2021 Insider Out 100: LGBT Power List

Sills Cummis’ Thomas Prol was named to the Insider NJ 2021 Insider OUT 100: LGBT Power List. This annual list covers the “politically influential LGBTQs in NJ politics” according to the article.

Insider NJ had this to say about Prol, who came in at the #7 spot:
“Thomas “Tom” Prol is one of the most brilliant legal minds and policy advocates in New Jersey. He’s also a long-serving executive board member at Garden State Equality, providing stability and continuity to NJ’s largest LGBTQ organization since its inception. Garden State Equality has passed more than 222 laws (and counting) to benefit LGBTQ people and Tom Prol’s fingerprints have been on every single one of them.

Mr. Prol shines brightly without being showy. He’s quietly and deftly deployed behind-the-scenes strategy for LGBTQ equality for the better part of two decades, most recently working with the Attorney General to vacate historical laws targeting our community. Mr. Prol’s legal sleuthing led to unprecedented action by former Attorney General Gurbir Grewal who, with Pride month winding down, apologized for the systemic harassment of gay bars by the AG office’s Alcohol Beverage Control division from 1933 until 1967.

During those years, the systemic harassment of gay bars was quite literally NJ’s official policy, codified in stature.

Until this past June, 126 anti-gay enforcement actions remained on the books suspending and/or revoking the liquor license for bars who served LGBTQ people. Thanks to Tom Prol, those 126 cases have been vacated, a symbolic gesture to complement the more substantive moves by NJ’s Office of Attorney General to amend their historical mistreatment of LGBTQ people.

‘This unprecedented action by Attorney General Grewal represents a profound and meaningful acknowledgment of the unfair discriminatory treatment visited upon the LGBTQ community in the past by state law enforcement officials,’ Mr. Prol said at the time. ‘The very people who were supposed to protect my community were actually the ones who led the charge in persecuting us – often viciously so – and they lost their jobs, homes, friends and families by those devastating actions. Attorney General Grewal and his senior staff should be commended for taking this deep dive to explore these terrible law enforcement practices, expose the truth, and reconcile with members of the LGBTQ community.’

As the past (and first openly gay) president of the New Jersey State Bar Association, Tom Prol remains a committed environmentalist who, in his spare time, is often mentoring and encouraging the next generation of LGBTQ lawyers to aim high.”