Gov. Deval Patrick nominated Barbara Lenk to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, allowing the openly gay Appeals Court judge to join the court whose 2003 decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health paved the way for her to enter into a same-sex marriage.
If approved by the Governor’s Council, Lenk will fill the vacancy created by the retirement of SJC Judge Judith Cowin.
Patrick, at a press conference announcing the appointment, said the fact that Lenk is gay was a “nice coincidence” that allowed him to appoint the SJC’s first openly gay judge. But Patrick said the real reason for the appointment is Lenk’s brilliance as a judge and her moving personal story.
Lenk, who attended Fordham University, Yale University, and Harvard Law School, is the daughter of parents who never went to college. She said her mother grew up on a potato farm and attended school only through the eighth grade. She said her father graduated from high school in Brooklyn and died when she was 16.
Lenk worked as a civil litigator at the Boston firm of Brown Rudnick Freed & Gesmer from 1979 to 1993, when former Gov. William Weld named her a Superior Court judge. Weld moved her up to the Appeals Court in 1995. Married with two children, Lenk said she has led a full life inside and outside the mainstream of American life.
“I know how fortunate I am,” Lenk said.
The SJC nominee took pains to say that any decisions she makes will be based strictly on the law.
Asked whether she supported making the judicial branch of government subject to the state’s Public Records Law, Lenk hesitated before answering. Gov. Patrick stepped forward before she could respond and said she didn’t have to answer. Top aides to the governor are pushing for the state’s scandal-plagued Probation Department to be moved from the judicial branch into the executive branch, in part because the executive branch is more transparent because it is subject to the Public Records Law.