Rebecca Levin Nayak was recently elected chair of the Family Law Section of the Philadelphia Bar Association, but her history of advocating for and providing legal aid to LGBTQ+ individuals and families long predates that promotion. Nayak is an attorney practicing predominantly adoption and reproductive law as a partner at Jerner Law Group, P.C., a family law firm that specializes in legal services for LGBTQ+ individuals and families in the Greater Philadelphia Area and helps with legal matters ranging from custody settlements to name changes and beyond.
Nayak started with the firm in 2010, when it was still Jerner & Palmer, P.C. Since that time, Nayak has stepped into the role that now Judge Tiffany Palmer previously held at the firm, handling adoption and assisted reproduction cases. While that particular area was not where she began, providing legal counsel for the LGBTQ+ population was always front of mind for Nayak.
“I became a lawyer because I wanted to advance LGBTQ plus civil rights,” Nayak said. “I went to grad school for a master’s in public administration but was really interested in LGBT civil rights.”
Nayak described how, during her master’s program, the ruling for Lawrence V. Texas, the case that legalized same-sex intimate relationships and invalidated anti-sodomy laws, came down and how that encouraged her to join the movement.
“I saw that changes were really happening through the courts, and that really motivated me to go to law school,” Nayak said.
Nayak began auditing law classes while completing her master’s in public administration, and, in 2005, she began attending Washington College of Law, a law school affiliated with American University. It was at Washington College of Law where her trajectory toward adoption and reproductive family law really began. There, she met Professor Nancy Polikoff, Professor of Law Emerita at American University Washington College of Law, who specializes in LGBTQ+ family law and wrote a book titled “Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage,” published in 2008.
Nayak, who worked as Polikoff’s research assistant during law school, spoke highly of her instructor.
“I had the best professor,” Nayak said of Polikoff. “She did one of the first second-parent adoptions.”
During her first year in law school, Nayak interned at the National LGBTQ Task Force (then known as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force), and that summer, she worked for what is now the legal services arm of the Mazzoni Center. During her second summer, she worked for the ACLU’s Lesbian & Gay Rights and AIDS Project in New York. As her dedication to LGBTQ+ rights never wavered during her law school experience, Nayak had her sights set on one law firm in particular for when she graduated.
Nayak very charmingly described her persistence in looking to join Jerner Law.
“I very deliberately sought out the firm that I’m at now,” she explained. “It was then Jerner and Palmer. Now it’s Jerner Law. But I had reached out to Tiffany Palmer, now Judge Palmer, a few years in a row. I was saying, ‘Are you hiring now? Are you hiring?’ And then, I think maybe after like the third or fourth time I reached out to her, the answer was, ‘yeah, yes, we’ll talk to you.’”
Nayak’s perseverance to join Jerner makes a lot of sense given her history of providing aid to the LGBTQ+ community and her career goals aligning with LGBTQ+ family law; Jerner is one of the most prominent LGBTQ+ family law firms in Philadelphia, and Nayak highlighted their origin as one aspect of the firm that sets them apart.
“The firm was founded to serve the LGBT community, and so that’s been its focus the whole time,” Nayak said. “Other firms might be LGBTQ+ friendly allies, but I don’t know if their mission has been the same.”
When Nayak joined Jerner Law in 2010, marriage equality had not yet been achieved, so much of her work focused on cases pertaining to that.
Nayak explained, “My work was really focused on custody cases where people may not be recognized as a parent; people may be getting civil unions or having relationships that functioned a lot like marriages but weren’t given legal recognition; and then having people break up and trying to resolve those situations in ways that made sense.”
When Judge Palmer transitioned to the Family Division of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Nayak put her many years of experience to work and began tackling matters pertaining to adoption and reproductive law, including confirmatory adoptions. Nayak said that many of her cases involve same-sex female couples who have a child within the context of their relationship and are both on the birth certificate. She said this reflects one currently critical aspect of family law in Philadelphia.
“Right now, in Pennsylvania, we don’t have a statute regarding children conceived through assisted reproduction,” Nayak explained.
What family law attorneys do have, though, is case law, and Nayak expressed that the body of case law in Pennsylvania is quite positive for LGBTQ+ families.
“[Case law] establishes precedent for how parentage of children born by assisted reproduction is determined,” Nayak explained. “There was just a very good decision from the Superior Court, saying that you can be a parent based on not only principles of contract, but also intent. So, we have actually pretty good case law in Pennsylvania.”
Nayak said she hopes that this will eventually result in statutes, and she is playing an active role in that effort as co-chair of the working group for the Pennsylvania Bar Association, looking at advancing parentage laws in Pennsylvania.
In general, despite the present climate on a national scale, Nayak said she has seen positive things for LGBTQ+ family law in Philadelphia and in the surrounding counties, with judges respecting clients’ pronouns and names and making sure they are comfortable. While Nayak has some concerns, particularly about a trend toward prioritizing marriage for confirmatory adoptions in the state, she indicated that, particularly in Philadelphia, she is optimistic about the future for LGBTQ+ families.
The heart of Nayak’s work is clear and has been consistent throughout her career, and she aims to continue achieving those goals.
“I want to make sure that relationships between children and their parents are protected, regardless of any change in the law.”