Mary C. Dunlap

Dunlap was born in Napa, California, the daughter of Frank Leslie Dunlap and Betty Marion McBean Dunlap. Her father was a lawyer. She attended Napa High School, earned a bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1968,^[1] and completed a Juris Doctor degree at UC Berkeley School of Law in 1971.^[2] In law school, she and other students founded the Boalt Hall Women's Association, and took over a restroom for the association's office.^[3]

In 1973, Dunlap co-founded of a non-profit law firm specializing in sex discrimination law, Equal Rights Advocates, with Wendy Webster Williams and Nancy Davis.^[3][4] In 1976 she debated Phyllis Schlafly on the Equal Rights Amendment at Mills College.^[5] In 1977, she represented a pregnant teacher forced to take maternity leave in Berg v. Richmond Unified School District.^[6] In 1984, she represented women in a class-action suit against laundries for discriminatory price differences between services for men's and women's clothing, saying "ring-around-the-collar ought to cost the same to remove, whether a man or a woman put it there".^[7] In 1987, she represented the Gay Games before the Supreme Court, in San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. United States Olympic Committee.^[8][9] In 1989, she represented Eleanor Swift in her lawsuit against Boalt Hall over tenure. She supported Black firefighters in a civil rights challenge to the San Francisco Fire Department's hiring practices.^[10] She was involved in the early work of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.^[10]

Dunlap was appointed director of San Francisco's Office of Citizen Complaints in 1996.^[11] In that role, she oversaw the office that investigated complaints against city police officers.^[12] She taught at the Hastings College of Law, Golden Gate University, Stanford University, and the University of San Francisco School of Law.^[9]

• "The Equal Rights Amendment and the Courts" (1975)^[13]
• "The Constitutional Rights of Sexual Minorities: A Crisis of the Male/Female Dichotomy" (1978)^[14]
• "Attorneys' Fees against Government Defendants; Economics Requires a New Proposal" (1979)^[15]
• "Harris v. McRae" (1979)
• "Toward Recognition of A Right to Be Sexual" (1981)^[16]
• "Feminist Discourse, Moral Values, and the Law—A Conversation" (1985, with Ellen C. DuBois, Carol Gilligan, Catharine A. MacKinnon, and Carrie Menkel-Meadow)^[17]
• "Sexual Speech and the State: Putting Pornography in Its Place" (1987)^[18]
• "The F Word: Mainstreaming and Marginalizing Feminism" (1988)^[19]
• "AIDS and Discrimination in the United States: Reflections on the Nature of Prejudice in a Virus" (1989)^[20]
• "The Lesbian and Gay Marriage Debate: A Microcosm of Our Hopes and Troubles in the Nineties" (1991)^[21]
• "Are We Integrated Yet? Pursuing the Complex Question of Values, Demographics and Personalities" (1994)^[22]
• "Gay Men and Lesbians down by Law in the 1990's USA: The Continuing Toll of Bowers v. Hardwick " (1994)^[23]

Dunlap also wrote and published her poetry.^[3][24] Andrew Sullivan included one of her poems in his Same-Sex Marriage, Pro and Con: A Reader (1997).^[25]

Dunlap was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2001, and kept an online journal of her treatment and experiences; she died in 2003, at the age of 54, survived by her partner of almost 18 years, Maureen Mason.^[9][10] In 2004, the Berkeley Women's Law Journal dedicated a special issue to tributes to Dunlap.^[1][3] In 2005, the first Mary Dunlap Fellowships were awarded at Berkeley,^[26] and the first Mary C. Dunlap Memorial Lecture on Sex, Gender & Social Justice was held. Her work with the Gay Games is featured in the documentary Claiming the Title: Gay Olympics on Trial (2009).^[27]