Gladys Limón

Gladys Limón is an environmental justice and civil rights attorney with over 20 years of experience in legal, policy, and community-based work. She most recently served as Executive Director of the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA), a coalition of ten community-based organizations across California working to advance environmental justice in state policy. Under Gladys’ direction, CEJA achieved substantial growth and significant policy and political victories.

Gladys’ legal career has centered on social justice impact litigation. As a senior staff attorney at Communities for a Better Environment, she brought an unprecedented environmental and civil rights lawsuit on behalf of youth of color groups against the City of Los Angeles challenging the rubber-stamping of oil drilling projects in neighborhoods, resulting in the City’s issuance of a robust administrative guidance policy that provides environmental and anti-discrimination protections. Gladys represented CEJA as lead attorney in a challenge to a proposed fourth gas-fired power plant in the EJ community of Oxnard – her hometown. Through deep community coalition work, the power plant proposal was defeated and was replaced with the construction of one of the largest battery energy storage facilities in the nation. Gladys has extensive experience working on behalf of immigrant communities, including as a staff attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF), where she litigated cases concerning anti-immigrant laws, racial discrimination, and the rights of low-income immigrant workers. Gladys’ social justice work is deeply rooted in her personal experiences as a daughter of Mexican immigrants and growing up in an environmental justice community. Gladys received her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2003 and served as a law clerk to the late Hon. Lawrence K. Karlton in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.