Sheila Kuehl

In her first three years on the Board, she has undertaken or collaborated in a number of initiatives and motions. A partial list of her work includes raising the minimum wage, creating a Citizens' Oversight Commission for the Sheriff's Department, providing funding and services for LA County's homeless population and those trying to find and keep affordable housing. She terms out in 2022.

On September 14, 2022, deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department served Kuehl with a search warrant. The warrant is related to an investigation into Kuehl's involvement with an alleged "pay to play" scheme; a former County official claimed that Kuehl and others improperly awarded a series of contracts for sexual harassment training programs.

On November 24, 2020, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to uphold the county ban on outdoor dining, with Kuehl voting in favor of the ban and referring to the ongoing situation as a "serious health emergency." On November 30, 2020, the media received reports that within hours after voting in favor of the outdoor dining ban, Kuehl was spotted dining outdoors at an Italian restaurant, Il Forno Trattoria, in Santa Monica.

On November 4, 2014, Supervisor Kuehl was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. She assumed office on December 1, 2014, thus becoming the first openly LGBTQ person to ever serve on the Board. As the representative of Los Angeles County's 3rd Supervisorial District, she serves nearly two million residents, and is responsible for managing 431 square miles of land stretching from the Pacific ocean to Los Feliz, and from Venice up to San Fernando. In 2018, she served as chair of the Board of Supervisors.

On January 28, 2008, The New York Times reported that Kuehl planned to vote against a health care plan sponsored by Governor Schwarzenegger and supported by a majority of Democrats in the Assembly, while opposed by a majority of Republicans. Her opposition along with the opposition of Senator Leland Yee led the Times to predict that California's widely touted healthcare bill – widely but inaccurately called "universal" coverage – would be effectively killed. However, by the time the bill came to the Senate Health Committee, chaired by Kuehl, all but one of the Democratic Senators on the committee had grave doubts about the bill and, after an eleven-hour hearing on the bill and an intervening week to caucus, on January 28, 2008, one Democrat voted yes, three abstained and three (including Kuehl), along with all Republicans, voted in opposition.

In 2006, Kuehl sponsored a bill to prohibit the adoption by any school district in California of any instructional material that discriminates against persons based on their gender or sexual orientation.

Throughout her career as a legislator, Kuehl took a leadership role on health care policy. Her foremost objective was securing passage of legislation to establish a single-payer health care system in California. SB 840 passed both houses of the legislature in 2006, but was vetoed by Schwarzenegger; it was reintroduced in 2007. SB 840 passed both houses of the California legislature in August 2008 and was, again, vetoed by Schwarzenegger.

In 2002 Kuehl co-authored the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act that defined marriage as a civil contract between two persons. The bill went on to pass the state legislature – the first time a state legislative body in the USA voted to approve same-sex marriage rather than respond to a court order to do so. The bill was vetoed on September 7, 2005, by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. who held that the matter should be decided by the courts or by popular referendum.

In 2004, Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, held that denying homosexuals the right to marry was a violation of the due process clause in the California Constitution and allowed them to go forward (until a later Court order was made). After the mayor's announcement Kuehl presided over a number of same-sex marriages on the steps of San Francisco's City Hall rotunda. Among those whose wedding she officiated was Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg (who authored AB 205, a sweeping domestic partner benefits law) and her partner for twenty-eight years Sharon Stricker (a poet and activist). The couple's newly married son and daughter-in-law were in attendance. Kuehl also officiated over the weddings of Torie Osborn and her partner, Lydia Vaias; Jehan Agrama and Dwora Fried; Patti Giggans and Ellen Ledley; Barrie Levy and Linda Garnets; and Avi Rose and Ron Strochlic. Assemblymember Mark Leno (who had recently introduced a bill to change the family code to allow marriage equality) also attended the ceremonies giving a blessing in English and Hebrew to the couples.

Also in 2004, Kuehl authored Senate Bill 1234, an omnibus act intended to protect Californians from hate crimes, which the bill defined as criminal acts committed in whole or in part because of the victims' actual or perceived disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or association with persons with any of those characteristics. The bill targeted crimes, not First Amendment-protected speech. It also protected undocumented immigrants from deportation due to reporting hate crimes, increased civil protections from discrimination, and provided for law enforcement training concerning crimes against homeless persons and law enforcement response to homelessness, bill was later enacted into law.

Los Angeles County limits its Supervisors to three consecutive four-year terms in accord with a 2002 measure. When running for the office she was asked if she missed acting and responded that the camaraderie in public service mirrored her favourite aspect of acting, and then stated "I suppose if I get to be a supervisor and then I'm termed out, I'll be, you know, fairly elderly but still able to do things, and then I guess my ambition would be to be Betty White for a couple of years."

After three terms in the Assembly, she was elected to the California State Senate in 2000, beating Assemblyman Wally Knox in the Democratic primary and becoming the first openly gay person elected to the Senate. Re-elected in 2004 with 65.7% of the vote, she was repeatedly voted the "smartest" member of the California Legislature.

While in the Assembly Kuehl served as Speaker pro tempore during the 1997–98 legislative session, becoming the first woman in California history to hold the position. Kuehl served three full terms (six years) in the California Assembly which was the maximum allowed under term limits that had been adopted in 1990.

Kuehl was elected to the California State Assembly in 1994, becoming the first openly gay person elected to the California legislature. While running for office Kuehl found she was able to offset some negative stereotypes people had about lesbians thanks to their familiarity with her role as Zelda. She told an interviewer "When people know gay people personally, they tend to feel differently about the whole community. And all of a sudden, here's a person that they knew very well that they found out was lesbian."

When Kuehl was elected as a Democrat to the California Assembly in 1994 a Republican majority was seated for the first time in 20 years. This was due largely as an out-flowing of the enthusiasm stoked up by Newt Gingrich's strategy supporting Republicans for Congressional and U.S. Senate seats. Kuehl recalled "The Republican majority was quite a different kind of Republican, not a moderate, not a Rockefeller Republican. They were primarily Bible-thumpers and very right-wing. So it was not the most welcoming Republican group, though they loved Zelda Gilroy, and it was very difficult for them because they already liked me so much…. And to their surprise, we all got along very well. ...The Republicans were pretty horrible about LGBT stuff. They all virtually said stuff like, 'Well, they're all spawn of the devil, oh, but not you, Sheila….'"

Kuehl served in the California Senate for two terms (eight years) the maximum allowed under term limits adopted in 1990.

In 1989, along with Abby Leibman and Jenifer McKenna, Kuehl formed the California Women's Law Center to promote gender issues, including expanding the rights of divorced women and reforming hiring procedures in male-dominated professions, such as law enforcement.

During her 1986 inauguration as president of the Women Lawyers' Association of Los Angeles, Kuehl introduced Torie Osborn as her partner in the same manner that previous presidents had introduced their husbands. The incident became the lead story of California's daily law journal. (The pair would later separate in 1991, but remained close friends).

In the 1980s Kuehl became an adjunct law professor at the University of Southern California, and later an associate professor at Loyola Law School where she taught courses on family law, sex discrimination, and education.

In 1975, at age 34, after being denied admission into UCLA, Kuehl was accepted at Harvard Law School. In her third year she was elected class marshal and president of the student council. She received her J.D. in 1978. During her final year, she chaired the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the first group of women to be admitted to the law school, and became the second woman to win Harvard's prestigious Ames Moot Court Competition, judged by a panel including Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Kuehl recalled that the Justice "strode over to me, clasped my hand in his two huge hands and said, 'Lady, I like your style.'" Kuehl was recognized in the ABA's Law Student Division magazine as one of the nation's top five law students.

Despite Kathy moving to L.A. and their being able to see each other daily, the social sacrifices Kuehl was contemplating put a strain on their relationship. Kuehl later recalled "By then the whole idea of being queer was so overwhelming and scary. Not the sexuality, but the loss of everything. To be that way for good meant no family, no children, no career, nor normalcy, no parents. It seemed at that point that I should really get out of it. I told [Kathy] I didn't want to see her any longer." Kuehl had seen a man casually on and off during her relationship with Kathy and began working to make it more serious. They kissed but they did not have sex and they almost got engaged. Kuehl couldn't get Kathy off her mind and broke up with the man to resume the relationship with her. Kuehl's closeted relationship with Kathy continued until the beginning of the 1970s, and had lasted 12 years before they broke up.

Kuehl's only acting roles beyond 1970 were in two Dobie Gillis reunion projects: a 1977 sitcom pilot produced by James Komack, Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis?, and a 1988 television movie sequel, Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis. In both productions, Dobie had married Zelda and the two were running the Gillis family grocery store and raising a teenage son named Georgie Gillis.

After leaving the acting profession in the early 1970s, Kuehl became an adviser to students in campus activist groups at her alma mater, UCLA, and eventually became an associate dean of students. When Kuehl was passed over for a promotion that was given to a man, Kuehl felt that her treatment had been unfair and became interested in a legal career to address the position of women in the workplace.

After Dobie Gillis ended its run, Kuehl (as "Sheila James") co-starred with Kathleen Nolan, formerly of The Real McCoys, in the short-lived ABC television series Broadside, a female version of McHale's Navy, in its 1964–65 season.

Kuehl was able to make television guest appearances on National Velvet, McHale's Navy, The Donna Reed Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Marcus Welby, M.D. and The Ed Sullivan Show from 1963 to 1970. By the end of the decade, acting roles had dried up for her. Though Kuehl "can't state with certainty that she was blacklisted" from further acting jobs over her sexuality, she claims that afterwards, "with few exceptions, the phone stopped ringing." A pilot for a Dobie Gillis spin-off, in which the character Zelda was the lead, was produced, but the president of CBS, Jim Aubrey, thought Kuehl was "too butch" to be a star for their network. Subsequently, the pilot was not promoted and did not sell, but Kuehl was not told about this immediately. Rather, she was informed by the director, Rod Amateau, when she arrived to shoot the following episodes. She was devastated by the news.

Signing a contract with Dobie producer 20th Century Fox Television required Kuehl, then 18 and in college studying theater, to change her major to English, so that Shulman, also a successful author, could act as her proctor on set to allow her to continue her studies. Kuehl earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1962, during the show's final season.

Having signed a contract in 1960 to do 21 shows for the next season of Dobie, that same year Kuehl was elected an officer in both the university student government and in her sorority. Despite this success, things became difficult that summer when love-letters to Kathy that she had accidentally left at the sorority house were found by the cleaning staff and turned over to the alumnae council of the sorority. When she returned from summer vacation the council (while speaking in coded language and carefully avoiding the word "lesbian") confronted Kuehl with the letters demanding an explanation. Kuehl later recalled that at first she tried to deny it and failing that "I then just clammed up and took my sorority pin off and put it on the table and left. I cried all the way home." She was officially expelled from the sorority and despite assurance that no one would be told why, she was aware that rumors were spreading. Some of the members of the sorority refused to speak to her afterwards and avoided her. Kuehl moved back in with her parents under the cover story that she was homesick, but was still a member of the sorority which they knew she loved being a part of. Whenever her parents knew of a sorority meeting taking place, to prevent discovery, Kuehl would go to a coffee shop during that time and return with a story about the events of the meeting that she had not attended.

Opportunities for acting work steadily diminished and Kuehl was forced to sell her Malibu house. She later recalled this period saying "I couldn't even get a commercial." Due to worries about her career and being closeted she fell into a serious depression and developed a drinking problem. She was able to move forward after seeking help. She then moved in with her then-girlfriend, Kathy, and began working at the UCLA student activities office helping students organize around the rising political movements of the 1960s.

During this time, Kuehl began acting the role she is probably best known for – her portrayal of teen-aged genius Zelda Gilroy, the wannabe girlfriend of the title character in the television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963. Zelda was originally intended to be a one-shot character in the early Dobie Gillis episode "Love is a Science," but Dobie creator Max Shulman liked Kuehl and had her signed on as a semi-regular cast member.

Kuehl later recalled how she landed the part. "Well, when you're an actor with an agent, no matter how old you are, you go on interviews. I went on lots of interviews for lots of guest shots…and I had done two [episodes] on Love that Bob [The Bob Cummings Show] with Bob Cummings and Dwayne Hickman, who played his nephew, and the director Rod Amateau, so I had met all the people who eventually were going to be much of the team for Dobie Gillis. In 1959, I was at UCLA, and I went on an interview for Dobie Gillis and I walked on the set and they all said 'Oh, hi, we know your work, you're fine. Just go across the street and meet Max Schulman [the writer director].' As it turned out, Max and I were the same height, and he was like buried behind the desk when I walked in. And he said, 'What's the first line?' And I said, 'I love you.' And he said, 'You're hired!'"

Due to her radio talent, Kuehl's agent convinced her parents to take her to auditions for a television role. Kuehl was signed to play Jackie, Stuart Erwin's tomboy daughter, in the television series The Stu Erwin Show (also known as Trouble with Father), which ran from 1950 to 1955. Kuehl later recalled "The same 200 kids I think were there for the interview [as had been for the radio audition] and I was called back and called back and called back and eventually I got that part. And beginning in 1950, I did that series for six years."

Sheila James Kuehl (born February 9, 1941) is an American politician and retired actress, and served as the member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 3rd District and as board chair and chair pro tem. Kuehl was California's first openly gay state legislator, having previously served in the California State Senate and the California State Assembly, where she was the Assembly's first female speaker pro tem.