Gabriel Martínez, BA ’05/JD ’10, has spent his legal career in government service, including working for all three branches of the federal government. For the past three years, Martínez has been a Deputy Attorney General with the California Attorney General’s Civil Rights Enforcement section.

Martínez shares, “For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be involved in social justice. I credit my parents for that—at a young age my mom taking me to protest for increased public education spending and my dad taking me to protest for living wages with the United Farm Workers. In high school, my brother, Sierra [also an SLS alumnus, class of 2008], took me to an ACLU youth program that I ended up being involved with throughout high school, and that really shaped my view of being able to use the law to fight injustice. My interests were broad, and I hoped that law school would give me the tools for a career in public interest, whatever that might end up looking like.”

After graduating from Stanford University with his BA in Political Science, Martínez worked as a legal assistant at a large firm and then at Google before returning to Stanford for law school in 2007. Martínez states, “I chose SLS because of the amazing community that SLS has built. The smaller size allowed for class cohesion, ample opportunities to pursue interests, and access to programs. I remember being shocked that I was selected for an International Human Rights Clinic semester in Namibia, where my classmates/friends and I advanced policy and litigation around various issues in Namibia, including advocating for a constitutional right to water.”

In addition to the International Human Rights Clinic (which was focused on Namibia during Martínez’s time at SLS), he was also enrolled in the Three Strikes Project. He explains, “I spent a year at SLS (and a little after graduating) working with Reiko Rogozen [class of 2009] on the Three Strikes case of Gregory Taylor. Gregory had served several years of a life sentence for his third strike–attempting to break into a soup kitchen for food while homeless. Under the SLS clinic headed by Mike Romano, Reiko and I were able to win Gregory’s release and reunite him with his family. I was overjoyed for Gregory and in disbelief that we had so meaningfully impacted someone’s life with our legal work.”

After he graduated from SLS in 2010, Martínez was selected as a Presidential Management Fellow and went to Washington, DC to join the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Housing section. He worked for two years at HUD as a fellow, which included a rotation as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and a rotation as a legislative assistant for U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI). Then he went to clerk for Judge Barry Silverman for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

He returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2013 as a Trial Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, hired through the Honors Program. Martínez was in that office for five years before he shifted to state government and joined the California Attorney General’s Civil Rights Enforcement section.

Martínez has seen the powerful impact of his work and shared two examples. “While working at the U.S. DOJ Antitrust Division in San Francisco, my team brought and settled a lawsuit over a conspiracy among car component manufacturers to drive up prices. I felt honored to represent the United States in court, on behalf of consumers, and recover several million dollars in the settlement.”

He adds, “I feel like my current job at the California Department of Justice has afforded me many highlights, including personally meaningful work supporting transgender rights litigation. One of my first and most memorable projects was opposing a Trump-era HUD proposed rule that would have denied HUD benefits to anyone living with an undocumented immigrant. I was proud to be working on important and timely matters to help those targeted by an unjust and cruel administration. Thankfully, the proposed rule stalled and was not implemented by the Biden administration.”

While his career has been very fulfilling and meaningful, Martínez notes that it didn’t start off smoothly since he graduated during the Great Recession before the economy rebounded. He shares, “I remember starting my 3L year without a job in a bad legal market. And I wasn’t alone. My friend James Hairston [SLS 2010] and I would commiserate about our joblessness on our daily commutes from SF to SLS, and the firm my brother, Sierra, was headed to dissolved. The pressure of that time forced me to take a very active look at what I wanted from my career and accelerated the public interest that I thought would come later. I started working for the government through the Presidential Management Fellowship. The lessons I learned from the experience, and advice I would impart is to keep actively pursuing your interests and taking risks. Your degree and education have set you up for success, even in hard times, and you do not have to passively accept the easiest and most secure options (especially with LRAP available!).”

He concludes, “One of my fears in law school was that my interests were broad and I didn’t know in which direction to specialize. The PMF experience allowed me to dabble and see what kind of work suited me. As a PMF fellow, I worked for HUD Fair Housing, the DC Civil U.S. Attorney’s Office, and for Senator Akaka. After my fellowship, I continued to dabble—I then clerked for the Honorable Barry Silverman on the Ninth Circuit, worked as a criminal and civil litigator for the US DOJ Antitrust Division in San Francisco, and am now working on law and policy in the Cal DOJ Civil Rights Enforcement Section. Through these broad and varied experiences working on behalf of the government, I have had an impact on issues that are important to me, and developed a skill set that allows me to continue working on both litigation and policy on a wide variety of topics.”