Kathryn Eidmann
Eidmann, a 12-year veteran at Public Counsel, stepped into her new role as the nonprofit organization's president and CEO in July, after its previous president, Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani, was named to the Central District of California bench last November.
Judge Almadani, who joined Public Counsel in 2021, is just the latest of the group's leaders to be named to a California judicial post. Judge Hernán Vera, Public Counsel's CEO and president from 2008 to 2014, also took a seat on the Central District bench. Meanwhile, Judge Margaret Morrow left the Central District in 2015 and went on to serve as Public Counsel's president until 2021.
Eidmann has always wanted to work as a legal advocate to expand access to justice and fight for civil rights, she told Law360. After getting some chops as a litigator at Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, she joined Public Counsel in 2013 as an impact litigator, a position aimed at taking on cases with broader public policy interests at stake.
She notched a major win in 2017 representing Velia Duenas, a woman whose license was suspended because she had failed to pay just over $1,000 in fines from citations she'd received years earlier as a juvenile.
A three-judge California Court of Appeals panel ultimately ruled in Duenas' favor, agreeing that it was a violation of due process for courts to impose fines and fees on indigent criminal defendants without consideration of their ability to pay.
When Eidmann first went to law school, she initially wanted to work as a law professor, studying and writing about legal barriers and civil rights issues. Instead, after participating in several law school clinics, she said she found that using her knowledge to actually help individual people was more rewarding.
"I did direct representation of asylum clients and other individual clients through our law school clinics and I realized that what I really wanted to do was to not be writing about it, but to really be able to use the law as a tool to advance justice and impact real people's lives," she said.
Eidmann would eventually get her chance to work as a law professor, joining the University of California Irvine School of Law as a lecturer in 2017.
Eidmann recently sat down with Law360 to share her reflections on being named president and CEO of Public Counsel, the impact of her work on individual clients, and how the organization has changed since she first joined in 2013. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
How does it feel to have been selected as Public Counsel's new president and CEO?
I really am just so honored and humbled to be entrusted with this role. I'm a longtime staff member of Public Counsel. I came very early in my career as an impact litigator working on civil rights cases to advance racial and economic justice.
Public Counsel has been around for about five decades, and for many years early on had been primarily a direct legal services organization — providing services to individual low-income clients, across many different issues affecting and impacting poverty.
About 15 years ago, it was a vision of the board to expand the systemic work. That was where I began my career, and I've been fortunate enough to work with this staff and to work on these issues from that perspective in my career as a litigator. And really what's kept me at Public Counsel all these years, is that we do this unique blend of the individual client representation along with the systemic advocacy — not just litigation, but also policy advocacy.
How has Public Counsel changed throughout your career?
What I think we've been doing much more of in the past few years is really trying to coordinate and integrate that individual advocacy with the systemic work. That's what I tried to do as director of litigation and more recently in overseeing our litigation and legal programs.
That's really my vision going forward. I think we have an opportunity to really be transformative around advancing racial and economic justice. And the way that we can do that is by not only changing individual lives through direct services, but also addressing the roots of the issues that our clients are facing through our system change litigation and advocacy.
Could you talk about some of your own work advocating for clients, like in People v. Duenas?
I think even that is a great example about the overlap between the individual approach and a systemic approach. That case was brought to us by a former Public Counsel staff attorney, Jordana Mosten, who became a public defender.
And as a public defender she saw that her most low-income, vulnerable clients who were involved in the criminal justice system at the very low level — very minor misdemeanors and fines — were disproportionately impacted by court fines and fees that they couldn't afford to pay.
Obviously, in this country, we are entitled to free legal representation, so the most vulnerable individuals involved in the criminal justice system would get their attorneys' fees waived, but then they would exit the court with a large bill of court fines and fees that they were unable to pay.
That would cause them to continue the cycle of poverty and involvement in the criminal justice system, because they would have unpaid court debts and that would potentially cause them to incur more misdemeanors in the future.
My client, Ms. Duenas, was referred to us by Jordana, who had really seen this cycle. In that case, Ms. Duenas' original misdemeanor was just a truancy violation — she wasn't able to attend school one day — that she incurred as a youth. And she wasn't able to pay the court fines and fees as a result of that misdemeanor truancy ticket that she received.
And so because of that, she became involved in the criminal justice system at the very low misdemeanor level, and had this spiraling court debt that she was unable to pay. The public defender was able to represent her in her criminal case, but then referred the issue of these court fines and fees to us, which is a real access to justice issue.
We were then able to go to the Court of Appeal and get really the first instance that I'm aware of in the nation of an appellate court saying that it's a violation of due process for courts to impose fines and fees on indigent criminal defendants without consideration of their ability to pay because that is a penalty on the basis of poverty.
That means that, if somebody has the means to pay the fee, they can just go pay it and move on their way. But somebody who doesn't have those means is doubly penalized and carries this debt with them and all the consequences of that debt throughout their life.
What I've heard from so many public defenders since is that this ruling comes up over and over and over again as something that public defenders now rely on as a sort of critical due process protection for their clients. The issue as a whole is also being considered currently by the California Supreme Court.
How did you first get interested in working as a civil rights legal advocate?
I went to law school because I was interested in civil rights and advancing justice. I actually thought I would be a professor originally. I wanted to be a law professor and study and write about these issues, but as a law student I was able to get involved in clinical work.
Coming out of law school, I knew this was the only kind of work that I really wanted to do.
I clerked and then I went to Munger Tolles & Olson for a few years, where I got great training in litigation. But as soon as I saw this position for an impact litigator with Public Counsel open up, I knew that that was a perfect match with my desire to really use the law as a tool for social change.
What's the most rewarding part about working on these issues?
The reason that I became a lawyer is because the law has incredible power to affect change on behalf of people who need it the most.
One of the things that I've found the most-rewarding and meaningful in my career is working with our community partners — working in the community with our clients.
I've done a lot of education work, so working with parents, teachers and students to collaborate and think about multipronged advocacy strategies. Not only litigation but the way the litigation can work with policy, can work with public education, can work with communications strategies that really put forward an affirmative message and validate the dignity of our clients in the communities we partner with.
I think that being a small part of this larger movement has been really a great joy and one of the most meaningful and satisfying parts of this work for me.
--Editing by Jay Jackson Jr.
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