Legal Aid at Work

Guided by a mission of gender & LGBTQ justice, Legal Aid at Work's Gender Equity & LGBTQ Rights Program partners with clients to vindicate their rights and build power in their workplaces and schools. Our clients include low-wage women; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals; immigrants; military veterans; survivors of harassment as well as domestic and sexual violence; student athletes; and other under-represented individuals.

The Central Valley Workers’ Rights Project is committed to providing access to justice for workers, regardless of immigration status, who face discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and other unlawful conduct on the job.

With dedicated staff based in the Central Valley, we empower and advocate for low-wage workers in the Central Valley to assert their rights in the workplace through community outreach and education, legal advice and self-help tools, and legal representation in collaboration with community partners.

Our National Origin and Immigrants’ Rights Program advocates for the workplace rights of persons who face discrimination because of their ethnicity or the parts of the world they have migrated from. We do this through litigation, policy work, and community education.

Among other things, our cases have challenged discrimination against workers because of their ethnic identity, the languages they speak or their level of English language proficiency, their religion or their citizenship status. We represent undocumented workers, who have virtually the same legal rights as all employees but whose employers threaten them for asserting those rights, including by reporting them to ICE. We sue to stop and remedy employer practices that appear to be even-handed but, in reality, fall the hardest on immigrant workers and workers of color.

The Racial Economic Justice Program empowers Black and Brown workers who are discriminated against and economically exploited. We protect and advance the civil rights of people of color in the workplace and beyond, with the aim of building a world with racial equity, solidarity, respect, dignity, and economic justice for all. We seek systems change through policy advocacy, legal services, organizing, community education, and litigation.

We offer free, confidential advice through our helplines, represent individuals in low-wage jobs and industries, litigate race discrimination cases, and organize and educate workers to fight against discrimination and vindicate their rights under Ban the Box and Fair Chance laws. We also advocate for systems and policy change to challenge structural racism and advance the rights of marginalized workers, including workers of color and persons with arrest or conviction records in California and beyond.

Through legal representation and advocacy, the Wage Protection Program works to build a just economy where all workers are empowered to win fair wages and dignified workplaces. Our program assists individual workers and groups of workers seeking to enforce their right to the minimum wage, overtime pay, meal and rest breaks, sick pay, and reimbursement for work-related expenses. We also assist workers who have been retaliated against for pursuing their rights and those who have been forced to work through threats of violence, fraud, or coercion.

We know that workers have more power when they fight for their rights collectively, and our Program regularly supports community-based organizations and groups of workers to enforce their rights.

We empower workers who are parents, pregnant, family caregivers, or caring for their own health to access time off from work, paid leave, and other workplace accommodations. We offer free, confidential advice through our Work & Family helpline, represent individuals in low-income jobs and industries, and advocate for systems and policy change to advance the rights of working families by partnering with families, healthcare and social service providers, and government agencies. Our work is rooted in our strong belief that no worker should have to choose between their job and income and the health and wellbeing of their family.

The Workers’ Rights Clinic provides low-income and unemployed people with free, confidential information about their legal rights related to work in California. We operate in 13 physical Workers’ Rights Clinic sites throughout the State, currently in San Francisco, Berkeley/Oakland, Antioch, Sacramento, Fresno, Watsonville, East Palo Alto, Ontario, San Bernardino, Los Angeles (2 locations), Santa Ana, San Diego. For those that we are unable to see in person, we also offer assistance by phone.