Oregon Consumer Justice

Policy: over the past year, the policy team has made significant strides, expanding our ability to engage in impactful state and federal work. We've created new roles, including separate directors for state and federal policy, and have seen the benefits of hiring permanent staff in the fall. We've also invested in building the next generation of advocates by launching our policy fellow program, hiring a year-long fellow to provide an emerging professional with in-depth experience in consumer justice policy. We completed our third year of our policy internship program, which allows us to mentor aspiring advocates and bring fresh perspectives to our organization. We partnered with the portland state university school of social work to host a master's student for a nine-month placement. See schedule othis year, we also hosted our first pre-session policy summit, bringing community partners together for a deep dive into key consumer issues. These efforts, along with our other work, led to huge legislative wins in the 2025 session, where we supported the passage of 18 pro-consumer bills.

Communications + engagement: last summer, we publicly announced the rollout of our new educational tools and access to justice solutions to provide oregonians with greater support to protect themselves against predatory practices and law-breaking companies. One way we continue to center the voices of consumers is through our statewide surveys, where we uplift the findings to support pro-consumer policy and craft responsive and relevant educational tools (including our expanded resource library, including a consumer protection timeline and explainer videos). We also partnered with impacted consumers identified through the survey to share their stories directly with lawmakers and advocate for stronger protections for all of us. See schedule owe hosted two fair learning forums, free educational events for advocates and legal professionals, covering topics like law changes and trauma-informed practices to better show up for oregon consumers. Ocj also published two new issues of our consumer confidence comics, focusing on debt collection and shipping thousands of free copies (in english and spanish) statewide.

Education: during the past year, ocj worked to connect the legal community with community members to develop an understanding of the issues oregon consumers face and build local leadership to create solutions. This was accomplished through a research partnership with the university of oregon through consumer protection grants as outlined in our founding court order. Additionally, we engaged over 230 attorneys, judges, law students, legal professionals, and advocates during our two fair learning forum events and provided 65 scholarships to consumer justice attorneys to attend national consumer law center's consumer rights litigation conference and spring training.