Tara Borelli
CONTACT: Western Regional Office, 213-382-7600
Tara Borelli is a Staff Attorney in the Western Regional Office of Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people with HIV. Borelli joined Lambda Legal in July 2006, bringing with her experience in both corporate law practice settings and in the nonprofit legal advocacy arena.
Borelli's work at Lambda Legal has included matters involving asylum claims, Washington's anti-discrimination law, constitutional claims for public employees seeking domestic partnership benefits in Washington, California's domestic partnership law and parenting issues.
In the area of relationship recognition, Borelli represented firefighter paramedics and a lead 911 dispatcher in Bellevue in deGroen, et al. v. City of Bellevue, et al., and two high-ranking police officers in Redmond seeking domestic partner benefits from their city employers. Both matters resulted in settlement agreements providing equal family benefits to domestic partners of those cities' employees. Borelli also helped secure equal treatment for California registered domestic partners, serving as co-counsel before California's Fourth Appellate District in Ellis v. Arriaga, which recognized the right of domestic partners to putative spouse protections.
Borelli has served as a Lecturer in Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and co-authors a monthly "Ask Lambda Legal" column that appears in Frontiers Magazine.
Borelli began her legal career as a litigation associate with the Los Angeles office of Proskauer Rose LLP, a leading national law firm, and subsequently worked for the intellectual property and technology firm Newman & Newman LLP in Seattle, Washington. Borelli has also worked on family law issues involving youth as a Senior Staff Attorney at Break the Cycle, an organization dedicated to empowering youth to build lives and communities free from domestic and dating violence.
Borelli received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude from the University of California, Davis, and her J.D. from Boalt Hall, the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Borelli is a member of the State Bars of California and Washington.
