Candidate for
Superior Court Judge; County of Alameda; Seat 9

Dennis Hayashi has had a lifelong commitment to public service, providing leadership in the legal community for over 27 years. His experience and dedication to serving the greater good has led him to seek election as a judicial candidate in 2008. As a judge, he will be dedicated to maintaining the highest ethical standards of judicial service, where judges remain impartial and independent of the legislature and the Governor, and render decisions that are fair and free of bias.

Throughout his career, Dennis has worked to ensure fairness and the delivery of justice under the law. Appointed by President Clinton in 1993, Dennis served as the Director of the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he was responsible for ensuring that programs and activities receiving funds from the Department were in compliance with all civil rights laws. Overseeing its headquarters in Washington, DC, as well as 10 regional Civil Rights Offices, Dennis ensured the enforcement of laws such as the Age Discrimination Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

For five years, Dennis also served as the Director of the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the largest state civil rights agency in the country. There he led the Department's efforts to protect and safeguard the civil rights of all Californians, enforcing the Fair Employment and Housing Act, the Unruh Act, and the Ralph Act, which addresses acts of hate violence. In 2005, Dennis was elected to the Board of AC Transit, the third largest bus system in the country, where he worked to ensure affordable transportation to all residents of Alameda County.

His legal expertise is built upon a foundation of defending the rights of the underserved and underrepresented. While an attorney for more than ten years with the Asian Law Caucus, the oldest public interest legal organization in the country serving the Asian American community, Dennis litigated numerous cases on behalf of low-income residents who faced discrimination or harassment on the job, as well as threats to their civil liberties. During this time, he served as co-counsel in the famed case that successfully challenged and overturned Fred Korematsu's World War II conviction for refusing to report to a Japanese American internment camp. He also served as lead counsel in Henning v. Industrial Welfare Commission, which challenged the imposition of a subminimum wage for tipped employees in California. The case was decided by the California Supreme Court, and was ranked as one of the 10 most important Supreme Court decisions that year by the California State Bar Association.

Currently, Dennis is in private practice. He is a graduate of Occidental College and received his JD from Hastings College of Law. Dennis lives in Castro Valley with his wife Mary.