Bruce Nickerson, gay rights legal champion, dies at 80
11.02.2022 - 12:29
/ qvoicenews.com
Attorney Bruce Nickerson sits in the hallway of the Torrance Courthouse and shares good news with his client, Charles Samuel Couch, July 21, 2017. The judge granted Nickerson’s request for a finding of factual innocence. Photo: Q Voice News photo.
Bruce Nickerson, a legal lion who spent decades defending gay men throughout California who had been discriminated against and falsely arrested by law enforcement in gay-sex sting operations, has died.
Nickerson died at a hospital Saturday in Redwood City after a brief illness, said Carlos Scott Lopez, Nickerson’s domestic partner.
Bruce Nickerson was 80.
Nickerson previously had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, but it’s unknown if that contributed to his death, said Lopez, who is awaiting cause of death information from the coroner.
A colleague found Nickerson unconscious in his San Carlos office on the afternoon of Feb. 4. He was rushed to a local hospital, where he regained consciousness, but passed away Saturday morning.
“Bruce was a civil rights lawyer, and a human rights lawyer,” Lopez tells Q Voice News. “LGBTQ rights are civil rights and human rights.”
“Bruce was devoted to LGBTQ rights,” Lopez says. “He would not give up. He was working and fighting up until the very end. When I talked to him Friday, he said he would be in the office Saturday afternoon.
“Bruce was relentless and intensely passionate,” Lopez says. “It drove him until the very end. He had a passion for justice.”
Gay rights champion
Over the years, Bruce Nickerson helped numerous clients avoid a criminal record or a place on California’s list of registered sex offenders, along side rapists, child murderers, and sexual predators.
In many cases, defendants faced counts of not only lewd conduct,