Sylvia Pressler (April 10, 1934 – February 15, 2010) was an American judge who served in a number of positions within the

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

judicial system. She is best known for deciding a landmark 1973 case which allowed girls to compete in

Little League baseball Little League Baseball and Softball (officially, Little League Baseball Inc) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization New Jersey Superior Court The Superior Court is the state court in the U.S. state of New Jersey, with statewide trial and appellate jurisdiction. The New Jersey Constitution of 1947 establishes the power of the New Jersey courts.Jeffrey S. Mandel, New Jersey Appellate Pra ...

for five years. Prior to this she was the Presiding Judge for 15 years. She officially retired from the bench in 2004. A graduate of

Rutgers School of Law–Newark Rutgers Law School is the law school of Rutgers University, with classrooms in Newark and Camden, New Jersey. It is the largest public law school and the 10th largest law school, overall, in the United States. Each class in the three-year J.D. pr ...

at a time when the legal profession was still dominated by men, Judge Pressler was the second woman to sit on the appellate division in

, and was one of the first women to clerk for an appellate division judge.

Biography

Pressler was born as Sylvia Diane Brodsky in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, the daughter of

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

immigrants from

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...

and

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. Her father died when she was a young girl. Growing up in the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

, she attended

Hunter College High School Hunter College High School is a secondary school located in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is administered by Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Hunter is publicly funded, and there i ...

. She attended

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...

and later

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

for her undergraduate studies, earning her degree in 1955, and earned her law degree from

. She met her husband, with whom she would later have two children, when they were both working in a restaurant in 1953. At the time that she earned her degree, the law profession in the United States was male-dominated. Pressler became one of the first women in the state to clerk for an appellate judge. For a time, she worked in private practice and as city attorney for

Englewood, New Jersey Englewood is a city in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, which at the 2020 United States census had a population of 29,308. Englewood was incorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from por ...

. In 1973, she was appointed to the bench in

Bergen County Bergen County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The following year, she was appointed to the appellate division of the Superior Court, one of the first women to serve in that role. In 1973, when serving as a Hearing Examiner for the New Jersey Department of Civil Rights, Pressler ruled on the landmark case that opened

Little League baseball Little League Baseball and Softball (officially, Little League Baseball Inc) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization The case had its origins in the previous year, when a twelve-year-old girl in

Hoboken, New Jersey Hoboken ( ; Unami: ') is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 60,417. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 58,690 i ...

was forced to quit a Little League baseball after only three games when national Little League authorities threatened to revoke the charter of the local league. A case was filed on behalf of the girl by the

National Organization for Women The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It ...

. Pressler was assigned the case. She ruled in a strongly worded decision that the girl should have been allowed to play, writing:

The institution of Little League is as American as the hot dog and apple pie. There is no reason why that part of Americana should be withheld from girls.

Her decision forced Little League to allow girls to play everywhere in New Jersey, and was met with protests from the national Little League organization, which called the ruling vindictive and prejudicial. The following year, the organization changed its charter nationally to allow girls to play on its teams anywhere in the United States, and created a softball division as well. According to her husband, David Pressler, she did not think that the Little League case was a difficult one to decide. In 1997, Pressler became the first woman to be appointed as Presiding Judge of the state's appellate division, and took on additional administrative responsibilities. Over the course of her career, she issued hundreds of decisions, though few as widely covered in the media as the Little League case. In 1993, she decided a second prominent case, ''In re. Adoption of Two Children by H.N.R.'' (666 A.2d 535, N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 1995), giving gay couples the right to adopt the children of their partners, writing that, "They function together as a family." In 2004, her decision imposing a moratorium on the death penalty in New Jersey until the state's procedures could guarantee the rights of the defendant was followed three years later by legislative action banning the death penalty entirely. Her decisions were not without critics. In 1983, State Senator

Gerald Cardinale Gerald Cardinale (February 27, 1934 – February 20, 2021) was an American Republican Party politician, who served in the New Jersey State Senate from 1982 until his death in 2021, representing the 39th Legislative District. He also served one ...

attempted to block her reappointment to the Superior Court by invoking

senatorial courtesy Senatorial courtesy is a long-standing, unwritten, unofficial, and nonbinding constitutional convention in the United States describing the tendency of U.S. senators to support a Senate colleague when opposing the appointment to federal office of ...

. Senate President

Carmen A. Orechio Carmen Anthony Orechio (November 4, 1926 – February 26, 2018) was an American politician who served as President of the New Jersey Senate and as Commissioner and Mayor of Nutley, New Jersey. Early life and education Orechio was born in 1926 in ...

removed Cardinale's ability to block her nomination, citing the fact that he had previously appeared before Judge Pressler in a legal matter, and her nomination was approved. She retired from the bench in 2004. Pressler was awarded the medal of honor of the New Jersey State Bar Foundation in recognition of her service to that state's justice system. Judge Pressler died on February 15, 2010, following a battle with

lymphoma Lymphoma is a group of blood and lymph tumors that develop from lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell). In current usage the name usually refers to just the cancerous versions rather than all such tumours. Signs and symptoms may include enlar ...

at her home in

Sparta Township, New Jersey Sparta is a township in Sussex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 19,600, reflecting a decrease of 122 (−0.6%) from the 2010 United States Census, when the township's population was 19, ...

, at the age of 75. She was survived by her husband, David Pressler and their two children and three grandchildren. Until her death, Pressler was the commentator and annotator of the Gann Law Books edition of the Rules Governing the Courts of the State of New Jersey, which are the most commonly used edition of the Court Rules in New Jersey; the duties have since been taken over by former Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice

Peter Verniero Peter G. Verniero (born April 30, 1959 in Montclair, New Jersey) is an American lawyer and jurist from New Jersey. He previously served as a justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and as New Jersey Attorney General; he is presently in private p ...

, but Pressler is still credited on new editions.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pressler, Sylvia 1934 births 2010 deaths Boston University alumni Deaths from cancer in New Jersey Deaths from lymphoma New Jersey state court judges People from the Bronx People from Englewood, New Jersey People from Sparta, New Jersey Rutgers School of Law–Newark alumni Rutgers University alumni American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent 20th-century American judges 20th-century American women judges 21st-century American women