Judge Tonya Parker, right, and U.S. Navy Cmdr. Emily Schilling, retired
TAMMYE NASH | Managing Editor
Nash@DallasVoice.com
When you think of who has sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton more than 15 times in the last three years, with cases ending up at the Texas Supreme Court five times in that same stretch of time, who do you think of?
If you said Lambda Legal, then you are correct.
Lambda Legal, founded in New York in 1973, has spent the last 52-plus years working tirelessly toward its goal of “achieving full equality” for LGBTQ+ people. (See the Sept. 19 issue of Dallas Voice for a story on some of the organization’s landmark victories.) This fall, the organization is celebrating that legacy with the Landmark Dinner on Oct. 11, from 6-11 p.m. at Union Station in Dallas.
This year’s dinner, presented by the Dallas Leadership Council, honors Judge Tonya Parker, with retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. Emily “Hawking” Schilling as guest speaker.
Judge Tonya Parker
Parker is, noted Lambda Legal’s Dallas-based South Central Regional Director Shelly Skeen, “the first authentically LGBTQ+ African-American elected official in Texas.” She presides over the 116th Judicial District Court for the state of Texas and has twice served as the presiding judge for the Dallas County Civil District Courts. Parker is also on the executive board of the SMU Dedman School of Law, serving at that school as an adjunct professor teaching Texas Pretrial Procedure.
She is a member of the American Law Institute and is advisor to ALI’s Restatement of the Law project on tort remedies.
Throughout her career on the bench, Parker has been lauded for both her performance and her temperament. Dallas Morning News in 2024 described her as “far and away the top-rated civil jurist,” and in every Dallas Bar Association Judicial Evaluation Poll from 2013 to 2023, her overall approval ratings have exceeded 92 percent — the highest ratings of any civil
Other honors include being named “Trial Judge of the Year” by the Dallas Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates” in her fifth year on the bench. Since then she has been named Judge of the Year by Dallas Lawyers Magazine, and has received the Martin Luther King Jr. Justice Award from the Dallas Bar Association, the Luminary Award from the Washington, D.C. think tank Diversity and Flexibility Alliance, the Distinguished Jurist Award for the State Bar of Texas’ African American Lawyers Section twice, the Stonewall Award from a commission of the American Bar Association, the Distinguished Alumni Award for Judicial Service from Dedman School of Law, the Hon. Cleo R. Steele Committed Mentor Award twice from the J.L. Turner Legal Association and the Maura Women Helping Women Award from the Dallas Women’s Foundation.
Before donning her judicial robes, Parker was an attorney in private practice promoted to partner at two prestigious Dallas law firms, and recognized numerous times by her peers.
In February of 2012, Judge Parker garnered headlines when she announced she would not perform any marriages until same-sex couples had the legal right to marry and she could perform all marriages. A little more than three years later, on June 26, 2015, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, Parker officiated at Dallas County’s first legal same-sex marriage.
Cmdr. Emily Schilling
Cmdr. Schilling, a transgender woman who is lead plaintiff in Lambda Legal’s lawsuit challenging Donald Trump’s executive order banning trans people from military service, served more than 19 years in the U.S. Navy as a combat aviator and test pilot. She flew 60 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning three air medals for her service, and led critical aerospace engineering programs for the Navy, “helping shape the future of U.S. Naval aviation,” according to a Lambda Legal press release.
Despite her years of distinguished service, Schilling was separated from the military in May this year due to Trump’s executive order. This month would have marked Schilling’s 20th year of service, making her eligible to retire. But she left the service in May rather than risk being forced out before her retirement date and losing everything she had worked for.
Schilling told ABC News in June that she “volunteered” to separate from the military in May because if she had not, “I could theoretically be kicked out … and lose everything. So it was very much a decision made under duress. …
“I was coerced into it because we knew that the voluntary separation would give me an honorable discharge with some portion of my retirement, and I’d be able to keep all of my benefits.”
Landmark Dinner details
Lambda Legal’s 2025 Landmark Dinner will be held from 6-11 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, at Union Station in Dallas. Event hosts are Callie Butcher and Ashton Barrineau Butcher, Steve and Lisa Rudner, Chuck Thompson II and Alex Qi and Stephanie Quintero and Camryn deCurno.
Individual tickets are $300, and sponsorships start at $1,000, available online at Give.LambdaLegal.org.