Equality California
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U.S. State of California
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| Founded | 1998 |
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| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California |
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Area served
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California |
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Key people
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Rick Zbur, executive director |
| Website | eqca.org |
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Formerly called
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California Alliance for Pride and Equality (CAPE) and Marriage Equality California |
Equality California or EQCA is a non-profit civil rights organization that advocates for the rights of LGBT people in California. It is the largest statewide LGBT organization in the United States and the largest member of the Equality Federation. The organization is currently based in Los Angeles.
Equality California is an umbrella organization for the Equality California Institute, a 501(c)(3) organization that conducts public education programs for members of the LGBT community and the general public, as well as for healthcare workers, educators and public policymakers; and Equality California, a 501(c)(4) that maintains three political action committees (PACs), and, as of September 2016 has sponsored passage of more than 118 laws in the California Legislature expanding LGBT civil rights in the state.
Equality California's leadership includes Executive Director Rick Zbur, and is supported by the separate boards of Equality California and Equality California Institute, as well as the Equality Council, a body of LGBT community leaders and allies. Zbur retired from his senior partnership with the law firm Latham & Watkins, where he was the first openly gay partner, to become Equality California's executive director.
When Zbur assumed the position of the organization's executive director in 2014, a rapid string of LGBT civil rights victories made it clear that a victory in the two-decade struggle to win marriage equality appeared imminent and that the priorities of LGBT organizations would have to evolve if they were to survive. In the summer of 2014, months before the historic 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, Zbur met with boardmembers to assess the organization, its priorities and its place in the LGBT civil rights landscape. The result was a broadly refocused mission designed to address the many, well-documented disparities in health and well-being that LGBT people suffer in comparison to the general population, especially the community's most marginalized members: people of color, the transgender community and LGBT undocumented immigrants.
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Wikipedia