Al Gerhardstein

Alphonse A. Gerhardstein is a partner in the civil rights firm of Friedman, Gilbert +Gerhardstein. For more than 45 years he has litigated civil rights issues including police misconduct, race, sex, sexual orientation and disability discrimination, prisoner rights, voting rights, and reproductive health issues. For three decades he represented abortion providers in Ohio.  He was lead counsel in Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court case establishing marriage equality for same sex couples in all 50 states. His long struggle to secure LGBQ rights is chronicled in episode #5 of the Netflix series hosted by Will Smith, Amend: The Fight for America. He won early victories for transgender clients including a jury favorable jury verdict for a transgender police officer. Barnes v. City of Cincinnati, 401 F.3d 729 (6th Cir. 2005).

Gerhardstein has served as lead counsel on numerous civil rights class actions including one that reformed Ohio’s juvenile prisons and another that resulted in Cincinnati’s Collaborative Agreement, which has been repeatedly cited as a national model for police reform. Mr. Gerhardstein is the Founder of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center www.ohiojpc.org. He earned his J.D. degree from and was a Root Tilden Scholar at New York University. Mr. Gerhardstein litigates causes, not just cases, and pursues reforms in all of his practice areas.  He now splits his time between St Paul Minnesota and Cincinnati and was interviewed on Cincinnati Edition to mark that transition.