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Legal History

LGBTQIA+ Rights Leader John Ward (’76) Is BU Law’s 2026 Commencement Speaker

The trailblazing civil rights lawyer and the first openly gay man to argue before the US Supreme Court will address graduates on May 17.

John Ward (’76), Boston’s first openly gay male attorney; the first openly gay man to appear before the United States Supreme Court; and the founder of GLAD Law, a legal advocacy group for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, will deliver Boston University School of Law’s Class of 2026 commencement address on Sunday, May 17.

While he was a student at BU Law in the early 1970s, and after witnessing the courage of the Stonewall rioters, Ward began to accept and embrace his sexuality. He began his legal career clerking for Judge Raymond J. Pettine (LLB’37, LLM’40) of the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Just a few years later, Ward opened his own practice, placing an ad for his legal services in a gay community newspaper. “Once I started representing LGBTQ+ folk, I knew I was in the right place,” Ward noted in 2019.

In 1978, just two years after graduating from law school, he founded GLAD—Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (now known as GLAD Law: GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders)—  to fight systemic police harassment. GLAD’s first case, Doe v. McNiff, targeted a District Attorney-backed sting operation at the Boston Public Library that outed and arrested over 100 gay men. GLAD’s civil rights lawsuit charged the Boston Public Library and police officials with violating the civil rights of one of the men arrested. That case ended with a settlement.

Ward’s commitment to human rights also includes what he has called a “passionate opposition to the death penalty;” he spent years representing people on death row in California in post-conviction proceedings. He has also taught law, including classes at BU Law on courts and the LGBTQIA+ movement. In 2023, Ward was chosen by the US State Department to host a discussion at BU Law on human rights around the world.

“I am thrilled that John Ward will share his wisdom and passion for justice with the Class of 2026,” says Dean and Ryan Roth Gallo Professor of Law Angela Onwuachi-Willig. “John is a true trailblazer who has long stood at the forefront of advancing civil rights. His work has helped make a profound difference for the LGBTQIA+ community, and more broadly, for all those seeking equal justice under the law. He represents the best of BU Law and is an inspiration to us all.”

Being out in the 1970s had many challenges; Ward tried to establish a group for gay students at BU Law but “nobody showed up,” he recalled in a 2019 interview. The community started to openly gather in 1978, when the LGBTQIA+ student group OutLaw was formed (two years after Ward graduated). Nevertheless, his time on campus was formative: Before building a career bringing constitutional challenges on behalf of LGBTQIA+ individuals, Ward took constitutional law with then-BU Law Professor Ira C. Lupu. Professor Lupu was also the first and only faculty member Ward told he was gay. Their friendship continues today, and Lupu has served as a guest lecturer in Ward’s classes.

Two years after the Boston lawsuit, Ward led another monumental case for GLAD, Fricke v. Lynch. He represented a Rhode Island high school student who challenged a decision forbidding him from bringing his same-sex date to prom. Ward was successful, and his former boss, Judge Pettine, issued an injunction ordering the school district to accommodate the young man and his date.

Another of Ward’s highest profile cases came in 1995 when he challenged a decision by the sponsors of South Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade to prohibit members the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston from marching. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in his client’s favor, the case proceeded to the nation’s high court, where Ward became the first openly gay man to argue in front of the US Supreme Court. He and his client lost the case—and it took many more years of public pressure and protest for parade sponsors to allow queer participants, starting in 2015—but, as he said in a 2019 interview, the case “was a first.”

Ward’s landmark achievements have continued through his work as a consultant for GLAD Law. For instance, in 2018 GLAD won a lawsuit that resulted in the first transfer of a transgender woman from a men’s facility to a women’s. Just before she finished her sentence and was released the next year, Ward helped defend criminal accusations against her, which were dropped by the prosecution after a year and a half of litigating.

Ward’s courage in founding GLAD Law in 1978, and his fierce commitment over the decades, has had an enormous impact. When he filed his first brief at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on behalf of GLAD in 1979, he wasn’t sure the court would accept the filing because of the inclusion of the words “gay” and “lesbian” in his organization’s name. Now, nearly a quarter century later, GLAD Law has transformed legal doctrine as well as broader society and culture. GLAD Law was behind the 2003 case, Goodridge et al. v. Dept. Public Health, that led to marriage equality in Massachusetts, the first state decision of its kind in the United States.  GLAD Law also argued the 2015 US Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, that upheld same-sex marriage rights across the country. Ward received GLAD’s Spirit of Justice Award in 2008.

“I have something in my gut that identifies with the underdog and is offended by unfairness and injustice,” Ward shared. “I think we have to be wayshowers about what a better world would look like.”

“John’s instinct and the courage to act on it are particularly resonant at this moment as fundamental human rights are threatened in ways that test the strength of our values and the integrity of our laws,” Dean Onwuachi-Willig notes. “The Class of 2026 will begin their legal careers with the reflections of a true legal visionary who knows change is possible.”

In 2021, Ward was awarded a HistoryMaker Award from Queer History Boston, a community archives of LGBTQ+ histories in New England. He lives with his husband, Alain Balseiro, in Spain.