Tobias Barrington Wolff served as the chief advisor and
spokesperson on LGBT issues for presidential candidate Barack Obama
throughout the 2007-08 campaign. Wolff is currently a law professor and civil rights lawyer.

As a scholar, Professor Wolff specializes in the fields of
Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, and the Conflict of Laws, and his
work has been widely cited in fields ranging from free speech and the
First Amendment to class action litigation. As a civil rights lawyer,
he has worked extensively on the rights of gay men and lesbians, with
particular focus in two areas: relationship rights, and the U.S.
military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Professor Wolff is an active
participant in the marriage equality litigation in California,
consulting with lead counsel and representing the NAACP, the Equal
Justice Society and other civil rights organizations in submitting two
briefs before the California Supreme Court on behalf of California
couples. He has also participated in the marriage equality cases in
Iowa and Hawai'i and has worked behind the scenes in similar cases
around the country. From 1999 to 2008, Professor Wolff served as co-
counsel in a civil rights case in Alaska that succeeded in securing
equal employment benefits for the same-sex partners of municipal and
state employees throughout that State -- the most significant gay
rights ruling in Alaska history. Professor Wolff is also one of the
Nation's leading commentators and advocates on the Don't Ask, Don't
Tell policy, an issue that he has worked on for over a dozen years,
and he has been involved in constitutional challenges to that policy
in courts around the country.

Following his graduation from Yale Law School, Wolff served as a
judicial clerk for two judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
and worked for two years as a litigator at a top New York firm. He
then began his teaching career at the University of California, Davis
Law School, living in the Bay Area for six years. He now makes his
home in Philadelphia as a tenured professor at the University of
Pennsylvania Law School. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford
and Northwestern Law Schools and is currently scheduled for visits at
NYU and Harvard.

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