Suzanne Goldberg

Suzanne Goldberg is one of the country’s foremost experts on gender and sexuality law and a leading advocate and attorney for the LGBTQ+ community. She co-founded the Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and established Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic when she joined the faculty in 2006. From April 2024 to January 2025, Goldberg served in the U.S. Department of State as senior advisor to the under secretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights. From 2023 to 2024, she served as senior advisor and legal expert to the special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons at the U.S. Department of State. She began her federal service in January 2021 as deputy assistant secretary for strategic operations and outreach in the Office for Civil Rights (serving as acting assistant secretary) at the U.S. Department of Education.

An award-winning teacher, Goldberg has received the Law School’s Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching and has been named the Public Interest Faculty of the Year. From 2015 to 2021, she served as Columbia University’s inaugural executive vice president for university life. In this role, she created and led a university-wide office that addresses intellectual life, community citizenship, and student life issues, through projects that include the Community Citizenship Initiative for all Columbia students, the Community Citizenship events series, the university-wide Student Well-Being Survey, and working groups on such issues as inclusive public safety. Goldberg also oversaw Columbia’s Title IX implementation for students and worked to broaden and reinforce the university’s commitment to respect, inclusion, and ethical leadership across Columbia’s campuses.

Goldberg launched her career as an advocate at Lambda Legal, the country’s first and largest legal organization focused on achieving full equality for LGBTQ+ people. While at Lambda, she worked on immigration, employment discrimination, and family law matters as well as two cases that became cornerstone gay rights victories at the U.S. Supreme Court: Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark decision that struck down Texas’s sodomy law, and Romer v. Evans, which overturned an anti-gay Colorado constitutional amendment. She has continued this advocacy as a professor at Columbia, filing briefs in nearly every marriage equality case in the United States. 

From 2000 to 2006, Goldberg was on the faculty of Rutgers University School of Law, where she directed the Women’s Rights Litigation Clinic. Goldberg has also served as a clerk to Justice Marie Garibaldi of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Goldberg is a frequent commentator and analyst for the news media on the MeToo movement, sexuality and gender law, and discrimination law and litigation issues. Her commentary has been featured on the ABC News program 20/20, CNN, and other television networks as well as on the radio and in news outlets around the world.