Brian Ellner is a 2005 candidate for Manhattan Borough President
www.brianellner.com

About Brian

Brian Ellner is running as a Democrat for Manhattan Borough President to tackle the City's toughest challenges with integrity and discipline. Now more than ever, Manhattan needs an energetic, creative and hard-working advocate. The Borough is faced with critical challenges that must be addressed: guarding against terrorism, fixing our broken public school system, redeveloping downtown, creating affordable housing, confronting public health concerns such as asthma in our youth and a rise in new HIV infections, and protecting Manhattan's historic buildings and parks.

Brian Ellner is a native New Yorker who grew up in Stuyvesant Town and attended Middle School 104 on the East Side, and the Bronx High School of Science. He is now an attorney with the New York law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP, where he is litigation counsel.

It was his interest and leadership in education issues that led to Brian's appointment by current Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields to Community Board 5 in 1997. Brian served for two years, and in 1999 was elected to the District 2 School Board, where he served as President until July 2004.

During Brian's tenure, the School Board created two new high schools – Eleanor Roosevelt and Millennium – creating much needed classroom space in underserved neighborhoods. Over the last five years, District 2 has been home to the top elementary, middle school and non-specialized high schools in the State, and consistently ranks first or second among the 32 Community School Districts in reading and math scores.

On the School Board, Brian worked to ensure that all of the City's students have a safe and nurturing environment in which to learn. Working closely with fellow Board Member Douglas Robinson, Brian arranged comprehensive training for the District's teachers and administrators in combating harassment – particularly that of LGBT youth, who are consistently subjected to harassment and, all too often, violence, in the City schools. Additionally, Brian led the 2000 campaign that severed the City's ties to the Boy Scouts of America in light of its continued discriminatory practices against gay Scouts and Scoutmasters.

In addition to his work as an elected official, Brian has also worked as a Special Assistant to former Public Advocate Mark Green. In the Public Advocate's Office Brian worked with community groups to develop policy initiatives on child-care and human rights, and investigated the ways in which the City could more efficiently purchase and track municipal goods. Brian also worked on Green's campaign for Mayor.

At the O'Melveny law firm, Brian worked on an amicus brief representing civil rights groups from across the country – including the Human Rights Campaign, The Anti-Defamation League, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund - in Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark 2002 case that overturned existing anti-gay sodomy laws throughout the United States. Brian has also provided, and continues to provide, pro bono representation to the New York City LGBT Community Center and Freedom to Marry.

While at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison LLP, Brian worked with the New York Civil Liberties Union on a statewide companion case to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity – the group that won the decision from the New York Court of Appeals requiring that the State spend more on New York City's public school system. This companion suit, which is still active in State Court, was filed on behalf of predominantly minority schools throughout the state that were being denied a sound basic education as required by the State Constitution.

While at Paul, Weiss, Brian also co-authored an amicus brief in Levin v. Yeshiva, the landmark challenge to Yeshiva University's policy of denying university housing to same sex couples. The brief was filed on behalf of New York City elected officials, including then Public Advocate Mark Green, then NYC Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi and then Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer.

Brian began his legal career as a litigator at White & Case in New York, where he devoted much of his time to pro bono work and co-authored an amicus brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of women in the armed forces who supported integration at the Virginia Military Institute. The brief was cited in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's majority opinion that ended VMI's all male admission policy in 1996.

Prior to White & Case, Brian clerked for Justice Alan B. Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court where he spent much of the year working on the landmark Abbott v. Burke decision that required New Jersey to spend as much public money on its so-called special needs districts as it spends on its suburban schools.

Brian is on the Board of Directors of the Hetrick Martin Institute (home of the Harvey Milk High School) and on the Board of Visitors of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Service at Dartmouth College.

While attending Dartmouth College (from which he graduated magna cum laude and received the Deans Prize), Brian served in leadership positions, including President of the student body, and pressed for a progressive agenda -- advocating successfully for the college to divest from apartheid South Africa, hire more African American and minority faculty and discontinue its relationship with ROTC because of the Army's continued discrimination toward gays. During his junior year, Brian was awarded the national Harry S. Truman Scholarship for commitment to public service.

After Dartmouth, Brian attended Harvard Law School where he graduated cum laude. At Harvard, Brian worked as a research assistant to Professor Laurence Tribe, and worked to overturn Proposition 187 in California (which attempted to deny undocumented persons access to critical public services) and Amendment 2 in Colorado (which sought to overturn gay civil rights ordinances that had been passed in Denver, Boulder and Aspen). Both laws were invalidated. Brian also spent one semester working at the ACLU's Women's Rights Project in New York, where he worked on the Citadel case in an effort to end that school's discriminatory admission's policy. He also worked on a case that challenged a police department's failure to aggressively pursue domestic violence.

During his summers at Harvard, Brian worked at the United States Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division. During those summers, Brian traveled to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, investigating allegations of discrimination and abuse of minority students, and he worked on several desegregation cases.

Brian and his partner now live in Chelsea. He plays basketball regularly and is a fanatic Knicks fan.