan is Lambda Legal's lead counsel in Logan v. Gary Community School Corp., where a transgender student was excluded from a high school prom because he was male and wore a prom dress. That case is pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
Madigan was also lead counsel in Brinkman v. Miami University, a case brought by an antigay politician seeking to have state university domestic partner health benefits declared unconstitutional under Ohio's antigay constitutional amendment regarding marriage. The trial court and court of appeals both accepted Madigan's argument on behalf of Miami University faculty and their same-sex partners that the antigay plaintiff in Brinkman lacked standing to challenge the benefits and entered judgment against him.
In Wisconsin, Madigan was lead counsel in a successful Wisconsin case brought on behalf of Brett Timmerman, an openly gay young man who was attacked and beaten near his college campus because of his sexual orientation. The case highlighted Wisconsin's civil recovery provision for victims of hate crimes.
Madigan coauthored Lambda Legal's amicus briefs in the United States Supreme Court in Morse v. Frederick, a case concerning the First Amendment rights of high school students; in the Michigan Supreme Court in National Pride at Work v. Granholm, a case concerning the state's anti-marriage constitutional amendment; and in In re Kimumwe, where a young gay man was denied asylum in the United States, despite having been subjected to antigay persecution in Zimbabwe.
Madigan is currently an adjunct lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and a visiting adjunct lecturer at Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University. Prior to joining Lambda Legal, he was an associate in the law firm of Goldberg Kohn in Chicago. From 2000 to 2002, Madigan taught legal research and writing and a seminar on domestic abuse law at the University of Chicago Law School as the Harry Bigelow Teaching Fellow.
Madigan has published articles regarding the United States Supreme Court's decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, John Rawls' theory of public reason and the lessons of poetry for use in improved legal writing. He graduated cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School in 2000 and received his B.A. summa cum laude in History and with departmental honors in Political Science from Case Western Reserve University in 1997.
