A March 7 forum at Elon Law took an inside look at state-level marriage equality cases, featuring attorneys who served as counsel for such cases in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Elon Law and the Elon Law student organization OutLaw hosted two speakers, Dylan Steinberg and Christopher Brook, who presented on their work as counsel in marriage equality cases in North Carolina and Pennsylvania prior to Obergefell, the landmark United States Supreme Court case that guaranteed the right to marry to same-sex couples.
They spoke about litigation strategy, case history, post-marriage equality issues and a number of other topics directly related to their personal work on those cases, with the ACLU, and on other issues post-Obergefell.
Christopher Brook is Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, where he oversees the organization’s legal program and its work on a wide range of constitutional law issues, including LGBT rights, racial justice, and religious liberty. Brook grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate and law degrees. While in law school, he served as a legal intern at the UNC Center for Civil Rights, Director of the Carolina Law Pro Bono Program, and Managing Editor of the North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation. Upon graduation he was inducted into Carolina Law’s Davis Society, which recognizes eight third-year students possessing both academic and personal excellence as well as a willingness to serve for the betterment of the School of Law and its faculty and students.
Dylan J. Steinberg is a shareholder and commercial litigator at Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller in Philadelphia, PA. Drawing on his ten years of business experience as a technology consultant to pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, Dylan has represented clients in a wide variety of technology and life sciences matters, including matters relating to software licensing and implementation as well as life science collaborations. In partnership with the ACLU, Dylan and four of his colleagues at Hangley Aronchick represented the plaintiffs in Whitewood v. Wolf, which succeeded in striking down Pennsylvania’s laws prohibiting same sex marriage in May of 2014. Dylan received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania Law School where he was an Articles Editor for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Following law school, Dylan clerked for the Honorable Stewart Dalzell on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.