SALLY J. ABRAHAMSON is a partner at Outten & Golden LLP in Washington, DC. She is head of the Class Action Practice Group for the DC Office, and is co-chair of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer (LGBTQ) Workplace Rights Practice Group. Ms. Abrahamson represents individual employees facing discrimination based on their sexual orientation and litigates nationwide collective and class actions. Ms. Abrahamson represented plaintiffs in the Cote v. Walmart $7.5 million class action settlement on behalf of Walmart associates who were unable to obtain health insurance coverage for their same-sex spouses from Walmart from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2013.* Ms. Abrahamson was also a part of the O&G team litigating a class action against the Census Bureau that challenged the use of arrest and criminal history records as a screen for employment for 850,000 applicants. In 2016, the parties reached a landmark settlement that requires the Census Bureau to reform its hiring practices for the 2020 decennial census as well as creating a class-member Records Assistance Project housed at the Cornell University ILR School. In 2017, Public Justice awarded Class Counsel in the Census case with their prestigious Trial Lawyer of the Year Award.
Ms. Abrahamson has also litigated and settled class actions on behalf of restaurant and catering workers, retail employees, and skilled service technicians and repair employees. Ms. Abrahamson speaks frequently about issues facing LGBTQ employees and low wage workers.
Prior to joining the firm in 2012, Ms. Abrahamson litigated collective action and individual wage and hour cases at the D.C. Employment Justice Center, where she won two bench trials in D.C. Superior Court on behalf of two individual low wage restaurant workers.* After graduating from law school, Ms. Abrahamson was a law clerk to the Honorable Frank Montalvo, U.S. District Judge in the Western District of Texas, El Paso Division. In addition to serving as Judge Montalvo’s law clerk, Ms. Abrahamson drafted speeches and papers in Spanish on topics ranging from arbitration to due process in support of Judge Montalvo’s position on the Committee on International Judicial Relations. Ms. Abrahamson received her B.A. from Oberlin College and her J.D., with honors, from American University’s Washington College of Law where she received the Dean’s Award for Professional Responsibility – Outstanding Student in the Clinical Program for her work with the Domestic Violence Clinic.
(*Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.)
