Faculty Profiles
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Mary Louise Frampton
Title: Faculty Director, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice
Office: 785 Simon Hall
Tel: 510-642-4474
Email Address: mlframpton@law.berkeley.edu
FSU Contact: Pamela Anne Lowry
Mary Louise Frampton, faculty director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, has a long record of involvement in social justice issues. She recently retired from a Central Valley civil rights practice that focused on issues of discrimination in employment. Prior to the establishment of that firm in 1974, Frampton was the directing attorney of the Madera office of California Rural Legal Services. She was on the first board of directors of the California Women Lawyers Association, was the founder of the San Joaquin Valley Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and helped establish the first local chapter of the federal Inns of Court.
Frampton has been involved in a number of important social justice causes over the course of her career. In the 1970s she was instrumental in establishing National Land for People, an organization of small farmers and farm workers. As the group's lawyer, she won a series of landmark federal cases that forced the federal government and large agribusiness corporations to comply with the 160 acre limitation law and end the diversion of federally subsidized water away from small family farmers. Such victories enabled small farmers and farm workers to purchase desirable agricultural land and become economically independent. Frampton authored an article on that legal struggle for the UC Davis Law Review.
Frampton has represented several community coalitions, including a group of Latino, African-American and women's groups that increased diversity in hiring and programming in network and local television stations. The second-largest school district in the state was the target of several of Frampton's Title VII cases to enhance promotional opportunities for African-American educators. In the 1980s she obtained the largest economic damages figure in an employment case awarded by the Fair Employment and Housing Commission, and in the early 1990s she won the biggest verdict in a sex discrimination action in the Central Valley. She also represented women in their efforts to compel enforcement of Title IX at state universities and obtain slander damages against a prominent radio personality for his homophobic and misogynist attacks on women athletes. On appointment by the federal court in Sacramento, Frampton continues to represent two death row inmates in their federal habeas corpus actions.
In 2003 Frampton was named a National Bellow Scholar by the Public Interest Committee of the American Association of Law Schools. The award honors projects that involve law students and faculty in anti-poverty or access to justice work.
Education:
B.A., Brown University (1967)J.D., Harvard University (1971)
