Bruce William Nickerson is a civil rights and gay rights attorney in California. He is also a leading authority on lewd conduct law in the United States. He has operated a solo legal practice in San Carlos, California for most of the last 40 years and has recently commenced working more closely with Dr. C. Scott Lopez-Gelormino, a human and civil rights attorney, epidemiologist, and clinical psychologist with whom he has worked on numerous cases over the last decade. Nickerson is recognized as having "made a sort of mini-career out of defending these cases" on lewd conduct and police sting operations targeting gay men. Openly gay himself, he has argued in front of the California Supreme Court and U.S. Federal Circuit courts regarding civil rights issues affecting gay people. In the late 2000s, he was interviewed by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News regarding a series of cases which he had been arguing on behalf of several hundred defendants related to a sting operation targeting gay men in Fresno, California.
Nickerson has operated a solo legal practice since his joining the California Bar, though has often affiliated himself with attorneys addressing civil rights issues and lewd conduct cases. His focus on lewd conduct emerged after pursuing several cases addressing such conduct and freedom of speech issues at adult bookstores in the early 1980s in and around the Bay Area of California.
Critics
Given Nickerson's stance and successful track record on gay issues and civil rights, he has been the subject of many critics, including Bill O'Reilly on Fox news.
Articles
Nickerson successfully argued Baluyut v. Superior Court, 12 Cal.4th 826, which established discriminatory prosecution as a defense in police sting operations which target gay public conduct and ignore identical straight public conduct.
Additional interests
Nickerson is an avid world-traveler and photographer, having visited six continents and dozens of countries. He has particularly keen interests in hiking, bridges, and waterfalls. He completed the entire John Muir and Inca Trails in the mid-1990s, finished the Grand Canyon rim-to-river-to-rim hike in 2002, and rafted down the Grand Canyon in 2011. He also recently visited the Everest and Ama Doblin Base Camps in Nepal via helicopter, the Borobudur ruins, and the temple of Pagan . Additional travels include a trip to central Guyana ; to Nanga Parbat's Rupal Face in Pakistan and within 30km of the Annapurna Sanctuary in Nepal ; and to Manitoba for the annual Polar Bear Migration. His ability to complete additional trips largely depends on his continued recovery from a coronary bypass operation and a car accident in May, 2009, which affected his left lung. Nickerson is also an accomplished organist, a member of the American Guild of Organists, and enjoys giving classical music concerts in his home which contains a pipe organ. The most recent of these concerts took place in his home in mid-2012, complemented by a reunion of close family members—including his two ex-wives, ex-boyfriend, and ex-boyfriend's husband in April 2013. He is hoping to have another concert sometime in 2021 when his local church has completed a restoration of its organ.
