William R. Tamayo was appointed in 1995 as the Regional Attorney for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, San Francisco District. He currently directs the Commission’s litigation and legal program in Northern California, Northern Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Montana. He supervises a staff of 18 lawyers and nine support staff.
From 1979 – 1995 he was a staff attorney and the Managing Attorney for the Asian Law Caucus, Inc. of San Francisco where he emphasized the practice of immigration and nationality law and civil rights litigation and advocacy involving employment discrimination, immigrant rights, voting rights, and the Census. He was co-counsel for the plaintiff-intervenor in EEOC and Castrejon v. Tortilleria La Major, 785 F. Supp. 585 (E.D. Cal 1991) (undocumented workers are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and was on the legal team that developed the “self-petitioning provisions” for immigrant battered women under the Violence Against Women Act.