Kevin Kish was 15 years old when the LGBT community exploded and demonstrated for two weeks in 1991 after then-California Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed AB 101, the gay civil rights bill that would have added the words “sexual orientation” to the Fair Employment and Housing Act. On Monday, Dec. 29, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Kish, now 38, an openly gay adjunct law professor at Loyola Law School and director of the Employment Rights Project at Bet Tzedek legal services—as the new head of the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
Bet Tzedek—whose motto is “justice for all”—is the progressive non-profit that also yielded longtime LGBT ally Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer and has been quietly helping many of the 700,000 immigrants, human-trafficked laborers and low-wage workers abused and stuck in LA’s underground economy.
Kish comes to the state agency at a time when the department is facing its own allegations of discriminatory and inappropriate practices in hiring and promotion. The Sacramento Bee reports that an investigation by the State Personnel Board “warned about employment rules being ‘willfully ignored or disregarded’ by agency staff and found incomplete record-keeping. Spurring the investigation was the case of a woman being twice promoted despite lacking qualifications.” Kish’s predecessor left the department in October.
Kish graduated with a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2004, according to a bio at Allgov.com. He started at Bet Tzedek after law school, then took at year clerking for President Carter’s appointee District Court Judge Myron Thompson for the Middle District of Alabama—who had the distinction of being “the first African American employee of the state of Alabama who was not a janitor or a teacher,” according to his Wikipedia page. In 2006, Kish returned to Bet Tzedek after receiving a Skadden Fellowship.
Kish’s career seems devoted to helping the underdog, including representing a housekeeper who sued a Kenyan diplomat last April for taking her passport and failing to pay her agreed-upon wages.
Allgov.com has more on Kish’s career:
In 2011, Kish was co-counsel in a class-action lawsuit that won a $1million settlement for Los Angeles carwash workers over wage theft. Four carwash company owners agreed to compensate around 400 workers for routinely working 10-hour days for less than half the minimum wage. Some of the workers toiled for just tips.
Kish and lawyers from two other firms won a $21 million settlement from Walmart contractor Schneider Logistics Transloading and Distribution Inc. in May over the retailer’s alleged abuse of minimum wage and overtime payments to warehouse workers in Eastvale, California. The National Law Review found the settlement amount “staggering” but said its true significance lay in the “courts’ willingness to untangle multi-level business operations and hold all involved entities liable for wage and hour violations.”
Kish’s friend, Tico Almeida, the Latino founder and president of the national LGBT organization Freedom to Work, said this about the announcement:
Kevin Kish is one of the best litigators I have ever known, and LGBT Californians are gaining a strong and passionate legal champion who will work hard to ensure everyone in California gets a fair shot on the job and a fair chance to rent or own housing.
Latino Californians are also gaining a strong advocate who has already taken on and won significant victories against the unlawful traffickers in human beings, the exploiters of hard working immigrants, and all those criminals who would put corporate profit above human fairness.
I’m not surprised that such a talented attorney like Kevin, who happens to be gay, would rise to the very top of Governor Brown’s selection list because the California Governor has a long history of rewarding smarts, talent, and achievement in his government appointments, as Kevin Kish has very clearly demonstrated in his impressive winning record as a civil rights attorney.
Under state law, Kish can assume his responsibilities soon at what is described as “the largest civil rights agency in the nation,” even before his likely confirmed by the Legislature.