2026 New York City Event

Joshua Rovenger joined GLAD Law as Legal Director in April 2025. He brings a wealth of experience in civil rights, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ equity, most recently serving as Associate Counsel to the President in the White House, Racial Justice & Equity. Within the Biden administration, he advised on policies and litigation related to LGBTQ+ equity, democracy and civic engagement, religious freedom, access to justice, veterans’ affairs, and housing. Josh has extensive legal expertise across various sectors, having previously worked as a Supervising Attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, where he led economic justice litigation and systems change advocacy.

Before joining Legal Aid and then the White House, Josh served as Senior Attorney at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard, where he led cases against the US Department of Education, leading to the discharge of over $6 billion in student debt. He has also held senior and associate roles at prominent law firms, including Baker Hostetler, Covington & Burling, and Ropes & Gray.

Josh’s career is defined by a commitment to racial and economic justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and systems change. He brings leadership skills and deep legal knowledge to GLAD Law’s advocacy efforts, and a profound commitment to developing strategies to fight harmful policies and create a more inclusive and effective legal team.

Patience “Polly” Crozier (she/her/hers) joined GLAD Law in October 2016. Polly came to GLAD Law from private practice where her work focused on LGBTQ+ probate and family law, including adoption, divorce, dissolution, guardianship, paternity, parentage, name changes, gender marker changes, and assisted reproduction issues. Polly has engaged in cutting-edge trial court and appellate litigation involving assisted reproduction and parentage including Hunter v. Rose (2012), Adoption of a Minor (2015), Partanen v. Gallagher(2016), Adoption of Daphne (2020), and J.M. v. C.G. (2023). Polly’s work focuses on youth and family issues, including parentage protections, adoption, access to fertility healthcare, transgender family law, juvenile justice, and child welfare, and work at the intersection of LGBTQ justice and reproductive justice. 

Most recently, Polly successfully worked to help pass laws that update family law in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont that ensure LGBTQ+ families have equal access to the legal recognition of their relationship to their children, as well as health care provider shield laws in Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Polly is a graduate of Yale University and Boston College Law School, and she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Irma S. Raker of the Maryland Court of Appeals and to the Justices of the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court.

Benjamin P. Marcus (he/him/his) is a Senior Constitutional Law Fellow with GLAD Law. He rejoins GLAD Law after clerking for the Honorable Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He previously served as a GLAD Law Constitutional Law Fellow in 2023-2024, and he was a Legal Intern in summer 2021. As a Senior Fellow, Ben will help GLAD Law strengthen legal strategies to defend the constitutional rights of the LGBTQ+ community from ongoing attacks, including attempts to undermine or overturn marriage equality and other legal rights and protections.

Ben also has deep interest in the relationship between religion and law. His past research projects have examined the intersections of religious literacy, religious liberty, constitutional interpretation, and education in the United States, expressed in multiple book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles, and national columns. From 2017-2020, he served as the religious literacy specialist for the Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum, where he developed religious literacy programs for public schools, universities, businesses, and government organizations. In 2018, he traveled to Albania as a Fulbright Specialist to advise Ministry of Education officials on developing national policies related to religion and education. 

Ben earned a J.D. at Yale Law School, where he served as a Coker Fellow in Constitutional Law, a notes editor on the Yale Law Journal, and the co-president of OutLaws. He also attended Harvard Divinity School as a Presidential Scholar, where he earned an M.T.S. with a concentration in religion, ethics, and politics. As an undergraduate, he studied religion at the University of Cambridge and Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude.