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Ms. Dietrich has been an attorney with the Employment Unit of Community Legal Services, Philadelphia, since 1987. She became CLS’ Managing Attorney for Public Benefits and Employment in 1997, and its Litigation Director in 2014. A focus of Ms. Dietrich’s work has been issues involving the employment of people with criminal records. She has co-counseled with Francis & Mailman on numerous class actions brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act against background screeners, including for the inclusion of expunged cases on background checks.
Others activities involving criminal records include: (1) representation of hundreds of people who have been denied employment because of their criminal records; (2) led CLS’s legislative advocacy on Pennsylvania’s innovative Clean Slate law (Act 56) to seal more than 30 million minor criminal cases through automation; (3) leads CLS’s work in the National Record Clearing Project, to provide technical assistance nationwide for provision of expungement and sealing representation; and (4) co-authorship of One Strike and You’re Out: How We Can Eliminate Barriers to Economic Security and Mobility for People with Criminal Records (Center for American Progress, 2014).
In 2019, Ms. Dietrich received numerous awards for her work on Clean Slate, including from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, and the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network. Among her other awards are: the Pennsylvania Prison Society (2002), the Philadelphia Bar Association (2005), the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (2011); and the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2016).