Justin Fairfax

Justin Edward Fairfax was born on February 17, 1979, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of four children. When he was five years old the family moved to Northeast Washington, D.C. His campaign biography said he grew up there living with his mother and grandparents. His eldest brother, Roger A. Fairfax Jr., went on to become a legal scholar and dean of Howard University School of Law.

The family traced its roots to Simon Fairfax, an enslaved man freed in Fairfax County, Virginia, on June 5, 1798, by Thomas Fairfax, 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who manumitted the people he enslaved as part of his Swedenborgian beliefs. Fairfax's father later presented him with a copy of the manumission deed on the day he was sworn in as lieutenant governor.

Fairfax graduated from DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, where he was senior class president. He earned a bachelor's degree in public policy from Duke University in 2000. After two years on the staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, he attended Columbia Law School, graduating with a Juris Doctor in 2005. At Columbia he was a member of the Columbia Law Review. He later served on the board of visitors of Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy.

Fairfax worked as a briefing coordinator for Tipper Gore in the Nashville office of Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and as a staffer in the Washington office of Senator John Edwards. In summer 2004 he joined the Kerry presidential campaign as body man for Edwards, the vice presidential nominee.

After law school he clerked for Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, then practiced at WilmerHale in Washington. In 2010 he joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, spending two years as a federal prosecutor in Alexandria and serving as deputy coordinator of the Northern Virginia Human Trafficking Task Force.

In 2013 he sought the Democratic nomination for Virginia attorney general and lost to Mark Herring by about 4,500 votes out of roughly 141,600 cast. The Washington Post had endorsed him, praising his "agile and impressive command of the issues." He co-chaired Senator Mark Warner's 2014 reelection campaign, joined Venable in its Tysons office, and later became a partner at Morrison & Foerster in September 2018.

In 2017 Fairfax won the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor with about 49 percent of the vote against Susan Platt and Gene Rossi, after all three refused contributions from Dominion Energy. He defeated Republican state senator Jill Vogel in the general election with 52.7 percent and took office on January 13, 2018, serving alongside Governor Ralph Northam. He was the second African American elected statewide in Virginia, after Douglas Wilder, who endorsed him.

The office was part time, and he kept practicing law. In August 2018 he became the first chair of the newly launched Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association. In January 2019 he stepped off the Senate dais in protest as the chamber honored Robert E. Lee, saying he would be thinking of the 1798 deed that freed his ancestor. His term ended on January 15, 2022, and he was succeeded by Winsome Earle-Sears.

In February 2019, as Governor Northam faced calls to resign over a racist yearbook photo, which would have made Fairfax governor, Vanessa Tyson, an associate professor at Scripps College, publicly accused him of sexually assaulting her in a Boston hotel during the 2004 Democratic National Convention. On February 8, 2019, Meredith Watson accused him of raping her in 2000 when both were undergraduates at Duke. Fairfax denied both allegations, saying the encounter with Tyson was consensual and calling the claims part of a coordinated smear campaign.

The second allegation brought calls for his resignation from many Virginia Democrats, most of the state's Democratic members of Congress, former governor Terry McAuliffe and several 2020 presidential candidates. A delegate threatened articles of impeachment but did not file them. Fairfax was placed on leave and then resigned from Morrison & Foerster in July 2019, left the Duke Sanford board of visitors and the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, but remained in office.

He sued CBS for defamation over CBS This Morning interviews with the two women. Judge Anthony Trenga dismissed the suit on February 11, 2020, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed on June 23, 2021, finding he had not plausibly alleged actual malice. In a 2021 primary debate he drew criticism for comparing the scrutiny he faced to the cases of George Floyd and Emmett Till.

Fairfax entered the 2021 Democratic primary for governor of Virginia. He was endorsed by Nicholas Fairfax, 14th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, a descendant of the family that had freed his ancestor. After his debate remarks about George Floyd and Emmett Till, Governor Northam endorsed Terry McAuliffe. Fairfax finished fourth on June 8, 2021, with 17,471 votes, or 3.54 percent.

Fairfax was a Catholic. As a candidate he supported a $15 minimum wage, action on student debt, apprenticeships in skilled trades, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion, and said he supported single-payer health care. He backed renewable energy and opposed the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines. He supported abortion rights, same-sex marriage, criminal justice reform, restoration of voting rights to people who had completed their sentences, decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana, and gun control measures including universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. He spoke often about racial healing and the descendants of Confederate figures and enslaved people working together.

Fairfax met Cerina Wanzer at Duke University and they married on June 17, 2006. She was a dentist with a practice in Fairfax, Virginia. They had two children, a son and a daughter, and lived in the Annandale area of Fairfax County, Virginia.

Court documents reported after his death showed the couple separated in 2024, and Cerina Fairfax filed for divorce on July 18, 2025. In early 2026 he accused her of assault, but home security cameras showed no assault took place. She accused him in filings of alcohol abuse and of not paying his share of expenses. A judge ordered him to leave the home by the end of April 2026, and he lost custody of the children. He was due in court on April 21, 2026.

Shortly after midnight on April 16, 2026, Fairfax County police were called to the family home on Guinevere Drive near Annandale. Police Chief Kevin Davis said Fairfax shot his wife, Cerina Fairfax, 49, several times in the basement, then went to a bedroom upstairs and killed himself with the same firearm. Their two teenage children were home and were not physically injured; their son called 911. Police described the shootings as the culmination of a domestic dispute over a messy divorce.

Governor Abigail Spanberger, Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi, Attorney General Jay Jones and former governor Ralph Northam were among the Virginia leaders who expressed shock. Spanberger ordered flags at state offices flown at half staff on May 4, 2026, in memory of Cerina Fairfax and other victims of domestic violence. Funeral and burial details for Justin Fairfax were not made public.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (US). For domestic violence support, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

Fairfax's election in 2017 was historic: he was the second African American elected to statewide office in Virginia, and he framed his career around the arc from his ancestor's enslavement in Fairfax County to his own swearing in at the Capitol in Richmond. That story was overshadowed first by the 2019 allegations, which ended his rise in Democratic politics, and then by the killing of his wife in 2026. Friends and former colleagues told The Washington Post he had become consumed by efforts to clear his name. His death brought renewed attention in Virginia to domestic violence and firearms.

Fairfax gave a widely broadcast CBS interview in 2019 denying the allegations, and CBS This Morning aired interviews with both of his accusers in April 2019, which became the subject of his unsuccessful defamation suit. He was active on X under @FairfaxJustin and as lieutenant governor under @LGJustinFairfax, where he frequently posted about the 1798 manumission of Simon Fairfax and his friendship with the 14th Lord Fairfax.