With more than two decades under her belt, Heather Sawyer has firmly established herself as one of the country's leading civil rights attorneys.
As a young lawyer at Schiff Hardin in the early 1990s, Sawyer fought for a Chicago gay man's right to work for the Boy Scouts of America and won a favorable ruling from the Human Rights Commission. After moving to Lambda Legal in 1996, Sawyer spearheaded landmark HIV/AIDS cases that resulted in widespread policy changes.
During her 18 years in Chicago, the active attorney maintained a strong presence in the LGBT community. At a 2011 event, former Lambda co-worker Jim Bennett half-jokingly called Sawyer "the most popular lesbian that has ever come out of Chicago." An avid softball player, Sawyer could often be found on the field.
"I pitched because I'm a control freak," Sawyer said with a laugh. "I mean: think about it. Not a single play can start until the pitcher decides to start. It's the perfect position for a control freak."
In 2007, Sawyer started a new chapter in her career as senior counsel for the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. In that capacity, she's overseen post-9/11 civil liberties work, led the committee's efforts to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act's ( DOMA's ) constitutionality, and served as lead counsel for important legislation such as the 2008 ADA Amendments Act and the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
During a recent trip to Chicago, Sawyer sat down with the Windy City Times to talk about first jobs, AIDS litigation and life on the Hill.
WCT: We hear you had a pretty interesting first job.
Heather Sawyer: I worked for Sesame Street out of college; I was one of the researchers. They're very serious about having their programmatic stuff track children's learning abilities so we would go out, test various concepts with the kids, and see what they knew. Then we'd meet with the writers and script it. The writers would film with the Muppets, and we'd take the tapes back out to see if they actually worked.
WCT: What made you decide to go to law school?
Heather Sawyer: I was in New York, and my brother got very ill so I moved back to Ohio to be with my family. I was there for a year, and I worked at a law firm as a paralegal. I thought it was intellectually interesting work, so I figured: Maybe I'll like law. My mentor was crushed; he always encouraged people to do the path not taken. I moved out here to Chicago and stayed here for 18 years. I loved it. It's a wonderful city.
WCT: How did you end up at Lambda Legal?
Heather Sawyer: I worked at Schiff Hardin right out of law school for four years, then I joined Lambda Legal in 1996. At the time, the office had been open three or four years; it was relatively new. It was originally just one lawyer: Pat Logue. Then they hired Barry Taylor as their HIV Project lawyer. When he decided to go work for Equip for Equality, a position came open, and I thought: 'Perfect. Here's my chance.' I just jumped on it.
WCT: You had some high-profile cases pretty early on.
Heather Sawyer: We had a pretty big case against Chicago Public Schools ( CPS ) . This is going to sound truly outrageous now, because fortunately, times have changed and people do have a better understanding of HIV as a medical condition. But there was a point in time when CPS would not hire, and would even fire, employees who had HIV. [ CPS ] had a questionnaire at the time, where, if they found out you had HIV, they asked you how you got it and required you to have mental health counseling.
They were, and probably still are, the third largest school district in the country. For that size of a school district to have such an appalling policy… . I will say they did step up to the plate. We settled, and they changed their policy. They really did do the right thing. But it was one of those appalling things, where, when you discovered it, you thought: How can this be?
WCT: You had another game-changer with Mutual of Omaha, right?
Heather Sawyer: Yes. They were capping coverage for people with HIV at a mere fraction of what you could otherwise have in terms of your lifetime policy.
Here's how it worked: You'd get a lifetime policy of $1 million for any medical condition, whatever it would be, and you could renew it. So, let's say you got cancer. You had a series of treatments, then you went into remission and didn't have treatments for three years. [ The lifetime policy ] would renew if you didn't incur an expense after three years—for pretty much any condition except for HIV and AIDS. They established a $25,000 lifetime cap. Once it was exhausted, you were done.
We challenged that policy, and again, we had a wonderful decision at the district court. It did get reversed on appeal on the grounds that the content of an insurance policy is not covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act ( ADA ) . It was a heartbreaking decision, but [ the case ] did result in the company changing their position—I think—because they got such adverse press.
It was shown during the course of litigation that there was no actual valid reason for them to [ cap coverage ] . I think they panicked when HIV was first discovered. The insurance companies thought there was going to be such a glut of people that they didn't know what to do.
WCT: Were a lot of cases settled out of court?
Heather Sawyer: Yes. Most of them settled without us even having to go to trial. I think most people, when they looked at what the science said and what the reality was, they'd come to the conclusion that discrimination could not be sustained—that their polices were really much more fear-based then science-based.
The difficulty about those times was that a lot of people were doing things in a knee-jerk manner. For the most part, when people were challenged on it, they would educate themselves—and allow us to help educate them—then step up to the plate and do the right thing.
WCT: How did you choose your cases?
Heather Sawyer: None of our clients were ever looking to challenge a policy or have a lawsuit. No one wants to engage in litigation; it's no fun and it's very stressful. You have to put your life out there for people to explore.
We'd try to get everyone help, but for some of the clients, we felt like their issues needed to be cases because their problems were system-wide: school districts, big employers, important employers, public employers, an insurance company. We wanted to try to shape the discussion.
WCT: What was the environment like?
Heather Sawyer: Quite frankly, people were very discriminatory because the people who got HIV weren't necessarily people they cared for. People thought: Well, you either got HIV because you're gay or because you were using intravenous drugs. There was a lot of stigma around how HIV was transmitted that got put into the policies.
If you look at some of the congressional debate, people would say this was the punishment for being gay. Or that people engaged in unnatural behavior, and this was God's punishment. It created a sense of 'They're them, and we're us, and it's okay to exclude them.'
There were calls for quarantines or public lists that identified people who have HIV. There were restrictions on food handlers, health care workers, police officers, and teachers. They didn't want people in the workplace who had HIV because everyone was so worried about transmission. There were these really draconian, horrible campaigns that you would never imagine in respect to any other medical condition. And it wasn't even that long ago. We've come a long way.
WCT: How so?
Heather Sawyer: Some of the stigma has gotten better, though it's not entirely gone. People have a much better understanding of the science now. It's about facts and how to help people.
The biggest problem now is funding battles: How do we get treatments to people who couldn't otherwise afford it? How do we reach the population that has HIV but doesn't have health insurance? The conversation is much more about the practicalities of treating people.
WCT: What prompted your 2005 move to Washington, D.C.?
Heather Sawyer: It was partly for personal reasons and partly just for a change of pace; it was an amalgam of things. When I first moved to D.C., I taught at Georgetown. I did that for a few years, and then I went over to the Hill, and it's been some exciting work. It's important work. My portfolio has included LGBT issues, but there's also a lot of other civil rights work. For the first few years I was [ on the Hill ] , a lot of my agenda was dealing with Iraq and our national security policy—things like people getting tortured or being sent to other countries to be tortured.
That was very surprising to me. I had never really thought of America as a place where that could happen. Maybe that was naive of me. If so, I feel proud to have been that naive about America. I was pretty much taken aback. Obviously some troubling things came out. A lot of my time those first couple years was spent figuring out what we were really doing, what we've been accused of doing. Sometimes that was very difficult to find out because there was such secrecy.
WCT: What do you mean?
Heather Sawyer: Congress is supposed to be able to have oversight on the executive branch. That is one of the key checks: The executive branch is supposed to execute the law, and Congress is supposed to check in and make sure that in doing so, the executive branch is actually complying with the Constitution.
We were being stonewalled. You just couldn't get the facts.
WCT: How's life on the Hill been going otherwise?
Heather Sawyer: It's been very interesting, and it's great work. It's been a nice opportunity, but I still miss Chicago. I think of Chicago as home. I really felt like I found a great community and friends, both in the professional law field and the community. I consider Chicago home even though I wasn't born or raised here; I feel like I grew up in Chicago.
This story is part of the Local Reporting Initiative, supported in part by The Chicago Community Trust.
