Commissioner Tracy Nadzieja was sworn in as the first Transgender Judicial Officer in 2018
In 2018, Commissioner Tracy Nadzieja was appointed to the Maricopa County Superior Court bench becoming the only openly transgender judicial officer in Arizona and only the third in the US. Since her appointment, she has been assigned to the Court’s Criminal Department serving rotations in the DUI division and at Initial Appearance Court. Commissioner Nadzieja has collaborated with other departments of the Maricopa County judicial branch concerning issues relating to serving the transgender community. She has served as the Court’s liaison to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s LGBTQ Advisory Board. Before her judicial appointment, Commissioner Nadzieja had a broad-based civil litigation practice for nearly 25 years and was most recently a partner at the Phoenix law firm of Peshkin & Kotalik where her practice focused on complex insurance coverage and bad faith litigation.
Outside of her judicial duties, Commissioner Nadzieja is an initiated member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, one of the first and largest women’s collegiate fraternities and was recently elected to serve as a District Director overseeing the fraternity’s chapters and alumnae groups in the Pacific Northwest. She also serves on the Board of Directors of one-n-ten, a non-profit organization providing services and programs to Arizona’s LGBTQ youth and young adults. Commissioner Nadzieja also was involved in efforts to pass Illinois H.B. 1785 that on January 1, 2018 expanded the right of current and former transgender residents to correct the gender marker on their Illinois birth certificates and she became one of the first beneficiaries of that law when she received her birth certificate two days later.
Since being appointed to the bench, she has had the opportunity to speak to diverse audiences about challenges encountered by the transgender community, transgender lawyers, gender biases in the workplace, diversity and inclusion in college fraternal organizations and her personal experiences as a transgender judicial officer.