Monica Marquez, Colorado’s First Latina + Lesbian Supreme Court Justice

Special shout to my girl Monica Marquez, Colorado’s deputy attorney general and the first Latina and openly gay member of the state’s Supreme Court. She was sworn in on Friday by her father, retired Judge Jose D.L. Marquez, who just so happens to be the first Latino justice appointed to the Colorado Court of Appeals. And what if a lawsuit attempting to negate the state’s 2006 constitutional ban on same-sex marriage were to ever reach Marquez and her colleagues? “On the bench, of course, my allegiance is to the law, not to any particular constituency,” she says. Which is fine, because the law — and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1996 decision in Romer vs. Evans, which overturned Colorado’s repeal of anti-gay discrimination laws, and which was cited by the Ninth Circuit during the Perry Prop 8 hearings this month — is on our side.