Tom Ammiano
#lgbtqpridemonthProfiles
Tom Ammiano is an elected leader and activist who has been leading the fight for LGBT rights in San Francisco for decades. In the 1970s he partnered with activists Harvey Milk and Hank Wilson in a successful campaign to defeat the Briggs Intitiatve, which would have banned all gay people from teaching in California. Ammiano was elected to the San Francisco Board of Education in 1990, where he was instrumental in creating gay and lesbian sensitivity training for students. During his tenure on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (1994-2008), Ammiano developed the city’s Domestic Partners Ordinance and helped create the city’s Health Care Security Ordinance, making San Francisco the first city in the country to provide universal access to health care. In 1999, Ammiano ran as a write-in candidate for mayor of San Francisco and nearly defeated incumbent Mayor Willie Brown. Ammiano served in the California State Assembly from 2008 to 2014, during which time he authored the School Success and Opportunity Act, which extends gender identity and gender expression discrimination protection to transgender and gender-nonconforming K-12 students in public schools. The bill was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2013.