Kathryn Eidmann is Public Counsel’s Vice President, Chief of Litigation and Legal Programs. She oversees the organization’s full range of comprehensive legal advocacy to advance civil rights and racial and economic justice. This role builds upon her prior work as Director of Litigation, where she promoted a coordinated approach to transforming unjust systems through litigation. She also oversees Public Counsel’s delivery of legal services to low-income clients across Public Counsel’s practice areas of immigration, veteran’s rights, consumer rights and economic justice, children’s rights, women and girls’ rights, community development, and homelessness prevention.
Kathryn first joined Public Counsel in 2013. As a supervising staff attorney in Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project, she litigated major cases in the areas of education equity, children’s rights, gender discrimination, criminalization of poverty, immigrants’ rights, housing and homelessness, and the rights of low-wage workers. She has particular expertise in litigation and advocacy to reform education, child welfare, and other systems to address the needs of children impacted by trauma. In 2019, she received a California Lawyer of the Year award for her appellate advocacy in People v. Duenas, a landmark California Court of Appeal opinion establishing that courts may not impose mandatory court fees on indigent criminal defendants.
In addition to her work at Public Counsel, Kathryn teaches in the Appellate Litigation Clinic at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, where she has previously taught education equity and gender discrimination law. She was appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti to serve on the Board of Library Commissioners of the City of Los Angeles and the Commission for Community and Family Services, advising the City of Los Angeles on issues of poverty and the needs of children, youth, and their families. She is a frequent speaker on education equity and economic justice issues, and her work has been covered by national and local news media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, and PBS News Hour.
Prior to joining Public Counsel, Kathryn worked for the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.
