Chris Ho, JD ’87: Litigating Impact Cases in Defense of Immigrant Workers
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Join us for a discussion with Chris Ho, JD ’87 about the challenges of litigating on behalf of immigrant workers, including those who are undocumented. Last year the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ho’s client in Salas v. Sierra Chemical Co. when it determined that undocumented workers could sue their employers, even if they obtained the position using false papers.
BIOGRAPHY: Chris Ho is the Director of the National Origin, Immigration, and Language Rights Program at the Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center. He has been with LAS–ELC since 1987, first as its Félix Velarde-Muñoz Graduate Intern and then, upon his return in 1990, as a staff attorney. His primary focus has been on litigation against practices that disproportionately impact language minorities, undocumented workers, and recent immigrants. Mr. Ho has also worked on cases in the areas of race and sexual orientation discrimination, wage and hour rights and workplace privacy, and served as lead class counsel in Tracy v. Yellow Cab, which successfully enjoined unlawful employment practices in the San Francisco taxi industry affecting thousands of drivers. He was the recipient of a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year Award in 2004 for his work on Rivera v. Nibco, Inc. and Singh v. Jutla, two cases that reaffirmed the right of undocumented immigrants to seek legal redress for workplace discrimination and retaliation. He also was given the Joe Morozumi Award for Exceptional Legal Advocacy in 2006 by the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area, and Stanford Law School’s Alumni Public Service Award in 2007. Most recently, he successfully argued Salas v. Sierra Chemical Co., a case that solidified California state law protections for undocumented workers, before the California Supreme Court. Mr. Ho received his B.A. in political science from Yale in 1977, an A.M. in government from Harvard in 1980, and his J.D. from Stanford in 1987. In 2001, he was a Windcall Resident Fellow in Belgrade, Montana.
Lunch provided courtesy of APILSA.