Our Fearless Founding Mothers-In-Law

March 2025

By Betty Williams
CLA President

Women now represent 44% of all attorneys; we’re everywhere. It all started with Clara Shortridge Foltz.

When Clara was just 15 years old, she eloped with an Iowa farmer 10 years her senior. By her 25^th birthday, Clara was living in San Jose, California with her five children, abandoned by her husband who took what little money they had saved. The year was 1875.

Clara was the daughter of a lawyer and a preacher, with a long line of lawyers in her family. She had a keen intellect and a calling to the women’s suffrage movement, which naturally merged into her interest in studying the law.

Determined to support her family financially, Clara began reading law books while earning speaking fees lecturing on suffrage and promoting the right for women to vote.

When Clara learned the only prerequisite stopping her from becoming a lawyer in California was that she was not a white male, she set about changing the law by drafting the Woman Lawyer’s Bill with fellow suffragist, Laura deForce Gordon. They substituted “any white male citizen” with “any citizen or person” in the state code provision, CCP 275. Clara took extraordinary efforts to ensure the bill eventually passed, which removed the requirements of being “white” and “male” to become a lawyer in California.

Clara passed the bar in 1878, becoming California’s first woman lawyer. She practiced law and prevailed in numerous cases, but she wanted to learn more about the law and registered at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law (now UC Law SF) in San Francisco in 1879. After three days of classes, Clara was advised the school resolved not to admit women to the law school. 

Clara didn’t give up. She made numerous unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the Founder and Dean of the Law School and ultimately filed a lawsuit against the school. Clara prevailed, which the school appealed. Ultimately, the California Supreme Court unanimously decided against the school in Foltz v. Hoge (1879). She was 30 years old.

Clara was left impoverished by the litigation; she had a busy legal practice, often representing those who could not afford counsel or were underrepresented. Clara did not attend Hastings, however Hastings granted her a posthumous degree of Doctor of Laws in 1991. At the end of her life, Clara noted she viewed the Hastings lawsuit as her finest moment.

Clara went on to achieve many “firsts” during her career in the Assembly and in the District Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. She founded the California parole system, originated the public defender system, and at the age of 81, she was the first woman to run for governor of California, although she did not win the election.

It would be another 50 years before women of color were admitted as lawyers in California, notably:

Annie Coker: The first African American female lawyer in California in 1929 

Chiyoko Sakamoto (Takahashi): The first Japanese American female lawyer in California in 1938 

Emma Ping Lum: The first Chinese American female lawyer in California around 1946 

Mary Virginia Orozco: The first Latina female lawyer in California in 1962

Eleanor Nisperos: The first Filipina American female lawyer in California in 1971 

 Abby Abinanti: The first Native American (Yurok) female lawyer in California in 1974 

Norma Samra: The first Indian American female lawyer in California in 1986 

I have to believe that all of these first women had many similar attributes, certainly the fortitude to become attorneys in California. This month we celebrate Women’s History Month, recognizing the incredible contributions women have made to our nation and throughout history, and today.

Many of our Sections honor women lawyers, including the Women in Tax annual celebration by the Taxation Section and coming up soon, Antitrust and Unfair Competition Law Section’s event, Celebrating Women in Competition Law in California.

Thank you, to the extraordinary mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law who have worked so hard to lead the way for the rest of us. May we continue in your tradition.