Nicole Amber Maines (born 1997) is an American actress, writer, and transgender rights activist.

As an actress, Maines played Nia Nal on The CW superhero series Supergirl (2018–2021) in the fourth through sixth seasons.

[8] Maines herself said she knew she was not a boy as young as three years old[9] and started explicitly telling her family who she was by the age of four.

[11] She initially wanted to be called Quinn from the same show, but she kept making spelling errors when writing the name, so she settled on Nicole.

[8][13] The case eventually made its way up to the state Supreme Court in Bangor,[14] and the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders of Boston represented Maines and her family.

[15][16][17] It was the first time in the nation that a court ruled it unlawful to force a transgender student to use the bathroom associated with the sex they were assigned at birth[13] and the first time Maine's Supreme Court interpreted amendments to the Maine Human Rights Act as prohibiting sexual orientation based discrimination.

[18] In June 2015, Maines appeared on the USA Network show Royal Pains as a transgender teen whose hormones might be endangering her health.

[21] She appeared as Nia Nal, a distant relative of Legion member Dream Girl, and played the first transgender superhero on television.

In 2019, Maines starred in Bit, a horror movie about queer female vampires, winning the top acting prize at the Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival.

[23] Maines penned the comic book debut of her character from Supergirl, Nia Nal/Dreamer, for DC Pride #1 in 2021.