Feinman, Paul

Paul Feinman (1960-2021, age 61). An American attorney who served as first openly gay judge of the New York Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, from June 2017 to March 2021.

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Feinman was born to a Jewish family in Merrick, New York and attended John F. Kennedy High School. He earned an undergraduate degree in French literature from Columbia University in 1981. He attended the University of Minnesota Law School on a full scholarship.

Feinman began his legal career as a public defender with the Legal Aid Society, working in Nassau County and then in New York City; at the time, the courts had a crowded criminal docket due to the crack epidemic.

Feinman became involved in the L.G.B.T. Bar Association and in Democratic politics in the Manhattan neighborhoods of Chelsea and the West Village.

In 2007, Feinman was elected to the Supreme Court; in 2012, Governor Andrew Cuomo elevated him to the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department.^[5] Feinman was a member of the Supreme Court Justices Association of the State of New York, serving first as its first vice president^[1] and then as its president.^[7] Feinman also served as treasurer of the Citywide Association of Supreme Court Justices in New York,^[1] and was president of the International Association of LGBT Judges from 2008 to 2011.^[7]

Feinman married web publisher Jay Robert Ostergaard in 2013.^] The couple lived on Roosevelt Island.

Feinman was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2015. He abruptly retired from the Court of Appeals on March 23, 2021, due to health concerns. On March 31, 2021, he died from leukemia at a hospital in Manhattan at the age of 61.