Noreen Farrell

Noreen Farrell, Executive Director of Equal Rights Advocates (ERA), one of the nation's leading women's rights organizations, is a nationally-recognized, award-winning civil rights attorney and gender justice leader. She has led landmark litigation and policy reform efforts to improve the lives of women and girls at work and school. Noreen has represented thousands of students and workers in sex discrimination cases (all the way to the Supreme Court) and she is the architect of several high-impact women’s economic policy reform campaigns improving the lives of millions of women and families.

Noreen plays a leadership role in state and national coalitions advocating for the development of policy and legislation to assist working families and expand workplace fairness. She founded and chairs the Stronger California Advocate’s Network advancing workplace justice and anti-harassment reforms, expanding access to affordable childcare, and helping families build assets and wealth. She also founded and chairs the national Equal Pay Today! Campaign, which works to close the gender and race pay gap with partners in states across the country.

Honored as one of the Top Women Lawyers and Top Employment Lawyers in California, Noreen has led ERA’s impact litigation efforts representing clients who have faced sex discrimination and other unfair treatment at school and work in numerous individual and class actions. They include Dukes v. Wal-Mart (pending in the US District Court), Medina v. Station Casinos (which resulted in a multi-million dollar settlement on behalf of a sexual harassment and wage and hour class), Mansourian v. Regents of the University of California (which resulted in a Title IX trial win and $1,350,000 settlement) and Bojorquez v. ABM (which recently resulted in a $812,000 jury verdict in the plaintiff’s favor and an award of over $2.5 million for attorney’s fees and costs).

She speaks and writes extensively on women’s rights issues, including a report entitled Expecting A Baby, Not A Lay-Off: Why Federal Law Should Require the Reasonable Accommodation of Pregnant Workers (May 2012), a book chapter entitled "Wal-Mart v. Dukes and Class Certification in Its Aftermath" in Civil Rights Litigation and Attorney Fees Annual Handbook, (Thomson Reuters 2012), a presentation and article entitled Family Responsibilities Discrimination: The Interplay of Title VII, FMLA, and the ADA (National Employment Lawyer Association, October 2010), and a law review article entitled Old Problem, New Tactic: Making the Case for Legislation to Combat Employment Discrimination Based on Family Caregiving Status, 59 Hastings Law Journal 1463 (June 2008).

Noreen is a graduate of Yale University and the University of California Hastings College of the Law (Class of 1997), where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Women’s Law Journal.

Follow Noreen on twitter @farrellERA.