Jason Landau Goodman

Jason Landau Goodman is a lifelong activist, environmental attorney, and civil rights advocate.

A fourth generation Lower Merion resident, Jason has spent 15 years advancing civil rights for LGBTQ Pennsylvanians through local and state government. As an environmental lawyer, Jason has been on the ground as an attorney for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Jason’s experience in government and the community demonstrate his commitment to public service.

Jason’s family has deep roots across Lower Merion and Narberth. All of Jason’s grandparents were Lower Merion residents from Wynnewood to Belmont Hills to Bryn Mawr. The Landau family textile business, H. Landau and Company, relocated to the old Bala Cynwyd Post Office and HLC recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. Jason’s great-grandparents from the Landau and Rudofker families were significantly involved in the building of Har Zion Temple, where Jason’s family are members. Jason’s mother was born in the College Park section of Bala Cynwyd, and Jason’s father was born and raised in Belmont Hills and is a graduate of Harriton High School. Both of Jason’s parents enjoyed long careers as owners of small local businesses in Narberth and Bala Cynwyd.

Jason was born in Wynnewood and later moved to Bala Cynwyd and attended Cynwyd Elementary School and Bala Cynwyd Middle School. Jason then transferred to Friends’ Central School for high school and was extremely active in student life, including running the school’s greenhouse where Jason fell in love with plant science.

Jason earned an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies and Urban Studies, and a master’s degree in Urban Spatial Analytics, both from the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, Jason was significantly involved in leading organizations at Hillel and the LGBT Center. Jason then continued on to earn a law degree at the University of Pittsburgh, where he completed a concentration in Energy and Environmental Law. At law school, Jason was part of the Environmental Law Clinic and was on the Pittsburgh Journal of Environmental & Public Health Law.

Statewide Champion for LGBTQ civil rights

Jason is a proud member of the LGBTQ community and uses he/they pronouns.

While a recent high school graduate, Jason learned that LGBTQ people like them could experience discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations without any explicit recourse under Pennsylvania law. While cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had passed local laws, it was essentially unheard of to have such a law in a suburban community. Jason dove right in to spearhead the local organizing and political strategy towards the enactment of Lower Merion’s nondiscrimination ordinance. Jason spent two years building community support from civic organizations, township leaders, and political activists. In December 2010, Lower Merion Township became the first municipality in Montgomery County and first Township in Pennsylvania to adopt an LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance.

With the news being featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer, advocates in surrounding communities contacted Jason to help them do the same in their towns, and so he worked directly with them in communities from Haverford to Abington and beyond to get dozens of ordinances adopted across the commonwealth since.

At the same time, while a student leader at Penn, Jason noticed how young LGBTQ people didn’t have a seat at the table when it came to public policy in Pennsylvania. Jason began traveling the commonwealth as a junior in college to meet with other student leaders from all corners of the state to build a network of key young advocates.

In 2011, Jason co-founded the Pennsylvania Youth Congress (PYC) as PA’s first and only statewide LGBTQ youth organization. With approximately 50 student organization affiliates throughout the commonwealth, Jason helmed the organization for over a decade as its founding Executive Director. In this time, Jason organized dozens of statewide conferences, coordinated numerous statewide actions, testified before PA House and Senate committees, opened PYC’s headquarters across from the state Capitol in Harrisburg, conducted outreach at over 100 Pride festivals, and was a personal advocate for countless young people and families facing issues on safety and inclusion in their schools and communities. When Jason would get a call from a young person or their parents, often from a small town in Pennsylvania, Jason would typically be there later that day to meet with them and help them navigate through the issues they were facing. By 2016, Jason had traveled to all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. Now in 2024, Jason has been directly involved in the passage of dozens of local laws and school board policies throughout the state, including in rural and small town communities like Huntingdon, Gettysburg, and Shippensburg. Jason builds bridges across party lines in order to deliver results.

Longtime Policy Advocate in Harrisburg

Jason has established a regular presence in Harrisburg advancing education and civil rights policy for 15 years. Jason has built close relationships with both Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate and has worked directly with administration officials. Jason has drafted important bills that have been introduced in the legislature and worked persistently towards their passage. Jason’s first major bill was the Pennsylvania Safe Schools (PASS) Act in 2012, which would provide for a large overhaul of how incidents of violence and bullying are handled in Pennsylvania’s public schools. He worked relentlessly on building legislative and public support for the bill — helping to secure over 50 Republicans and over 50 Democrats as cosponsors of the bill. Having over 100 cosponsors in a fully bipartisan bill is generally unheard of in Harrisburg. Jason has been directly involved in stopping harmful bills and helping move positive legislation, both in the House and Senate. When some may have given up, Jason rushed in. As a bridge builder, Jason has brought diverse lawmakers together towards shared goals. 

Community Involvement and Recognition

In 2018, Jason was appointed to serve as a member of the inaugural Pennsylvania Commission on LGBTQ Affairs, an advisory council he wrote the proposal for and spearheaded the creation of with Governor Tom Wolf’s administration. Jason has served on Governor Wolf’s internal LGBTQ Workgroup and various safety and inclusion committees for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. As a policy advisor, Jason was appointed to Governor Josh Shapiro’s transition team for the Education + Workforce Committee and has been recently selected by Montgomery County Commissioners Jamila Winder and Neil Makhija to serve on their Moving Montco Forward transition team in the Sustainability and Climate Change Committee.

Jason has received numerous local, statewide, and national distinctions for advocacy work. Those honors include being named an Emerging LGBT Leader by the Obama White House, Person of the Year by Philadelphia Gay News, and Citizen of the Year by the Neighborhood Club of Bala Cynwyd. Jason has been presented with the inaugural statewide Young Progressive Award from Keystone Progress and received a special annual honor at a spring dinner of the Democratic Committee of Lower Merion and Narberth in 2011. Jason has been named every year to City & State PA’s Pride Power 100 list. Jason has been invited to speak at the United Nations for the LGBT Core Group in 2017, was a United States Fellow to the Schusterman Family Foundation’s global meeting of LGBTQ Jews — 18:22 — in Austria in 2015, and was a selected marcher by the US Park Service for the 50th Anniversary Selma to Montgomery March in Alabama in 2015. 

Career as a Government Environmental Attorney

Jason persisted in community advocacy work while a full time college, graduate, and law student. Following passage of the Pennsylvania Bar, Jason was hired for his dream job of being a government environmental attorney. For nearly three years Jason counseled a variety of programs at the Department of Environmental Protection from its Southeast Regional Office in Norristown. Jason’s practice focused largely on Air Quality, Waterways & Wetlands, and Environmental Justice. Jason was directly involved in the work to rehaul the state’s Environmental Justice Policy and associated PennEnviroScreen tool. Jason also helped develop the agency’s forms and procedures with compliance on disability access and accommodations. Jason has litigated primarily before the Environmental Hearing Board, the state’s administrative court for environmental matters.

Jason at Home

At home, Jason is in a second term on the board of the Neighborhood Club of Bala Cynwyd, and a member of both the Pennsylvania Bar Association and Montgomery Bar Association.

Jason lives in the College Park section of Bala Cynwyd, less than a mile from where his parents still reside, with a litter of kittens he is fostering as rescues from the neighborhood. In Jason’s free time he enjoys studying Yiddish, vegetable gardening, and Pennsylvania roadtrips. Jason is an avid fan of Groundhog Day and travels to Punxsutawney each year.