Mariah Lopez

Mariah Lopez (born 1985) is an American activist based in New York City. She has been a plaintiff in multiple lawsuits related to civil and human rights, and has lobbied for legislation and greater policy protections for LGBTQ people. Lopez is the executive director for STARR (Strategic Trans Alliance for Radical Reform), a transgender rights advocacy group.

Early life and education Lopez was born and raised in the Amsterdam Houses on the Upper West Side of New York City. At age 9, she was placed in foster care after her mother and grandmother died. In 2012, she lobbied for a reexamination of the 1992 death of Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender rights activist. The case was first considered a suicide, then in 2002 changed to "undetermined", and in 2012 the New York Police Department re-opened the case as a possible homicide. In 2013, Lopez protested the misgendering of Islan Nettles during a vigil in honor of Nettles following her death after a violent assault.

In 2014, Lopez started the Strategic Transgender Alliance for Radical Reform (STARR) as a renamed version of the transgender rights group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), which had been founded by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. In 2014, she expressed her support as a STARR activist after the New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) paid for gender affirmation surgery for a 21-year-old former foster care child pursuant to the ACS policy to cover the costs that began in 2010.

Lopez has also advocated specialized housing units for gay and transgender inmates in jails and prisons, including after the closure of the units at Rikers Island in December 2005. In 2014, she announced the opening of a specialized housing unit at Rikers after advocating for its creation.

Between 2017 and 2018, Lopez filed multiple lawsuits related to her experience with Marsha's House, which was the only shelter for LGBTQ adults in New York City at the time. By 2019, some of the cases resulted in two confidential settlements for Lopez, after a case was certified as a class action lawsuit and the Center for Constitutional Rights joined in 2019 to represent the plaintiffs. seeking an assessment of the historic significance of the area.