Building Honors State’s Pioneer Female Lawyer

The first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court officially renamed the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building on Friday in honor of the first female lawyer in California: Clara Shortridge Foltz.

At an afternoon ceremony attended by about 200 lawyers and judges, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor praised Foltz for overcoming prejudice and hardship throughout her career and paving the way for others.

“She was really the pioneer for women lawyers,” O’Connor said during rededication of the 19-floor concrete and glass Temple Street building, perhaps best known as the trial site for the O.J. Simpson murder case. “When she saw a wrong, she worked to correct it.”

Foltz, born in 1849, was the first woman admitted to the state’s first law school, the first woman to serve as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County, the first female notary public in the state and a founder of the public defender system in the United States.

She also drafted the legislation and lobbied the California Legislature to change the law restricting women and minorities from practicing law. When her bill came up for a vote, she rode to Sacramento in the caboose of a cattle train, with biscuits and boiled eggs in her pockets.

“She was truly a woman of courage, dedication and foresight who viewed the profession that she expended so much effort to become a part of as a means of serving the public,” California’s Chief Justice Ronald M. George said.

Foltz’s struggles were not only professional; she was a single mother who raised five children. Before her death in 1934, she wrote, “I have lost for myself more than I have gained for all women. All the pleasure of my young motherhood I sacrificed for woman’s cause.”

Her great-grandson, Truman Toland, said renaming the building for Foltz was an incredible, if not overdue, honor.

“I don’t think even we realized what Clara had done,” said Toland, who painted a portrait of Foltz that will hang in the building. “It’s just unbelievable.”

Foltz’s professional credo succinctly summed up her accomplishments and attitude: “I am a woman and I am a lawyer--and what of it?”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors decided to rename the courthouse last spring on a proposal by Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, a lawyer and the first woman on the board. The building was opened in 1972 on the site of the old county courthouse, built in 1891, where Foltz practiced law. Fotz had a picture of the old courthouse on one of her scrapbooks.

During Friday’s ceremony, Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said, “Welcome back, Clara. Thank you for inspiring us all.”