Lilia García-Brower

by Site Developer
on August 24, 2026

Lilia García-Brower was born and raised in East Los Angeles. She is the proud mami of Maya and was appointed by Governor Newsom as the California State Labor Commissioner on July 29, 2019. As Labor Commissioner, she oversees the primary law enforcement agency for workplace wage and retaliation laws in the State. The Labor Commissioner’s Office has 20 offices throughout California and employs more than 600 hardworking public servants who investigate and adjudicate a wide range of workplace violations from unpaid wages to retaliation.

In 2020 she launched a multi-disciplinary outreach campaign, Reaching EVERY Californian. This campaign prioritizes educating worker populations in low wage industries who do not have a pathway to the LCO and may have a history of trauma. Under her leadership, the LCO has adopted a trauma informed approach to government enforcement. She is investing internally to improve the work environment at the LCO to render a more empathetic and effective enforcement agency. In addition, she initiated strategies to strengthen the agencies infrastructure, decrease processing delays, initiate early engagement, increase cross program collaboration and criminal prosecution of wage theft.

Specifically, in relation to immigrant workers, she was the first State agency leader to participate in the Federal Deferred Action Labor Enforcement program initiated by President Biden and implemented an immigration rapid response to reiterate California laws do not have border. In the last two years the LCO recovered over $140 million in wages for California workers.