Outten & Golden Hires Past EEOC Chair, Civil Rights Lawyer Yang

Civil rights lawyer Jenny Yang is joining Outten & Golden in its DC office, the law firm announced Wednesday.

Yang, who held prominent roles at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Labor Department, said she aims to help workers protect their rights as the Trump administration overhauls the agencies.

“I’m excited to be part of this forward movement that we need to ensure we have robust civil rights protections when the federal government is dismantling its agencies,” Yang said in an interview.

Jenny Yang

Outten & Golden

Yang joins Outten & Golden, which focuses on representing workers in employment disputes. The firm recently helped secure a class settlement against Southwest Airlines Co. for more than 6,000 employees. It’s also representing Black financial advisors who brought race bias claims against Merrill Lynch.

Her addition to the firm comes during a federal pushback against diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and the type of civil rights cases Yang built her career on.

“We really need more private attorneys to protect workers’ rights in a time where the administration is pulling back and dismantling our historic infrastructures that protect workers’ rights,” Yang said.

Former President Joe Biden tapped Yang in 2021 to lead the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs within the Labor Department.

Yang also held the top role at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the Obama administration, where she spearheaded an initiative to collect pay data from private employers in a move to address pay disparities.

Yang expects more enforcement actions from state and local governments as the federal regulatory environment shifts.

The labor and employment firm is looking to represent workers and those government clients in private litigation that touch on matters including pay equity, gender-based issues.

“The administration can’t change the law, it can just choose not to enforce it in certain situations,” Yang said. “But then the private bar as well as local and state governments have an even more important role in stepping in to ensure our laws have meaning because they don’t enforce themselves.”

Labor agencies have already begun to shift priorities. President Donald Trump named Andrea Lucas as acting chair of the EEOC Jan. 20. Lucas is a Republican who has questioned corporate DEI’s legality and opposed certain workplace gender identity protections.

“There’s a concerted effort to misstate the law and to confuse employers into thinking that somehow it is against the law ... understanding the impact across different demographic groups,” Yang said.