Alphonso B. David
1970 -
Alphonso David is the first black man and the first openly gay man to serve as Chief Counsel to the Governor of New York State, a position to which he was appointed in 2015. For the past two decades, David has utilized tools including litigation, legislation, and regulatory reform to advance LGBTQ rights ranging from litigating the marriage equality lawsuit in New York to drafting the law that secured those rights, and from advancing policies to protect people living with HIV to drafting regulations in support of transgender rights.
David was born in Maryland and, at age one, his family moved to Liberia, where he lived until his early teen years. His immediate family survived a violent military coup and were granted asylum in the United States. David began his legal career as a judicial clerk in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He went on to serve as a staff attorney at Lambda Legal, where he litigated precedent-setting civil rights cases across the nation affecting LGBTQ individuals and those living with HIV. Since 2007, David has served the people of the State of New York: first, as Deputy Commissioner and Special Counselor at the Division of Human Rights, then as Special Deputy Attorney General for Civil Rights, and later as the nation's first Deputy Secretary and Counsel for Civil Rights.
We have a responsibility as public servants to ensure that our laws and our policies are fairly and evenly applied in this new world order. We have an even greater responsibility to make sure New Yorkers are not marginalized or targeted.
-Alphonso B. David, 2016