LGBT & Discrimination Lawyers in California

Dolan Law Firm - LGBT Lawyer

1498 Alice Street Oakland, California 94612 USA

 (888) 424-5352

www.lgbt-lawyer.com
 Contact the Firm

Law Firm Overview Free Consultation

The Dolan Law Firm is an experienced, dedicated law firm serving clients throughout California. San Francisco is a very diverse community embracing many cultures and one of those that is most proudly represented is the LGBT community. At The Dolan Law Firm we affirm the importance of equal rights and protections for all citizens. Many of our employees are members of the LGBT community and we have dedicated ourselves to protecting, advancing, and preserving the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons.

Our skilled California gay rights attorneys will pursue your legal interests and your rights in cases involving discrimination, harassment, and unequal treatment in: Employment; Housing; Access to business services; Health care; Family matters. We also represent clients who have experienced assault and harassment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. We prosecute hate crimes cases and represent students who have been bullied and assaulted in school. Our firm also acts as a clearinghouse for information and resources for the GLBT community in San Francisco, throughout California, and across the United States, whenever possible.

Our lawyers work on a contingency meaning that you pay no fees or costs upfront. If we obtain a recovery on your behalf, we receive a percentage of any recovery we obtain for you. No recovery, no fee. If you have questions or concerns about your rights as a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person under California or federal law, talk to our San Francisco LGBT lawyers office to schedule a free initial consultation.

Practice Areas

Additional Practice Areas: LGBT Discrimination and Rights; HIV/AIDS Discrimination; Domestic Partnership Rights; Transgender Rights; Unruh Act; Hate Crimes.

Practice Areas Description

With the skilled trial attorneys at The Dolan Law Firm, you cannot go wrong. Our practice areas include:

- Employment Discrimination and Harassment

California Government Code Section 12940 makes it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of sex and/or sexual orientation in employment. This makes it unlawful for an employer to make a decision based upon sex or sexual orientation in the hiring, promotion, transfer, compensation and/or termination of an individual based upon sex and/or sexual orientation. Under California Law, it is also unlawful to discriminate against, or harass, an individual because of their association with someone who is gay i.e. friend, child, parent, etc., even if the person being discriminated against, or harassed is not gay. Therefore, you cannot be harassed or discriminated against because you have friends or family who are members of the LGBT community. If you have been harassed or discriminated against because of your association with a member of the LGBT community, we can help.

- Access to Commercial Establishment

If you like many members of the LGBTQ community spent years in the closet, then you likely felt an enormous sense of relief the first time you walked into a gay friendly business. Wouldn't it be nice to feel that relief and not have to be “on guard” more often? At The Dolan Law Firm, our advocates strive to help you get it by fighting hard to establish LGBTQ rights to equal access to business that California law protects.

- Family Medical Leave Act

In California you may be entitled to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid health care leave (you may be allowed to apply your vacation and sick time so you receive those benefits during your leave). If you, your registered domestic partner, your parent, or your child requires medical care due to illness or medical treatment for a serious health condition and you meet the requirements. You have similar benefits as it relates to the birth, foster care placement, or adoption of a child. Employees who seek to take medical leave have the legal right to be returned to the same or a similar position of employment if they return within the time afforded under the law. Throughout the period of the medical leave the employer has the responsibility of maintaining the employee’s health care coverage and other benefits. Taking a medical leave cannot be the basis for discipline, hiring, firing, or promotional decisions.

- Unruh Act

If you moved to California to live in a gay friendly state, you might be shocked to learn that every year there are a large number of hate crimes based upon sexual orientation or upon the transgender status of the victim. As much or more gay bashing goes on here as in any other city or town in the country. If you've been the target of a hate crime, our firm, The Dolan Law Firm, may be able to help. Our attorney-advocates have a solid grounding in California statutes designed to protect against gay hate crimes.

- Hate Crimes

Under California Law, it is unlawful to injure, intimidate, interfere with, or press or threaten any other person in the free exercise of their enjoyment of their rights, or destroy, deface, or damage their property, based upon their gender, sexual orientation, race, disability or other protected category. This includes any type of unlawful conduct based upon the identity, appearance, or behavior of the victim whether or not those differ from what traditionally is associated with the victim's sex at birth. These rights are advanced under both the penal code (California Penal Code Section 422.6(a)) as well as the civil code (California Civil Code Section 51.7(a) and (b) and Civil Code Section 52.1.). Individuals who are the victims of hate crimes have the right to recover not only damages and civil penalties; they have the right to recover their attorney’s fees in certain circumstances.

- Healthcare and Insurance

As civil rights attorneys, our firm, The Dolan Law Firm, fully realizes that California is ahead of other states when it comes to protecting civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender/transsexual people. The transgender community received additional protection with the passage of the Insurance Gender Non-Discrimination Bill in 2005. It protects the transgendered and transsexuals from being discriminated against when they seek gender-related health care and in buying insurance.

- HIV/AIDS Discrimination

California Law provides protection to individuals who have HIV/AIDS or who are perceived to have HIV/AIDS, as well as their family members and friends including but not limited to, prohibitions against discrimination and/or harassment in the work place on the basis of one’s status as having, or being associated with someone who has HIV or AIDS. Under California law an individual with HIV and/or AIDS, from the moment of infection forward, is protected under the law as an individual with a disability. (See California Government Code Section 12940 (a)) Additionally, an employer is required to provide a reasonable accommodation to an individual with a disability, including but not limited to, modifications to the work place, adjustments in schedules, reassignment to vacant positions, or other forms of accommodation so long as they do not present an undue hardship on the employer.

- Housing Discrimination

Society affords individuals all sorts of civil rights, but, without gay rights in housing, your life can be intolerable. You need a place to call home where you feel comfortable, among family, and left alone to live your life in peace. At The Dolan Law Firm, we take incidents of LGBT housing discrimination very seriously. We have represented numerous LGBT individuals and couples in cases where they were denied equal access to housing. California law also prohibits HIV discrimination in housing.

- GLBT Family Law

Individuals who are partners, but have not registered their partnership, do not receive the same rights and benefits as registered domestic partners. As a result, a life partner, who is not registered, may not, unless there is a separate, signed, notarized, durable, health care power of attorney form, make medical decisions on behalf of their partner. Likewise, in the absence of a registered domestic partnership, a partner who dies without a will, will not be deemed to have left any of the estate to their life partner who is not registered as a domestic partner. Under the laws of intestate succession (transfer of property following statutory rules after the death of an individual without a valid will), property would revert to the nearest next of kin, or if there is an adopted child or a blood relative, completely excluding the un-registered life partner.

- LGTB Family Law Issues

If you are gay or lesbian and have been in a committed relationship for any length of time, you know that same sex couples have as many, if not more, obstacles in building their relationships as straight couples do. In fact, given the hostility that same sex couples often face from society and even from their own families, these relationships should be celebrated as demonstrations of the dedication and commitment possible in all human beings. California has even taken some steps towards recognizing the validity of same sex couples by passing "registered domestic partnership" legislation that grants some of the rights and responsibilities to lesbian and gay couples as marriage does to heterosexual married couples, including adoption and inheritance.

- Rights of Domestic Partners (RDP Rights)

California law does not recognize marriage between two male partners or two female partners. However, California has moved much closer to offering equality for same sex couples by legalizing a process and procedure for establishing a registered domestic partnership (RDP). Couples who have official RDP status possess many of the same rights and protections enjoyed by married people. The Dolan Law Firm, is a gay friendly firm helping clients in the LGBTQ community and their allies with issues relating to violations of their civil rights because of their RDP status or their status as a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered person.

- Transgender Rights

In the past few years, California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) has finally caught up with other aspects of housing and employment law and now recognizes that transgender individuals are entitled to protection of their civil rights too.. Unfortunately, that does not mean that transgendered persons are confronted much less by discrimination and harassment, but at least now there are remedies where they didn't exist before. At our firm, The Dolan Law Firm, our GLBT rights lawyer-advocates fight for the rights and dignity of transsexual people.

More Information on Dolan Law Firm - LGBT Lawyer

LGBT Discrimination Law Firm in Oakland, CA
Oakland, CA AIDS/HIV Discrimination Lawyer
Hate Crime Attorneys in Oakland, California
Oakland, CA Family Medical Leave Act Attorney
Housing Discrimination Law Firm in Oakland, CA
Oakland, California Transgender Rights Law Firm
LGBT Harassment Attorneys in Oakland, California
Oakland, California Domestic Partnership Lawyers
Dolan Law Firm - LGBT Lawyer News and Publications
Contact Dolan Law Firm - LGBT Lawyer

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