Berkeley Law Foundation is thrilled to announce the selection of our year-long fellow for 2015-2016, Tasha Hill.

Tasha’s project at the ACLU of Southern California will work with California county Sheriffs’ Offices to reduce discriminatory profiling of LGBT people, as well as discriminatory conditions of confinement for LGBT people in county jails.  LGBT people are around three times more likely to be incarcerated than their straight/cisgender peers.  Once incarcerated, LGB people are ten times more likely and transgender people are twenty times more likely to be sexually assaulted than other inmates.  The project will provide “Know Your Rights” information and trainings to at-risk LGBT people, including youth, transgender women, people of color, and gay men.  The project will also work to reform Sheriffs’ Offices through staff training, advocacy, and litigation.

Tasha brings substantial professional advocacy experience to her work with vulnerable LGBT populations, having served for over a decade as deputy and executive director for LGBT organizations in Las Vegas, Colorado Springs, and Washington, D.C. Tasha is a 2014 graduate of the UCLA School of Law. While in school she co-founded the Criminal Justice Society and was instrumental in bringing a California prison parole curriculum to UCLA. During her law school summers, Tasha interned for Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Southern California’s LGBT Project, focusing on criminal justice issues and equal marriage. Prior to her fellowship, she clerked for the Central District of California.