First-rate civil rights attorney, currently lead counsel in a class action accusing Wal-Mart of gender discrimination, the largest civil rights class action in U.S. history when certified in 2004; litigating a narrower glass-ceiling gender discrimination case against Wal-Mart competitor Costco Wholesale Corp.; negotiated large settlements with companies such as State Farm and Lucky Stores.
For the over two decades, Brad Seligman has been a civil rights attorney specializing in class action and individual employment and civil rights litigation, currently lead counsel in the Wal-Mart gender discrimination action, one of the largest civil rights class actions in US legal history.
Seligman is founder and director of the nonprofit foundation The Impact Fund, which specializes in complex public interest suits, and leveraged it into a national network of plaintiffs-side civil rights class attorneys; gave away grants worth $4 million last year.
Since 1992, the Fund has made over $2,700,000 in grants to support such litigation. From 1988-1991, he was the managing partner of the Oakland firm of Saperstein, Seligman, Mayeda and Larkin. From September 1991 until June 1994, he was of counsel to the firm’s successor, Saperstein, Mayeda and Goldstein. He was a senior Law Clerk to Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of the Eastern District of California.
He has successfully litigated over 40 civil rights class actions and countless individual employment cases including wrongful termination actions. He successfully tried and then settled the third largest sex discrimination class action recovery in history ($107.25 million) (Stender v. Lucky Stores, 803 F.Supp. 259 (N.D.Cal.1992) and settled the first major challenge to the use of psychological testing by a private employer (Soroka v. Dayton Hudson Corp dba Target Stores).
He has served on the Board of Directors of Equal Rights Advocates and California Rural Legal Assistance, and was chair of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund Development Partnership. He was the co-founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Plaintiffs Employment Lawyers Association. He serves on the litigation committee for the ACLU of Northern California and was on the Steering Committee for the California State Bar Association Legal Services Statewide Planning Committee. He taught employment discrimination law at Hastings College of the Law and Golden Gate University Law School. He is a 1978 graduate of Hastings College of the Law and was a Teaching Fellow at Stanford Law School.
