An accomplished legislator in the California assembly,
Hilda L. Solis was elected to the United States House
from Southern California after she defeated an 18-year
incumbent in the Democratic primary. In Congress, Solis
championed the interests of working families and women
and focused on health care and environmental protection.
“People need to better understand that environmental
justice issues are issues of better health care, better
education, and an opportunity to begin to clean up their
communities and enhance economic development in a
positive way so that everybody can grow and prosper, and
children, whether they are rich or poor, can live in a clean
environment,” Solis once said.1
The third of seven children, Hilda Lucia Solis was born
on October 20, 1957, to Raul and Juana Sequiera Solis
in Los Angeles, California. Solis’s father was from Mexico
and her mother was from Nicaragua. They met in a U.S.
citizenship class. Her parents worked blue-collar jobs—her
father at a battery plant and mother on a toy assembly
line—and Solis assumed many of the duties around the
house early in life. “It wasn’t what you would call the all-American life for a young girl growing up,” she said. “We
had to mature very quickly.”2 She later remarked, “They came here with that hope—esperanza—of coming to a
country that would allow their children to prosper. I was
born here. But I still have the notion that my parents have
instilled in me, that they want a better life and they know
that there’s opportunities for us here.”3
After earning a BA in political science in 1979 from
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Solis
worked in the White House Office of Hispanic Affairs
during the Jimmy Carter administration. In 1981 she
earned a master’s in public administration from the
University of Southern California. Later that year, she
worked as a management analyst in the civil rights division
of the Equal Opportunity Program at the Office of
Management and Budget. In June 1982, Solis married Sam
Sayyad, a small business owner, and returned to Southern
California, where she became a field representative in the
office of Assemblyman Art Torres. She also worked as the
director of the California Student Opportunity and Access
Program in Whittier from 1982 until 1992.4
In 1985 Solis ran an intensive grassroots campaign
against better-known candidates for a position as a trustee
of Rio Hondo Community College. She walked the local
precincts and gained an upset victory.5 Solis served as a trustee for seven years, winning re-election in 1989. In
1992 she won election to the California state assembly,
serving there until 1994, when she was elected to the state
senate. She was the youngest member in the senate at the
time of her election and its first-ever Latina. Solis chaired
the industrial relations committee, where in 1996 she led
the fight to raise California’s minimum wage. As a state
senator, Solis also authored environmental protection
legislation, including a bill that created the San Gabriel
and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy to
preserve open spaces and habitat, restore the watershed,
and promote recreational activities.6 Her environmental
justice legislation earned her a John F. Kennedy Profile in
Courage Award in 2000. She was the first woman to receive
this award.7
In 2000, facing term limits in the California senate, Solis
challenged Matthew G. Martínez, a nine-term Democratic
House incumbent whose congressional district overlapped
much of her state senate district in the San Gabriel Valley.
Just east of Los Angeles, the district swept across the lower
two-thirds of the valley, taking in El Monte and West
Covina and part of Monterey Park. The campaign split the
backing of local Latino leaders as well as members of the
California congressional delegation. Solis won the support
of labor unions as well as the state party organization.8
Portraying herself as an active progressive in contrast to the
low-key Martínez, Solis prevailed in the March 7 primary
with 62 percent of the vote.9 She had no Republican
challenger in the general election and captured 80 percent
of the vote while three third-party candidates split the
remainder. She won her subsequent re-elections easily, and
ran unopposed for a fifth term in 2008.10
When Solis took her seat in the House in January 2001,
she won committee assignments to the Education and
Workforce Committee and the Resources Committee. Solis
was also tapped as the Democratic freshman class Whip for
the 107th Congress (2001–2003). In the 108th Congress
(2003–2005), she left her committees to become the first
Latina member of the powerful Energy and Commerce
Committee and the Ranking Member on its Environment
and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee.11 She also was
elected chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus
Task Force on Health, and was named Democratic vice
chair of the Congressional Caucus on Women’s Issues.
In the 109th Congress (2005–2007), she was elected
Democratic chair of the Congressional Caucus on Women’s Issues and chair of the Democratic Women’s
Working Group. She was the first Hispanic woman to hold
these positions.12
When Democrats gained control of the House in
the 110th Congress (2007–2009), Solis retained her
assignment on Energy and Commerce, and served as
vice chair of the Environment and Hazardous Materials
Subcommittee. Solis picked up additional seats on the
Natural Resources Committee and the Select Committee on
Energy Independence and Global Warming. She was also
appointed vice chair of the Democratic Steering and Policy
Committee, which made committee assignments and largely
set the party’s agenda.13
In the House, Solis advanced the environmental justice
agenda she had championed at the state level. In 2003
her San Gabriel River Watershed Study Act was signed
into law with bipartisan support. The bill authorized the
Interior Secretary to study the San Gabriel River to improve
the area’s recreational and environmental opportunities.
The area suffered from overdevelopment, the water was
frequently contaminated, and children often suffered from
asthma.14 “This will hopefully provide some type of relief
for over 2 million people that reside along the San Gabriel
River,” Solis noted on the House Floor. “I grew up there as
a child and spent many Saturday afternoons and vacations
in this area. Something we like to talk about is the fact that
so many people in that area come from largely low-income,
underrepresented areas, and do not have the ability or the
economic means to go to Sequoia, to go to Yosemite, to
even go to the beach… . Their recreation occurs in this
particular geographic area.”15
In 2005 Solis authored an amendment to prevent the
testing of pesticides on humans; the amendment was later
enacted into law. She carefully monitored Environmental
Protection Agency policies that affected her district,
where several Superfund sites (areas deemed by the federal
government to be especially polluted) were located and
where numerous wells had been shut down because rocket
fuel had seeped into the water table.16
Solis was also a longtime advocate for women’s rights,
and for victims of domestic violence and abuse. During her
tenure in the House, she raised awareness about the murders
of nearly 400 girls and women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico,
going back to 1993. She led a congressional delegation to
the city, located just five minutes from the U.S. border,
to help bring awareness to the brutality and the families’ heart-wrenching losses. In 2006 Solis, with support from
House colleagues Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and
Thomas Peter Lantos of California, authored a resolution
to condemn the murders, to express sympathy for the
families of the victims, and to urge the United States to
increase its efforts to end such human rights violations.
“I have always believed that attacks on women are attacks
on women everywhere,” Solis said on the House Floor.
“I felt compelled as a woman, as a Latina, as someone
who felt very strongly that, if we are going to stand up for
women’s rights in other continents of the world and the
Middle East and to defend Afghani women who are being
tortured by the Taliban, why not then also come forward
and support the women of Ciudad Juárez?”17 The House
passed the measure. In the 110th Congress, Solis sponsored
a similar measure expressing sympathy and concern about
the violence that had claimed the lives of more than 2,000
women and girls in Guatemala since 2001. This measure
also passed the House.18
As chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Task
Force on Health, Solis traveled across the country to
educate policymakers, advocates, and community leaders
about health needs in Hispanic communities. In the 109th
Congress, Solis was a lead coauthor of the Healthcare
Equality and Accountability Act, a bicameral bill addressing
minority health needs.19 During her eight years in the
House, she introduced more than 75 measures, many of
which pertained not only to environmental and women’s
issues but also to the concerns of recent immigrants, labor,
and access to health care. “I’ve always been a big believer
that government, if done right, can do a lot to improve the
quality of people’s lives,” Solis observed.20
In December 2008, President-elect Barack Obama
nominated Solis as Secretary of Labor.21 Solis resigned her
House seat on February 24, 2009, shortly after the U.S.
Senate confirmed her appointment. Solis served as the
first Latina Secretary of Labor until January 2013. In 2014
she successfully ran for the position of Los Angeles county
supervisor and was re-elected in 2018.22
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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