Sylvia Pressler

Sylvia Pressler (April 10, 1934 – February 15, 2010) was an American judge who served in a number of positions within the New Jersey judicial system. She is best known for deciding a landmark 1973 case which allowed girls to compete in Little League baseball for five years. Prior to this she was the Presiding Judge for 15 years. She officially retired from the bench in 2004. A graduate of Rutgers School of Law–Newark at a time when the legal profession was still dominated by men, Judge Pressler was the second woman to sit on the appellate division in New Jersey, and was one of the first women to clerk for an appellate division judge.

Biography

Pressler was born as Sylvia Diane Brodsky in New York City, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Belarus and Poland. Her father died when she was a young girl. Growing up in the Bronx, she attended Hunter College High School. She attended Queens College and later Boston University for her undergraduate studies, earning her degree in 1955, and earned her law degree from Rutgers School of Law–Newark. She met her husband, with whom she would later have two children, when they were both working in a restaurant in 1953. At the time that she earned her degree, the law profession in the United States was male-dominated. Pressler became one of the first women in the state to clerk for an appellate judge. For a time, she worked in private practice and as city attorney for Englewood, New Jersey. In 1973, she was appointed to the bench in Bergen County