She was the lead attorney in Romer v. Evans, the case that overturned Colorado Amendment 2 at the US Supreme Court, resulting in a landmark ruling for LGBT rights in the United States.
As a senior in high school, she won the national Betty Crocker Search for the All-American Homemaker of Tomorrow scholarship, and met Mamie Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.
In 1992, Colorado citizens voted for Amendment 2, a ballot initiative which banned state and local laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The majority opinion found that it violated the Equal Protection Clause since it "classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else".
The decision was seen as a landmark, setting the stage for other rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, overturning state bans on same-sex marriage.