Staff

Peter Renn is a Staff Attorney in the Western Regional Office of 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. Since joining Lambda Legal in 2010, Renn has worked on a range of issues, including marriage, relationship recognition, discrimination in employment and public accommodation, youth and schools, government misconduct, and HIV confidentiality.

Renn currently represents a lesbian couple who were turned away from a business establishment in Hawai‘i because of the business owner’s religious beliefs in Cervelli v. Aloha Bed & Breakfast. Renn is also seeking survivor’s benefits in Alaska on behalf of the surviving same-sex partner of a shooting victim, in Harris v. Millennium Hotel. Renn is co-counsel in Sevcik v. Sandoval, a federal case brought on behalf of eight same-sex couples seeking marriage equality in Nevada. In the past, Renn successfully advocated to persuade the largest school district in Idaho to abandon a proposed policy that would have undermined gay-straight alliances and was co-counsel in Lambda Legal’s amicus work in the federal Prop 8 litigation and in the most recent “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” litigation.

Renn graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Following law school, Renn clerked for the Honorable Lawrence K. Karlton in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. He received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in psychology and Plan II from the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining Lambda Legal, Renn was a litigation associate at the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles.