Gloria Allred

ALLRED, GLORIA

Gloria Allred, born July 3, 1941, in Philadelphia, is a flamboyant, widely recognized lawyer, feminist, activist, and radio talk show host. Though her critics dismiss her as a publicity monger and a dilettante, Allred has received praise from others who believe that she is a master at using the power of the news media to draw attention to the day-to-day struggles of ordinary people.

Born Gloria Rachel Bloom, Allred grew up in Philadelphia with her parents,Morris Bloom,
a door-to-door salesman, and Stella Davidson Bloom, a homemaker.Her conventional middleclass childhood gave no hint of the outspoken activist to come. Allred graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in English. She moved to New York to pursue a master’s degree in
teaching at New York University. While there,
she became interested in the CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT, which was beginning to gain
momentum. After earning her master’s degree
in 1966, she returned to Philadelphia to teach at
a high school with a predominantly black enroll-
ment.

Allred says her interest in the struggle for
equal rights arose from personal experiences.
While she was in college, she married, gave birth
to a daughter, and divorced. Unable to collect
CHILD SUPPORT from her former husband, she
was forced to return to her parents’ home. She
also recalls being paid less than a man for what
she considered equal work. The reason given
was that the man had a family to support, but at
the time, Allred as the single mother also had a
dependent to support. Perhaps the experience
that most galvanized her commitment to equal
rights was being raped and then having to
undergo an ABORTION at a time when the oper-
ation could not legally be performed by a doc-
tor. She nearly died after the operation.
According to Allred, the experience made her
realize the need for safe and legal abortions and
precipitated her lifelong commitment to the
fight for reproductive freedom.

Allred moved to Los Angeles and married
again in 1968, this time to Raymond Allred; they
were divorced in 1987. Allred taught in the tur-
bulent Watts section of Los Angeles and became
the first full-time female staff member in United
Teachers of Los Angeles, the union representing
Los Angeles’s teachers. The experience stirred
her interest in CIVIL RIGHTS and COLLECTIVE BARGAINING and prompted her to go to law school. She received her law degree,with honors,
from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles,
Law School in 1974. Soon after, she entered a
law firm partnership with her classmates Nathan
Goldberg and Michael Maroko. Allred, Maroko,
Goldberg, and Ribakoff grew during the 1970s
and 1980s into a thirteen-lawyer firm with
annual revenues exceeding $2.5 million. The
firm’s caseload has ranged from family and CONSTITUTIONAL
LAW to business litigation and
personal injury suits.
Allred has been perhaps the most flamboyant
and well known member of her firm. She
has achieved notoriety and name recognition
through staged press conferences and demonstrations
publicizing and dramatizing the
causes she has championed at various times.
She has also accepted controversial cases that
naturally attract media attention. During her
years in practice, she has successfully sued Los
Angeles County to stop the practice of shackling
and chaining pregnant inmates during
labor and delivery; put a halt on the practice by
the city of El Segundo of quizzing job applicants
about their sexual histories (Thorne v. City
of El Segundo, 802 F.2d 1131 [9th Cir. 1986]);
represented a client who was turned down for a
job as a police officer after a six-hour lie detector
exam that included questions about her sex
life; and sued a dry cleaning establishment for
discrimination because it charged more to
launder women’s shirts than men’s. Allred also
successfully sued on behalf of two lesbians who
had been denied entrance to the “romance
booth” at a Los Angeles restaurant (Rolon v. Kulwitsky,
153 Cal. App. 3d 289, 200 Cal. Rptr. 217
[Cal. App. 2 Dist. 1984]). The owner of the
restaurant vowed to close the booth if Allred’s
clients won. They did, and he made good on his
promise.
Allred relishes confrontation, and her showy
tactics have earned her both praise and criticism.
Defending what many have called selfpromoting
publicity stunts, Allred says she is
aware of the impression she makes and contends
that it is exactly the effect she wants. She tries to
use the few moments she is in the spotlight to
make her point as forcefully as possible. Her
detractors say that she wastes her time and
energy on trivial issues that do not advance any
worthwhile cause and deflect attention away
from serious issues. Yet, she points out, she is
often stopped on the street by people who recognize
her and want to thank her for taking on
the small fights that no one else wants. Allred
contends that what she is really doing is tackling
issues that are symbolic of the day-to-day struggles
people face. It is her way of educating the
public and the legal establishment to move
beyond stereotypes.
Asked whether she is an activist or a lawyer,
Allred replied that she is an “activist lawyer.” She
added that she believes in seeking change and
winning rights through the legal process but
that she does not shrink from utilizing the political
process when legal remedies prove inadequate.
She once held a press conference in the
office of California governor Jerry Brown to cast
media attention on his threat to VETO a bill
authorizing payroll deductions for child support
payments.When the news media arrived, Allred
and a group of women and children had hung
diapers across the governor’s office. Brown
reversed his position and signed the bill. In
another case that drew media attention, Allred
held a press conference at the door of the allmale Friars Club of New York to dramatize her
lawsuit challenging the club’s policy of not
allowing women members and not allowing
women to enter, even as guests, before 4:00 P.M.
She won her suit on the grounds that the club
did not meet the “substantially private” requirement
under New York law that would have
allowed it to legally exclude women. Possibly her
most famous politically motivated demonstration
was presenting California state senator John
Schmitz (R-Corona del Mar) with a chastity belt
at a hearing on a bill to limit abortion and BIRTH
CONTROL. Schmitz retaliated in a press release in
which he called Allred “a slick butch lawyeress.”
Allred sued for LIBEL and won a damage award
and an apology.
Allred has earned a reputation as a champion
of those who have been sexually victimized.
She represented a woman who won a $5
million civil suit against an accused rapist the
district attorney declined to prosecute; represented
a boy who claimed to have been sexually
abused by a famous rock singer (although she
abruptly and without explanation withdrew
from the case before it was settled); and tackled
the thorny issue of clergy SEXUAL ABUSE. She
says she wants people to know that, even if the
criminal justice system fails them, they are entitled
to file a civil suit.
Allred is an ardent feminist who believes
that all attorneys and all judges should be feminists,
because she feels anyone who is not a feminist
is a bigot. Some critics say she is all show
and no substance. She has been compared to
legal showmen such as Melvin M. Belli (“the
King of Torts”) and Marvin Mitchelson, who
gained notoriety through a series of celebrity
palimony suits. However, even Mitchelson, not
one to shrink from publicity himself, describes
her style as rough. But Allred has many supporters
as well.Among them is Justice Joan Dempsey
Klein of the California Court of Appeal who
credits Allred with moving women’s issues forward.
Klein also points out that Allred saves her
dramatics for outside the courtroom and always
observes proper decorum while before the
bench. According to Klein, Allred is always wellprepared
and, for that reason, is quite successful.
In 1994, Allred wrote an editorial for the
December 6 issue of the Los Angeles Times, titled
“Prosecution or Persecution,” in which she
asserted that laws prohibiting prostitution are
sexist and victimize women. She advocated
legalization and regulation of the sex trade in
order to reduce sexually transmitted diseases
and drug abuse. According to Allred, “Unprotected,
uninsured sex workers are the real victims
who deserve legal status and an end to
government-funded harassment.”
In the 1990s, Allred, whose law firm partners
were both the children of Holocaust survivors,
sued an organization that had promised a monetary
award to an Auschwitz survivor for proving
the existence of the Holocaust and then
reneged on the award. Allred won a six-figure
judgment that ultimately bankrupted the organization.
In 1995, Allred sued the Boy Scouts of
America (BSA) over the organization’s refusal to
let a girl join the troop to which her twin brother
belonged. The trial judge’s decision that the BSA
was not a business organization and was not
subject to the state Civil Rights Act was upheld
by the Court of Appeals. The case was appealed
to California’s Supreme Court, but, when that
court upheld two similar cases, the plaintiff
withdrew her appeal.
In early 2003, Allred served as president of
the Women’s Equal Rights Legal Defense and
Education Fund, an organization she founded.
She hosted her own radio talk show on a Los
Angeles radio station and was selected as one of
the 25 most important talk show hosts by USA
Today. She has also been a columnist for the
National Law Journal. She has been nominated
three times for television’s Emmy award for her
commentaries on KABC-TV.

Dressed in her trademark reds and electric
blues, Allred is a combination of scholarship and
theatrics. Her intelligence and shrewd understanding
of the power of the media have made
her a contemporary success story in the world of
law and politics. Gloria Allred has her own web
site: www.gloriaallred.com (accessed May 29,
2003).

FURTHER READINGS
Berry, Dawn Bradley. 1996. The 50 Most Influential Women in American Law. Los Angeles: Contemporary Books.

Drachman, Virginia G. 1998. Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers in Modern American History. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.

Gloria Allred. Available online at  (accessed May 29, 2003).