San Francisco supervisors have seated attorney Alex Lemberg, who is nonbinary, to the city's powerful Board of Appeals. The oversight panel determines appeals of permits issued by a wide array of city departments and commissions, such as those granted by the planning commission.
District 10 Supervisor and board President Shamann Walton had nominated Lemberg to an unexpired term on the appeals board that runs through July 1, 2024. The supervisors' rules committee had unanimously supported Lemberg serving on the quasi-judicial body at its June 27 meeting.
The full board voted 10-1 Tuesday, July 12, to confirm Lemberg's nomination, with District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani in the dissent. The supervisors, who appoint two of the five appeals board members, did so without comment. (The three other members are mayoral appointees.)
"I'm very much looking forward to serving on the Board of Appeals," Lemberg, 34, had told the Bay Area Reporter last month. "It has quite a bit of power and is pretty substantive."
After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2011, Lemberg worked as a tourist bus guide in San Francisco and then as a limo driver, according to their LinkedIn profile. They earned a law degree in 2017 from the Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco. The top public-interest student in their class, Lemberg served as executive comments and outside articles editor for the Golden Gate University Law Review.
Lemberg went on to serve as an extern to U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler and a judicial extern for the California Supreme Court. They also trained with former San Francisco City Attorney Louise Renne as an associate at her Renne Public Law Group.
The nonprofit Open Door Legal, the first organization in the U.S. to provide universal civil legal representation to low-income people, then hired Lemberg in 2018 as a housing attorney. Last July, Lemberg went into private practice and is licensed to practice law in state court and in federal courts covering the state's Central Coast and Central Valley regions north to the Oregon border, according to their bio on their eponymously named law firm website.
The Jewish and queer Bay Area native has lived in the city's LGBTQ Castro district with their husband, Kevin Cureton, since 2013. Lemberg for several years has served as president of the Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association, while Cureton is its treasurer.
The couple years ago documented in photos their traversing the city's numerous hidden stairways and presented talks on their outings. Two years ago they adopted a dog, Pumpkin, from the San Francisco SPCA that Lemberg considers their "legal assistant."
As they recount on their law firm website, adopting Pumpkin, "was easily the best part about 2020. Although she appears to be a dog, she is actually a moose."
This spring, Lemberg received a bit of national attention as a contestant on the television game show "Jeopardy!" Appearing on the April 21 episode, Lemberg lost to Mattea Roach, a lesbian who was the most successful Canadian on the show.
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