James Lobsenz Rewrites the Rules
HOW A SEATTLE
APPELLATE LAWYER
HELPED END
'DON’T ASK,
DON’T TELL'
BY ERIK LUNDEGAARD
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICK DAHMS
Asked what his immediate thoughts were
when Maj. Margaret Witt, a 17-year Air Force
veteran, came to his office in July 2004 and
told him she was being investigated under
the U.S. government’s “don’t ask, don’t tell”
policy, James Lobsenz pauses. “I’m sure I had
a lot of immediate thoughts,” he says finally.
Prompted on by the fact that, a year
earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence
v. Texas had recognized a constitutional right
to intimate consensual sexual conduct, and
thus homosexual conduct—improving the
chances that policies such as “don’t ask,
don’t tell” might be ruled unconstitutional
given the right case—Lobsenz pauses again.
There’s an assumption in the question, an
imprecision, that needs correcting.
“I think my first thoughts are always,
‘How can I help this person?’” he says finally.
“You’re not really starting off thinking about
how to set a precedent. You’re thinking
about what’s the best thing you can do for
this one person.”
“Jim’s not a prestige guy,” says attorney
Anne Bremner, of Stafford Frey Cooper,
who has worked opposite Lobsenz on
three cases and hired the Carney Badley
Spellman appellate lawyer to do a briefing
in another. “It’s all about justice, the law
and individual rights.”
Judge J. Robin Hunt agrees. “He has the
utmost integrity,” she says. “Whatever he’s
representing about the case law, the facts,
he’s not going to misconstrue things.” She
mentions the incivility of some lawyers, and,
referring back to Lobsenz, says, “I don’t think
that’s even in his nature.”
Witt simply calls him a man of great
character. “He was very serious about the
conversation,” she says of that first meeting
with Lobsenz. “Serious about me. He was very
focused on what was happening with me.
WHEN PERRY WATKINS WAS DRAFTED
in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War,
