Julia A. Gomez is a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California in the First Amendment and Democracy Project. Julia joined ACLU SoCal in May 2020.
Her current work focuses on protecting voting rights and ensuring government transparency through litigation, legislative advocacy, and education and outreach. Julia is currently counsel in Doe v. City of McFarland, a challenge under the Brown Act to the McFarland City Council’s decision to limit public access to its meetings.
Prior to joining ACLU SoCal, Julia worked at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) from 2016 to 2020. While at MALDEF, Julia litigated voting rights and immigrants’ rights cases. Her docket included: Luna v. Kern County, where she represented Latinx voters in a Section 2 Voting Rights Act challenge that resulted in the creation of a second Latino-majority supervisorial district; Higginson v. Becerra, where she successfully defended a challenge to the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA); and Aguirre v. City of Placentia, where she successfully represented a voter to enforce a settlement agreement under the CVRA. From 2013 to 2015, Julia was an associate and Civil Rights Fellow at Fried Frank, where she worked on a range of complex commercial litigation matters and had a robust pro bono docket.
Julia is a graduate of Columbia Law School and the University of California, Los Angeles.