Faculty Profiles
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Maria Blanco
Title: Executive Director, Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity & Diversity
Office: 2850 Telegraph - Office 457
Tel: 510-642-0322
Fax: 510-643-2362
Email Address: mblanco@law.berkeley.edu
Maria Blanco serves as the Executive Director for the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute. She served as executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. She brings more than 20 years of experience as a litigator and advocate for immigrant rights, women's rights and racial justice. As executive director of the Lawyers' Committee, Blanco launched initiatives to increase minority access to higher education, provide legal counsel for students in substandard schools, and convene African-American and Latino community leaders to discuss the impact of immigration reform. She regularly contributes to national and local media on school integration, the importance of an independent judiciary, and civil rights challenges in today's security climate. Blanco is also the co-chair of the California Coalition for Civil Rights, a group dedicated to building a progressive national agenda for civil and human rights.
Prior to her position at the Lawyers' Committee, she developed notably wide-ranging unique skills. Blanco was an attorney with Equal Rights Advocates (1987-1994), an associate director and associate professor of law at Golden Gate University's School of Law (1994-1998), and the National Senior Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (1998-2003).
Blanco has successfully litigated pivotal civil rights cases, such as Davis v. San Francisco, which brought women for the first time into the San Francisco Fire Department; and Castrejon v. Tortilleria La Mejor, which established that undocumented workers are covered by federal anti-discrimination laws.
Education:
B.A., UC Berkeley (1981)J.D., UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall) (1984)
