Norma Zarky

Norma Goldstein Zarky (April 29, 1917 – October 24, 1977) was a prominent lawyer in Los Angeles, active in the fight for abortion rights and other civil rights.

Zarky was born in Brooklyn, New York to Maxwell Goldstein and Fannie Senfeld Goldstein. She attended James Madison High School (where the editors of her graduating high school yearbook wrote a poem joking about her aspiration of becoming a lawyer). She attended Barnard College for one year. She then transferred to the University of Wisconsin, where she received her law degree in 1939 through a combined six-year arts and law program. She graduated with membership in Phi Beta Kappa and Order of the Coif. She married Hilbert Philip Zarky on July 29, 1939.

Zarky and her husband moved to Washington, D.C. She worked as a lawyer in the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor, dealing with violations of the Child Labor laws. She also served as a lawyer for the Railroad Retirement Board, and during World War II she was employed by the Office of Price Administration, enforcing price regulations in the clothing industry. She worked for a number of lawyers, including Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., a prominent civil rights lawyer, and for Arthur Goldberg. She co-authored a number of briefs with Rauh on civil rights cases during the 1950s.

In 1954, during the McCarthy Era, the Department of Justice sought to fire Hilbert Zarky from his position with the Department, based primarily on Norma’s very brief involvement with Communism when she was an undergraduate in the mid-1930s, along with such “crimes” as their belonging to a liberal book club and being at meetings attended by “suspect” individuals. After she and her husband filed numerous declarations from friends and prominent individuals regarding their loyalty to the United States, he was reinstated to his position.

After Zarky and her family moved to Los Angeles, she worked briefly for attorney Leonard Horwin (later a mayor of Beverly Hills) and then in 1961 joined the law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, where her husband worked, becoming the firm’s first woman partner in 1968. At Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, she practiced primarily in the field of entertainment law.

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