Julie Ann Su

Su was the secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency under Governor Gavin Newsom (D) from 2019 to 2021. She has faced criticism for mismanagement of California’s COVID-19 state unemployment plan, costing the state up to $30 billion in loses to fraud. ⁸ Su also worked for former California Governor Jerry Brown (D) from 2011 to 2019 as labor commissioner, ⁹ has been called “hostile to small business” ¹⁰ by some business organizations, and has been described as a “genuine progressive who knows the Labor Department inside and out” by the left-of-center publication American Prospect. ¹¹

Su has supported the critical race theory-inspired concept of social justice since at least 1989, ¹ has expressed the belief that the American workforce needs to “prioritize” the critical race theory-influenced concept of racial justice, ¹² and has said that all children “benefit from diversity, inclusion, and racial justice.” ¹³ In 2002, Su co-authored a paper that endorsed critical race theory, opposed “colorblindness and individuality,” and argued the paradigm surrounding civil rights struggles constricts debate and requires a “handling of coalitional claims” against what she called “dominant white interests.” ¹⁴

In April 2025, Su joined the left-of-center think tank The Century Foundation as a full-time senior fellow specializing on labor issues. ¹⁵

Career

Julie Ann Su ¹ is a left-of-center labor activist and attorney who served as Deputy Secretary of Labor at the U.S. Department of Labor in the Biden administration. ⁶

On March 1, 2023, then-President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Su as the Secretary of Labor to replace departing Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh.^{5 6} Her nomination was officially sent to the U.S. Senate for consideration on March 14, 2023. ^{4 16 17}

The left-of-center publication American Prospect has compared her to Franklin Roosevelt Administration Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins ¹⁸ and described Su as a “genuine progressive who knows the Labor Department inside and out.” ¹¹ In a 2020 article, left-of-center magazine The Nation argued that Su will “stand in stark contrast” to Trump administration Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia if confirmed as the Deputy Secretary of Labor for the Biden administration. ¹⁹

California State Government

Prior to joining the Biden administration, Julie Su held several positions in the California state government starting in 2011. From January 2019 until January 2021, Su was the secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency under Governor Gavin Newsom (D). She also played a leading role on Newsom’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery and the Future of Work Commission. ^{19 20}

In her role as California Labor Secretary, Su faced criticism for her handling of California’s COVID-19 state unemployment plan, potentially costing the state up to $30 billion in fraud ⁸ and freezing or delaying up to one million unemployment claims at the same time. ²¹ Su has said that the system, officially called the Employment Development Department (EDD), was not prepared for the number of unemployment claims that were made. ²² She also said that California did not have “sufficient security measures in place to prevent” up to $31 billion in unemployment fraud while she was California labor secretary. ²³

Su also faced criticism from the International Franchise Association, a trade association for franchised businesses, for being “hostile to small business.” ¹⁰ She was also responsible for implementing the controversial California labor regulation known as AB5 that classified some “gig” workers as employees instead of as independent contractors. This legislation was opposed by companies including ridesharing apps Lyft and Uber ^{24 25 8} and food delivery service app DoorDash for targeting the independent-contract status of their workers while exempting news organizations and other sectors that rely on freelancers. ²⁶  California Republicans including U.S. Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) wrote a letter to President Joe Biden citing this legislation to oppose her nomination to the Department of Labor. ²⁷ As California labor secretary, Su also pushed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to stop conducting immigration raids inside the Labor Commission Offices across the state. ¹⁹

Julie Su’s career in California state government began in 2011 when then-Governor Jerry Brown (D) appointed Su as California’s labor commissioner. ²⁸ Su worked in this role from 2011 until 2019 for the duration of Gov. Brown’s third and fourth terms as California governor. In this role, Su led lawsuits against port trucking companies and penalized garment, restaurant, and car wash industries. ^{29 30}

Acting Labor Secretary

Su’s nomination as Secretary of Labor was not confirmed by the United States Senate before the conclusion of the Biden administration. Despite the Senate action, Su was permitted to act as Secretary of Labor due to her Senate-confirmed position as Deputy Secretary of Labor. ³¹

In August 2023, Su claimed that “the fight for workers’ rights and civil rights go hand in hand” at an appearance at the annual NAACP convention. She also said that the Labor Department would be “embedding equity” in all its work and said that unionization would close the racial wealth gap. ³²

In February 2024, Su signed the Declaration on Algorithmic Bias in the World of Work with Spanish Second Vice President and Minister for Work and Social Economy Yolanda Díaz. The declaration aimed to combat racism and sexism in employment on digital platforms. ³³

In February 2024, Julie Su issued a Labor Department memo which allowed California’s Employment Development Department to write off more than $30 billion in fraudulent claims related to the COVID-19 CARES Act expanded unemployment program without repaying the federal government. At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Su was the head of the Employment Development Department. ³⁴

In May 2024, Su declined to call on FDIC chair Martin Gruenberg to resign or commit to investigating more than 500 complaints of workplace bullying, racial discrimination and sexual harassment at the agency in a U.S. Senate hearing. Su instead claimed that sexual harassment was handled by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. ³⁵

In October 2024, the American Federation of Government Employees’ National Council of Field Labor Locals (NCFLL), which represented 7,500 Labor Department employees, attacked Su for engaging in “bad faith delay tactics” and demanded that she negotiate telework proposals in good faith. Although NCFLL claimed there was no indication that Su was not “personally to blame”, the union attacked the Biden administration for its hypocrisy of publicly supporting unions and collective bargaining but allegedly not engaging fairly with them. ³⁶

In November 2024, Su approved a $635 million bailout of a Detroit carpenters’ union’s pension fund. Experts criticized the bailout because it did not address the underlying issues that led to the underfunding of the pension fund in the first place. ³⁷

In January 2025, Su gave an interview where she denied that the Biden administration’s support for weather-dependent energy subsidies led to Democratic defeat in 2024, claiming those projects needed more time to demonstrate their benefits. She also reiterated her opposition to mass deportations of illegal immigrants calling them “anti-worker.” ³⁸

Post-Biden Administration

In April 2025, Julie Su joined the left-of-center think tank The Century Foundation as a full-time senior fellow specializing in labor issues and “advancing equity in the economy.” The Century Foundation hired Su, and numerous other former Biden administration staffers, to “fight back against the potential harms of the Trump administration’s education, health care, and economic policy agenda and chart a vision for progress going forward.” ¹⁵

In April 2025, Su wrote a column criticizing Labor Department staffing cuts by the second Trump administration. She argued that the cuts amounted to the administration stripping the Labor Department to benefit corporations and claimed the staffing cuts would threaten workers’ retirement and healthcare due to decreased Labor Department enforcement. ³⁹

In April 2025, Su told Harvard University students to “fight for federal government employees” and claimed that job cuts in the federal government were part of a push for “small government and privatization.” ⁴⁰

Support for Critical Race Theory

Julie Su has supported the critical race theory-inspired concept of social justice since at least 1989, when she “agitated and organized and engaged in civil disobedience to promote more curricular attention to matters of social justice” while she was a student at Stanford. ¹ Su argued the American workforce needs to “prioritize” the critical race theory-influenced concept of racial justice. ¹² She has also said that all children “benefit from diversity, inclusion, and racial justice” ¹³ and posted on Twitter that she does “racial justice work.” ⁴¹

In 2002, Su co-authored a paper that endorsed critical race theory, opposed “colorblindness and individuality,” and also said that the current paradigm surrounding civil rights struggles constricts debate and requires a “handling of coalitional claims” against what she calls “dominant white interests.” ¹⁴

This article also poses a hypothetical question that asks “what might critical race theory offer to learn from groups engaged in forging alliances and building coalitions,” referring to collaboration between left-of-center groups with a focus on gender, class, sexual orientation, disability, and other dynamics. ¹⁴

Su’s article contrasts the mandates of traditional “legal justice” which she says has “narrow notions of redress” with “the goals of progressive political and social activism,” which she says emphasize “changes in living conditions and institutional power structures.” The article also suggests that the traditional nature of law in the U.S. “needs to change.” ¹⁴

Su’s co-authored article also claims that “unrelenting conservative attacks by Republican presidents, legislative majorities, and federal and state judges on civil rights, affirmative action, and desegregation, with the complicity and active participation of so-called liberal leaders and Democratic Party members, have rolled back many civil rights gains.” ¹⁴

The piece also states that critical race theory needs to examine how coalitions addressing left-of-center legal and political issues can survive in the face of opposition and identifies critical race theory as a framework for diverse alliances to combat opposition to affirmative action, stem racial and gender violence, challenge “resegregation in housing and schools,” and “stop immigrant- and gay-bashing.” ¹⁴

In March 2025, Su wrote an op-ed comparing opposition to critical race theory inspired diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and allowing children access to non-age-appropriate media that she called “book bans” to the Civil Rights Era’s Bloody Sunday, at which Alabama police viciously attacked peaceful marchers. Su argued in the piece that she was a beneficiary of DEI programs, and she called on Democrats to go even further left in future campaigns in supporting expanded unionization and expanded immigration. ⁴²

Early Career

Julie Su worked as the litigation director at left-of-center Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles (then called Asian Pacific American Legal Center, APALC) from 1994 until she joined the administration of then-Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) in 2011. ^{43 44}

In 1994, Su joined APALC on a fellowship paid for by the left-of-center Skadden Foundation that allowed Su to work on the critical race theory-influenced concepts of racial and economic justice for the first ten years of her career. ^{1 19} As an undergraduate student at Stanford, Su “agitated and organized and engaged in civil disobedience” to promote the critical race theory-influenced concept of social justice. ^{45 46}

In 1995, Su represented a group of approximately 70 Thai workers in a federal lawsuit alleging employer abuse in the California garment industry. While at APALC, Su also worked on education, college admissions, and hiring practices issues ^{47 48} and co-founded Sweatshop Watch. ⁴⁷

In 1997, Su was selected as one of the “Pioneers in Women’s History” by then-President Bill Clinton. ⁴⁹

In 2006, she won the Gruber Foundation’s  Women’s Rights Prize. ⁵⁰ Su also received a received a “genius grant” from the left-of-center John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2001 ^{9 47} and received  the Reebok International Human Rights Award in 1996. ⁴⁴

Endorsements for Biden Administration Appointments

Julie Su’s nomination to both the Secretary of Labor and Deputy Secretary of Labor roles were widely supported by left-of-center organizations, labor unions, and elected Democrats. ⁹ Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called Su’s nomination for Secretary of Labor “terrific” and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also supported her nomination. ⁵ The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) strongly supported the announcement of Su’s nomination. ^{51 52}

The left-of-center National Education Association (NEA) teachers union “enthusiastically supported” Su’s nomination ⁵³ and circulated a petition in support of Su’s confirmation. ⁵⁴ Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), ^{55 48} the AFL-CIO labor union federation, ⁵⁶ immigration expansionist group National Immigration Law Center, ⁵⁷ United Farm Workers of America, ⁵⁸ Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California, California Teachers Association, California Federation of Teachers, California Coalition for Worker Power, National Employment Law Project, Chinese Progressive Association, California Alliance for Retired Americans, Centro De Los Derechos Del Migrante, Partnership for Working Families, Unite Here, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) 1245, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), ⁵⁹ Jobs with Justice (JWJ), Center on Policy Initiatives, National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDAW), Working Partnerships USA, National Partnership for Women and Families, Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, One Fair Wage, Asian American Action Fund, ⁶⁰ and left-wing groups and labor organizations have all either endorsed or supported Su for Secretary of Labor. ^{61 62}

In 2020, Su received support from several left-of-center organizations to be the Biden administration’s first Secretary of Labor argued she would “maximize the impact the Department of Labor can have in addressing economic inequality and racial justice.” ⁹

Personal Information

Julie Ann Su ¹ was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1969. ¹⁹ Su received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science ⁶³ from Stanford University in 1991 ^{46 47} and a law degree from Harvard University Law School in 1994. ²⁸