By Mac Shorty
Guest Columnist
Los Angeles is a city built on resilience, creativity and community. In places like Watts, South Los Angeles and Boyle Heights, families and small businesses are doing everything they can to build a better future — despite rising costs, shrinking margins and decades of disinvestment.
But while we’re working to grow and uplift our neighborhoods, there’s a quiet threat making it even harder: abusive lawsuits that harm small businesses, drain resources, and make it more challenging for hard-working Angelenos to get ahead.
California is ground zero for lawsuit abuse. Our state has become a magnet for trial lawyers who exploit legal loopholes to shake down small businesses, nonprofits and working-class property owners, which impacts the lives and livelihoods of real people.
These aren’t legitimate claims brought by real victims — they’re mass-filed, copy-and-paste lawsuits designed to force quick settlements from vulnerable folks, even when no actual harm has occurred. Why? Because it’s cheaper to pay up than to fight back in court. The system, in these cases, effectively rewards bad actors and punishes honest people, creating a cycle of fear and financial insecurity.
We see it all the time in South LA. A family-run business gets hit with a lawsuit over a minor technicality — not because they caused harm, but because it’s an easy target. And they aren’t alone.
Across the state, serial plaintiffs and their lawyers have filed thousands of fraudulent suits against small businesses based on trivial issues, forcing owners to pay thousands to simply make the case go away. California makes up only 11% of the country’s population, yet it sees almost 30% of all American With Disabilities Act lawsuits filed across the United States.
Community-serving organizations — whether clinics looking to expand services or nonprofits aiming to build affordable housing — face the same kind of legal threat environment. Even the possibility of a lawsuit can delay hiring, freeze investment, or stall projects entirely, siphoning precious time and resources away from serving the community. These lawsuits often have nothing to do with justice and everything to do with money.
The cost isn’t just legal fees. It’s lost momentum, abandoned projects, higher prices and slipping opportunities in the very communities that need them most.
These lawsuits are yet another barrier in a long line of systemic obstacles that keep Black and brown neighborhoods from building wealth and stability. For wealthy areas, a legal threat is just a nuisance — but in our communities, it’s a wrecking ball that can erase years of hard-won progress.
Lawmakers need to take this problem seriously. We need common-sense reforms that protect everyday Californians from being caught in the crosshairs of bad-faith litigation. That means strengthening penalties for predatory lawsuits, increasing transparency around who’s filing and why, and shielding community-serving organizations from being buried in legal threats over technicalities.
Some will say tort reform helps corporations at the expense of consumers. But we’re not talking about letting big companies off the hook — we’re talking about stopping exploitative lawsuits that hurt working families, community leaders and local businesses.
We’re talking about making the system work as it should — promoting equality, addressing true injustices, and stopping bad actors before they have the chance to cause greater damage. The people of Los Angeles and beyond deserve a legal system that they can trust — one where effort, innovation, and community investment are rewarded, not punished.
At Community RePower, we know that real change starts from the ground up. But that change is harder to build when you’re fighting not just poverty, but a legal system stacked against you.
It’s time to restore balance, protect progress, and give L.A.’s communities of color a real shot at growing. By standing together and advocating for meaningful reform, we can ensure that hard work and dedication are not undercut by opportunistic litigation and that every neighborhood has the chance to thrive.
The Rev. Mac Shorty is the founder of Community RePower Movement, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing people together from across the country for the betterment of community, businesses and religious centers, while providing a voice to underserved communities.
LIFTOUT
We need common-sense reforms that protect everyday Californians from being caught in the crosshairs of bad-faith litigation.
