Long before she was named the director of the San Francisco- based nonprofit Legal Aid at Work’s Gender Equity and LGBTQ Rights Program in 2009, Elizabeth Kristen (’02) was involved in the fight for gender equity.
When Elizabeth was 7, her mother, a single parent, went to law school. Elizabeth witnessed firsthand the many obstacles a female lawyer in the 1970s faced, such as being one of few women in her law school class, being denied jobs because of her sex and not having the support of a husband to pursue a career. In third grade, Elizabeth came across a flyer for a boys’ basketball league. Having learned from her mom about Title IX — first enacted in 1972 to help balance the scales for girls and boys in school-based athletic programs — Elizabeth wondered why she couldn’t play. “So, my mom fought for my spot in the league, and sports became a significant part of my identity throughout adolescence,” she says. After relocating from Nebraska to Washington, D.C., the two also regularly attended social justice protests on the National Mall. “My mother instilled in me the importance of being an active and engaged member of civil society,” Elizabeth says.
Elizabeth’s own route to law school was circuitous. “I spent two years working at the Brookings Institution, then I moved across the country and started a business cleaning houses and walking dogs,” she says. However, growing up in an era when Supreme Court decisions advanced civil rights, abortion rights and women’s rights, Elizabeth always saw law as a critically important tool, “part of the DNA of social change.” Elizabeth then met her future wife, Mali, who inspired her to go to law school.
At the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Elizabeth forged a path she hoped would lead to a Skadden Fellowship. “The only way I perceived reaching my goal of working in public interest law was through a Fellowship, which at the time was still a relatively new phenomenon,” Elizabeth recalls.
In her third year, she landed an externship with Legal Aid at Work, the oldest legal service agency in the western United States. Founded in 1916, the nonprofit promotes the rights and economic self-sufficiency of low-wage workers and marginalized communities through free legal services, education and advocacy. “I felt very connected to the organization and its mission,” she says and noted that she started volunteering for Legal Aid at Work’s Workers’ Rights Clinic in her first semester of law school. After graduating, she clerked for a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit judge — the final step, she says, of her successful path towards receiving a Fellowship to return to Legal Aid at Work.
During her Fellowship, Elizabeth focused on disability rights. While the U.S. Supreme Court had recently narrowed the definition of “disability,” California had expanded it to include people with HIV, epilepsy and mental health conditions, among others. Elizabeth found advising clients about their rights and fighting to secure reasonable accommodations incredibly fulfilling. “Working on their cases, I also acquired a taste for litigation, which then extended to gender equity cases,” she says. In 2009, she became the head of the organization’s Gender Equity and LGBTQ Rights Program.
Over the past 15 years, Elizabeth has worked in that role to remove barriers to complete and equal participation in employment based on factors including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. She has handled numerous sexual harassment cases — nearly all on behalf of immigrant women of color, many of whom are undocumented. “It’s very important that people understand the challenges of being undocumented and dealing with having your rights violated.
Through education, litigation and policy work, we’re working toward systemic change for women who receive a low wage and have had these horrible experiences at work,” Elizabeth says. Her work also focuses on supporting LGBTQ workers. For instance, Elizabeth and her team created a toolkit of self-help materials for trans and nonbinary workers who have experienced discrimination, and she worked with colleagues and co-counsel on a case challenging the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, on behalf of California state employees who were denied the ability to buy long-term care insurance for their spouses and domestic partners. Currently, with co-counsel, Elizabeth is litigating a class action on behalf of LGBTQ veterans discharged because of their sexual orientation. “The discharge paperwork for many of these veterans still says ‘homosexual’ or ‘discharged for homosexual acts,’” she notes. “Without an honorable discharge, they are not eligible for the military benefits they should be getting.
Several decades after Elizabeth claimed a spot on the third-grade basketball team, the struggle to end gender-based discrimination in school athletics continues, and Elizabeth remains passionate about Title IX. She directed Legal Aid at Work’s Fair Play for Girls in Sports project, striving — through litigation, technical assistance, training and legislative advocacy — to ensure that all girls have equal opportunities, treatment and benefits in athletics provided by schools and parks and recreation programs. Highlights of her work include leading the team that secured a groundbreaking 2014 Ninth Circuit ruling that enforced Title IX in a Southern California high school.
Elizabeth and Mali now live north of San Francisco where Mali works in the wine industry educating workers and employers about sexual harassment laws and other workplace issues. They were married in 2004 “when Gavin Newsom took a bold step issuing about 4,000 same-sex marriage licenses,” Elizabeth says. “Then, we had another wedding in 2008 when the California Supreme Court struck down the same-sex marriage ban.”
Elizabeth admits that in the current political climate, her work can sometimes feel like an uphill battle, but she is not about to give up hope. “I know how dangerous things are, especially for the most vulnerable people in our society — they are part of my community,” she says. “And the best possible way to combat feelings of discouragement is to stand up and do something.”