MCLU Salutes Peard on Winning Glassman Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 30, 2008

PORTLAND - The Maine Civil Liberties Union Foundation congratulates its former board president, Patricia Peard, on receiving the Caroline Duby Glassman Award, which will be presented this Friday at the winter meeting of the Maine Bar Association at the Samoset Resort in Rockport.
Peard is a longtime activist for civil liberties and civil rights, and served several terms on the board of MCLU.  She also co-chaired the organization’s legal panel which handles pro bono cases in defense of civil liberties.  She has been active on the boards of several other local non-profits, including the Institute for Civic Leadership and she was a founding board member of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence.
Peard, an attorney with the firm of Bernstein Shur, has been a longtime activist in the movement for civil rights for gays and lesbians in Maine, and led the statewide organization Maine Won’t Discriminate in the campaigns that finally won passage of the civil rights bill after a two-decades effort, and successfully defended it in a referendum vote in 2005. 
“Pat Peard is a brilliant visionary and advocate for civil rights,”  said Shenna Bellows, MCLU Executive Director, “For decades, Pat Peard has led the way, making Maine a fairer and more just place to live for all of us.
More recently, Peard was instrumental in winning a Maine Supreme Court Case which secured the rights of second party adoption Maine.  In that case, which was brought on behalf of a lesbian couple who are raising foster children they sought to jointly adopt, Peard worked with leading civil rights attorneys at GLAD in Boston, including Mary Bonauto, who will be a speaker at Friday’s awards luncheon.
     At Bernstein Shur, Peard  chairs the labor and employment practice group, and serves on the management committee. A former history teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, she has developed a specialty practice in education law, and represents many schools and colleges. 
        The Caroline Duby Glassman Award, is given by the Women's Law Section of the Maine Bar Association to honor a female member of the Bar who has worked to remove barriers and advanced the position of women in the profession and who has acted as a role model for younger or less experienced women lawyers. It was created in honor of Justice Caroline Glassman, the first female Justice on Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court.
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