Linda Nellene Coffee (born December 25, 1942) : profile of Coffee is an American lawyer living in

Dallas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County w ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. Coffee is best known, along with

Sarah Weddington Sarah Catherine Ragle Weddington (February 5, 1945 – December 26, 2021) was an American attorney, law professor, advocate for women's rights and reproductive health, and member of the Texas House of Representatives. She was best known for rep ...

, for arguing the precedent-setting

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. Federal tribunals in the United States, federal court cases, and over Stat ...

case ''

Roe v. Wade ''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an ...

''.

Early and personal life

Coffee was born into a

Southern Baptist The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination, and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. The wor ...

family. She met her partner in winter 1983 in response to a

personal ad A personal advertisement, sometimes called a contact ad, is a form of classified advertising in which a person seeks to find another person for friendship, romance, marriage, or sexual activity. In British English, it is commonly known as an adv ...

Education

Coffee earned a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in German from

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universitie ...

in 1965 followed by a

Bachelor of Laws Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Ch ...

degree from the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

in February 1968. In May 1968, she was licensed to practice law in Texas.

Career

Once she graduated from law school she worked for the Texas Legislative Council. The Texas Legislative Council does research for the Texas legislature. Coffee was also a clerk for Sarah Hughes, who was a federal judge in Texas. Coffee was a member of the Women's Equity Action League, an organization working toward equal employment opportunities for women. After ''Roe'', Coffee worked on bankruptcy cases.

''Roe v. Wade''

Linda Coffee and

argued in favor of

Norma McCorvey Norma Leah Nelson McCorvey (September 22, 1947 – February 18, 2017), also known by the pseudonym "Jane Roe", was the plaintiff in the landmark American legal case ''Roe v. Wade'' in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that individual s ...

, also known as Jane Roe, and her right to have an abortion in the case ''Roe v Wade''. Coffee came up with the name Jane Roe. Although Weddington is more well known for this case, Coffee was the one that came in contact with

. It was argued that a woman has a constitutional right to have an abortion because of the Fourteenth Amendment. The challenged Texas law only permitted abortion only if it was medically necessary to save the life of the woman. The Court's decision was ultimately handed down in January 1973, overturning Texas’ abortion law by a 7-2 majority and legalizing abortion within the first trimester of pregnancy. This was a landmark decision because it enabled women everywhere in America to have an abortion in their first trimester and struck down many federal and state laws regarding abortion. Reacting to the leaked draft opinion in '' Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization'', she lamented the prospect of ''Roe'' being overturned. She opined that the leak was unethical and that states will either try to allow abortion or restrict it, advising abortion rights litigators that "They should try to carry on the best they can." Following the decision to overturn ''Roe'', Coffee said the Supreme Court's decision to overturn it "flies in the face of American freedom" and "destroys dignity of all American women".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coffee, Linda 1942 births 20th-century American women lawyers 20th-century Baptists 20th-century LGBT people 21st-century American women lawyers 21st-century Baptists 21st-century LGBT people Activists from Texas American abortion-rights activists American women lawyers American women's rights activists LGBT lawyers LGBT people from Texas Living people People from Dallas Rice University alumni Texas lawyers University of Texas alumni Place of birth missing (living people)