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There are few figures in the legal world who are more recognisable than Gloria Allred, one of the profession’s most feared combatants. She’s built a reputation over more than forty years of high-profile, high-stakes lawsuits involving many of the most famous and powerful figures in the world of entertainment and sports. She’s well known for her skillful use of the media to bolster her cases against prominent media figures, but perhaps more important are the people she chooses as her clients; minority victims of discrimination, exploitation and violence who this Secret Superhero Allred has been helping to find justice throughout her career. 

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THE MAKINGS OF A LAWYER

Gloria was born Gloria Bloom in 1941 in Philadelphia, into a working-class Jewish family; her father was a salesman, selling photo enlargements door to door. The Blooms worked hard to send their only child to college, and this eventually took Gloria to New York, where she studied for a masters degree before moving to Los Angeles in 1966, where she taught in the district of Watts. She was caught up in the civil rights movement and these early years were vital in developing her understanding of social justice, and desire to fight for the underdog.

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Another factor that contributed to that developing sense of justice happened that same year, when she was on holiday in Acapulco; she was raped at knifepoint, and subsequently forced by the lack of legal alternatives into having a back alley abortion. This traumatic experience helped to influence her decision to leave teaching and become a lawyer two years later. By 1975, she had earned her J.D. and was admitted to the California State Bar, and much of her early career was spent fighting for abortion rights.  

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AN EXPENSIVE MISTAKE

Allred’s formidable nature as a legal opponent - and her love of eye-catching stunts designed to garner media attention -  was apparent from early in her career. One notable incident occurred in 1981 when she presented California State Senator John G. Schmitz with a chastity belt during a series of hearings he was chairing on abortion. Schmitz unwisely responded by drafting a press release describing Allred as a “slick butch lawyeress”, and found himself on the end of a libel suit which he eventually lost after five years of legal wrangling. 

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Allred’s status as a celebrity in her own right took a little longer to establish, but her work representing Nicole Brown Simpson’s family in the 1995 OJ Simpson murder trial catapulted her to international fame. That fame was a valuable weapon in the hands of Allred, and she used it to challenge a great many celebrity figures on behalf of less famous clients. These have included the likes of Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Cosby. Her willingness to go up against powerful figures with enormous financial resources in high-stakes battles over reputation has never diminished over the years, and her continued successes are testament to the efficacy of her - often controversial - tactics, but this high-profile work obscures some of Allred’s more valuable and influential contributions in the courtroom.

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JUST DESSERTS

From the earliest years Allred has focused on civil rights issues and the defense of minority communities, and her work in these areas has helped to shape perceptions in society, preparing the ground for movements such as the #MeToo protests. An early example from 1983 was the Rolon v. Kulwitzky case, where a lesbian couple had been denied service at a Los Angeles restaurant called Papa Choux. The dramatic case was played out in the media as much as the courtroom, with the restaurant’s owners taking out full-page newspaper ads to plead their case. Allred, meanwhile, made regular public statements in which she famously announced “We intend to end this dinner discrimination and give Papa Choux’s their just desserts.” Allred won the case on appeal, which is now seen as a landmark decision.

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Allred also went out of her way to help transgender clients, including Jenna Talackova, who had been thrown out of the Miss Universe Canada beauty pageant for not being a “Naturally born” female. The news that Allred was representing Talackova was sufficient to persuade the Miss Universe competition to reverse their decision, rather than engage ina potentially messy public battle. Allred had also represented the family of Gewn Araujo, a transgender teen who was brutally murdered, and successfully saw all four of the accused brought to justice.  

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Throughout her career, Gloria has sought to take advantage of the media’s gaze to help her clients win, and while this has almost always been beneficial to those clients, her work has also had a wider impact. Since the 1970s, Gloria’s been focusing tabloid media attention on the broader issues that frame her cases, whether that be racial discrimination, sexual exploitation, or violence and discrimination over sexual orientation, and in the process has helped to shape society’s understanding that the victims of these crimes deserve justice. Her work in the twentieth century (and beyond) has helped to prepare the ground for the social justice movements of this century, a fitting legacy for a Secret Superhero whose origin story lies in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

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