Rick Chavez Zbur

Executive Director, Equality California
He/Him/His

Rick Chavez Zbur is a distinguished lawyer with a long history of advocacy for LGBTQ+ and environmental causes. Zbur has served as Executive Director of Equality California since 2014, when he retired from Latham & Watkins, one of the world’s largest and most respected law firms, where he was a senior partner and practiced law for 29 years.

At Equality California, Zbur has led the organization through a period of significant growth and an expansion of its mission to include advancing civil rights and social justice for the diverse communities to which LGBTQ+ people belong — communities of color, communities of faith, immigrants, women and people living with HIV.

A lifelong LGBTQ+ trailblazer, Zbur was Latham & Watkins’ first openly gay attorney and first openly gay partner. He worked in all aspects of the firm’s environmental, land and resource practice, including leading the firm’s extensive work before the California Coastal Commission.

Zbur was cited as one of Southern California’s top ten environmental attorneys by the Los Angeles Business Journal in its 2009 “Who’s Who in Law” feature. He was also cited as a leading environmental attorney by the Los Angeles Business Journal in 2008 and 2009.

He took a leave of absence from his firm in January 1996 to run for Congress in California’s 38th Congressional District, where he became the first openly gay, non-incumbent to win a contested primary for U.S. Congress. At the time, his campaign was one of the larger Congressional campaigns in the country with approximately 14 staff members and a budget of over $1 million. His experience running for office, combined with his years in practice as a senior partner at Latham & Watkins and his significant advocacy work have made Zbur well known in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

Zbur is Chair Emeritus of the board of the California League of Conservation Voters, the political action arm of California’s environment community, where he leads the organization and oversees its strategic direction. CLCV is a leading environmental organization that utilizes political strength to protect and improve the environmental quality of California. He formerly served on the board of Lambda Legal and was a founding director and vice president at the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation.

A proud co-parent to three children with their lesbian co-parents, Zbur grew up in a farming community in the Rio Grande Valley south of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his mother, Erlinda Chavez Zbur and her family have lived for generations.

Zbur is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.

Equality California Website