03/31/2026
Based in Santa Maria, Adrian Andrade has dedicated much of his legal career to serving and fighting for farmworker communities throughout California. After graduating from UCLA Law in 1976, he joined California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) in El Centro. In late 1978, he moved his growing family to Santa Maria to lead that CRLA office. His sister Vibiana Andrade joined him for a time at CRLA. In 1982, Adrian and another CRLA attorney (Steve Belasco, now a retired judge) created Andrade & Belasco.
At CRLA, Adrian fought for housing rights and workers’ rights, like other CRLA attorneys focusing on representing the rural poor community, in individual cases as well as in impact litigation, challenging laws, and government policies that failed to protect farm workers. The emphasis on impact litigation and giving voice to a community was CRLA’s defining strength, equally effective as organized labor. (T. Cozzens, Ronald Reagan v. CRLA: Politics, Power, and Poverty Law. California Legal History, vol. 15, p. 175 (2020)).
For more than two decades, Adrian served on CRLA’s Board, chairing it for five years, during times of great challenge to the very existence of CRLA. Even in private practice, Adrian routinely co-counseled with CRLA on farmworker rights cases. In 1997, Adrian secured a landmark verdict widely recognized as the first jury award for sexual harassment won by a female farmworker in Cecilia Romero v. Santa Maria Berry Farms. That result was written about in the Wall Street Journal and cited by the United Nations, Economic and Social Council in a 1998 Report of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Women Migrant Workers. We celebrate Adrian’s tireless dedication to farmworker rights, which has made a difference beyond the impact on his clients’ lives.
