About

Michael is a third generation Californian from Sacramento, the grandchild of Mexican immigrants. He was the first person in his family — and the only of his five siblings — to attend college. As a young child, Michael fondly recalls watching Perry Mason with his grandfather – a brilliant man condemned by lack of opportunity to spend his working life in a factory. The fictional Perry Mason was one of his inspirations to become a lawyer; another was Abraham Lincoln, in whose life Michael found a role model who encouraged his desire to obtain an education, despite the challenges faced by a working-class Latino boy in the 1960s.

Michael graduated from Stanford Law School in 1981 and upon graduation moved to Los Angeles where he began his legal career as a prosecutor with the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office, trying cases in the downtown criminal courts building. In 1984, he joined Horvitz & Levy, the state’s premier civil appellate boutique firm.

Two years later, inspired by a desire to return to public service, he went to work as a staff attorney for Arleigh Maddox Woods, the first African-American woman appointed to the California Court of Appeal. As Justice Woods’ attorney, Michael worked on hundreds of appeals in every field of the law, criminal, civil, family, juvenile and probate. One of the cases he worked on for Justice Woods of which he is most proud is Jasperson v. Jessica’s Nail Clinic (1989) 216 Cal.App.3d 1099, the first published decision to uphold an antidiscrimination ordinance that protected people with HIV/AIDS.

In 1999, he joined the staff of the California Supreme Court. Since 2004, he has been a judicial staff attorney for Carlos R. Moreno, Associate Justice of the court, perhaps best known for his dissent in the Proposition 8 case in which he defended the rights of same-sex couples to marry.

Michael is also involved in the community as an active parishioner at Most Holy Redeemer and was a member of the board of directors of the GLBT Historical Society. He was a founding member of the state bar’s Council on Access and Fairness, which advises the bar on diversity issue. He is mentor and a tutor in programs sponsored by the Bar Association of San Francisco, the San Francisco Law Raza Lawyers and For People of Color, a nonprofit that helps students of color enter and succeed in law school. He is a member of the state bar, the Bar Association of San Francisco, San Francisco La Raza Lawyers and the Hispanic National Bar Association.

In addition to his legal career, Michael Nava is also the author of seven novels published between 1986 and 2002 featuring the cases of a gay criminal defense lawyer named Henry Rios. His novels have won wide praise and many honors.

In October 2008, just before Proposition 8 banned same-sex marriage, Justice Moreno married Michael and his partner, George Herzog, an oncology nurse.