John Ota, a Senior Attorney with Minami Tamaki LLP, started as a law clerk in 1995 and became an Associate in 1998. His area of practice is civil litigation, with emphasis on employment litigation. Mr. Ota grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was admitted to the California State Bar in 1998, and is also admitted to practice in the U.S. District Courts in the Northern, Eastern and Central Districts of California, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Federal Circuit, and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon from 1968-1970 and the University of California, Berkeley, from 1970-1973, majoring in sociology. In December 1997 he received his law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Mr. Ota has represented many employees, including federal and other public employees, in their discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination and overtime claims. His employment practice includes actions in state and federal courts and before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Merit Systems Protection Board and other federal and state administrative agencies. Published cases in which Mr. Ota was counsel include: White v. Lee, 227 F.3d 1217 (9th Cir. 2000), Murakami v. United States, 52 Fed.Cl. 232 (2002), and Christofferson v. United States, 64 Fed.Cl. 316 (2005).

Mr. Ota has had a long history of community involvement in civil rights issues. He was one of the leaders of the National Coalition for Redress/Reparations in the successful campaign to enact the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This Act provided for a government apology and compensation for Japanese Americans who were rounded up and forced into U.S. internment camps during World War II. Mr. Ota also participated in the landmark case of Soko Bukai v. YWCA of San Francisco, a high profile dispute in which Japanese Americans defeated efforts by the San Francisco YWCA to sell off the Japantown YWCA building to private developers. The building had been built in the 1930s by the Japanese American community and was held in trust by the YWCA because Japanese immigrants were prohibited by law from owning property at that time.