Juliet Howard and Norma Jennings were elected to New York state judgeships last November, becoming likely the first same-sex married couple in the state to simultaneously win judicial election. The women, who took office in recent weeks, have been together nearly 32 years and have two grown sons.
Barnard University, Howard’s alma mater, reports that the two “possibly [became] the first same-sex married couple to win judicial elections in New York at the same time.”
Howard was then inducted in late January onto the Civil Court in Brooklyn, as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle writes. Jennings was inducted in February onto the New York Supreme Court, becoming Brooklyn’s first Black, openly LGBTQ justice on that court, another Daily Eagle piece reports. Last year, she had become the state’s first Black and LGBTQ civil court judge when she took a seat on the 6th Municipal Court, per Gay City News.
Back in 2021, the couple also made history on the Housing Court when they were “believed to be the first married same-sex couple appointed to the same court in New York,” according to Amici, a podcast from the New York Courts (PDF transcript). Jennings had been appointed in 2019, however, with Howard joining her as a judge two years later—so their simultaneous 2025 election was yet another first for them.
Howard told Barnard that she had been inspired by her mother, a court clerk who would bring her into the courtroom and made sure to introduce her to attorneys and judges of color. Both Howard and Jennings were the first in their families to go to college, and met when they were both working as attorneys at The Legal Aid Society. They were one of the first lesbian couples in their Brooklyn neighborhood to raise children, and their sons are now 28 and 21. (That means they’re roughly on par with my spouse and I, who have been together almost 33 years and have a 22-year-old son. Let’s hear it for our generation of queer parents!)
In their interview with Amici, Howard shared:
I would say for me, the thing I remember as the pushback was having a child and having folks in school not necessarily acknowledge that we were both moms. They would assume one was the stepmother. They just couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that our son had two mothers…. Our son was actually a really big advocate for us starting in preschool…. having to tell other kids who would say, “You can’t have two moms.” And he would say, “There are all kind of families.” So, I remember very early on, he would talk about the different configurations of family because we would talk about that. It was something that was openly discussed in our family.
Jennings added:
I think for us it was important to be out because if you’re hiding, what does that tell your children? Does that tell your children that your family is somehow different, somehow not normal? I think it was very important for us to show our children that their family was just like any other family, that some people had a mom and a dad, some people only had a mom, some people had two dads. I think for us, it was really important to be out so our children could understand that their family was just like everybody else’s family.
Both had applied for judgeships many years ago but not succeeded, then decided to put those career moves on pause to focus on their family, for which they are both grateful, they told the podcast. Once their kids were older, however, the possibility of judgeships opened up again, leading them each through several benches to their current seats.
I encourage you to read the Barnard piece and/or listen to the (slightly older) Amici podcast to learn more about these two inspiring queer moms.