In the spring and early summer of 2016, an attorney named Rogelio Morales filed 11 gender-discrimination lawsuits against hair salons and dry-cleaning establishments in Riverside County, California. The plaintiff in the lawsuits was 31-year-old Mireya Arias, Morales’s girlfriend.
The complaints said that the businesses discriminated against Arias by charging her more for a haircut or getting a woman’s shirt cleaned than they charged a man for the same services. (Under California’s Gender Tax Repeal Act, businesses cannot “discriminate with respect to the price charged for services of similar or like kind against a person because of the person’s gender,” but they can charge different prices based upon the “amount of time, difficulty, or cost of providing services.”)
By July 2016, the business owners, who were Hispanic or Asian, had banded together and were being advised by Rosa Sahagun, an attorney and community activist. She helped arrange for another attorney, Bryan Owens, to represent several of the owners pro bono. (Owens and Sahagun married in 2018.)
Sahagun helped organize a protest outside Morales’s office on July 17, 2016. She would later tell the Riverside Press-Enterprise: “My opinion is that he perceived this sector of the community as an easy target … My opinion is that he thought these small businesses, immigrant-owned businesses, were not going to have the knowledge or resources to fight.”
During the protest, Morales came out of his office and used a bullhorn to address the crowd. He said that the complaints he filed were based on the law. Several witnesses also said Morales referred to the Hispanic protesters as having “Nopales en la frente,” or “Cactuses on the forehead,” and they would later testify that this was a derogatory term for Mexican immigrants.
After the protest, Morales posted numerous messages on Sahagun’s Facebook page, accusing her of being a fraud. He called her a “bitch lawyer.” Other accounts affiliated with Morales, including one called the Cali Rave Cartel, also posted on Sahagun’s page, with one poster saying they were coming to her office to get justice.
Sahagun filed a request for a restraining order against Morales on July 27, 2016. A judge granted the restraining order on August 30, 2016, ordering Morales not to harass Sahagun or contact her directly or through third parties. Still, both Morales and Sahagun had to pay attorney’s fees to each other because the judge denied Sahagun’s request for a stay-away order.
Sahagun said she started receiving Facebook messages from a woman she did not know, asking Sahagun when she was going to pay the attorney fees to Morales. One message said, “I heard the federal system will go bad or be bad for you,” and another said she would lose her law license if she didn’t pay Morales. Sahagun contacted the police.
Riverside Police Detective Dave Smith investigated, obtaining search warrants for the Facebook pages of the woman and Cali Rave Cartel. The IP address for the device used to send the messages connected with Morales’s law firm.
Separately, Morales had filed his own request for a restraining order against Owens, several of Owens’s clients, and a newspaper that catered to the Hispanic community. A judge denied his request and awarded attorney fees to the defendants if Owens would provide the court with a detailed accounting of those fees. Morales then sent an email to Owens saying that he would file a federal lawsuit against Owens and the others if they tried to collect the attorney fees.
On April 20, 2017, Riverside City police arrested Morales and Arias, charging them with burglary, extortion, and attempted grand theft. Morales faced more than 60 charges, including for his actions involving Owens and Sahagun. Arias’s charges were limited to her role as the plaintiff in the lawsuits and in visiting the businesses to obtain services. In a release announcing the arrests, the police department said its “Lengthy investigation determined Mr. Morales and Ms. Arias would enter these businesses with the clear intent of extortion.”
The joint trial of Arias and Morales began in late November 2018 in Riverside County Superior Court. By then, the two had married.
Several of the business owners testified about their interactions with Arias and Morales.
Nelida D., who owned a hair salon, said that she cut their hair on April 30, 2016. Morales’s hair was already short, so she trimmed it, spending about 15 minutes, and charging him $10. Nelida said she spent 25-30 minutes with Arias and charged her $15. Four days later, Morales sued Nelida for gender discrimination, seeking $67,000 in damages. She testified that she already knew about Morales because she had heard about similar lawsuits. She said Morales called her after filing the lawsuit and said he would settle the case for $10,000. She said she declined the offer.
Nelida said she took part in the demonstration in front of Morales’s office. She said that Morales called the crowd “nopalito,” and said the demonstrators had the “nopales on your forehead.” Nelida said this was an offensive term for Mexican people, similar to being called a “wetback.”
Other business owners testified in a similar fashion.
A woman named Ednna A. testified for the state. Ednna was a long-time friend of Morales, and she said he reached out to her in 2016 with a business proposition. She said she met Morales, joined by Arias, at a restaurant where he outlined the plan. She testified that Morales said they would target “mom-and-pop” salons, first testing the businesses to see whether they charged different prices for men’s and women’s haircuts. Ednna said that Morales told her that he would file lawsuits against those salons.
According to Ednna, Morales said he was targeting immigrants because they had no money to defend themselves. She said she asked Morales why he didn’t go after the big chains. She said he answered, “We could, but they have money to lawyer up.” She said Morales tapped his chest and said, “My people are stupid.”
Ednna also said that Morales said he would target dry cleaners, often owned by people of Asian descent, whom he referred to “Chinitos.”
Ednna testified that she declined to help Morales. She also testified that he never told her that the lawsuits were unlawful or fraudulent. She said she called the police in 2017 after learning that the lawsuits had been filed. Because she wasn’t present when Arias or Morales visited the businesses, Ednna said she did not know whether gender discrimination had occurred at these establishments.
After the state presented its case, Morales and Arias moved to dismiss, arguing that the state had presented insufficient evidence. The state opposed the motion, telling Judge Samuel Diaz Jr. that there was enough evidence for the jury to determine whether Morales and Arias knew they lacked a cause of action when they filed the lawsuits. Judge Diaz asked whether there would be any expert testimony about whether the price differences charged by the business owners constituted gender discrimination. The prosecutor said that was for the jury to determine. Judge Diaz denied the motion to dismiss.
Morales, who represented himself, testified that although he had created the website for Cali Rave Cartel, the messages from that account to Sahagun were sent by a former employee. He said he didn’t stalk Sahagun and that the statements he posted on her Facebook page were legitimate. He also denied that “Nopales” was a derogatory term.
Morales said that threatening to sue someone wasn’t extortion; it was a right. He also testified that he was entitled to file the gender discrimination lawsuits, because he said the business all told him and Arias that they charged women more. He said he filed the lawsuits to “eradicate gender discrimination” but that it would not be discrimination if it took more skill or effort to cut a woman’s hair. At the time of the trial, Morales testified, the lawsuits were still pending, and he was still an active attorney.
In its closing argument, the prosecutor said the complaints filed by Morales were not “righteous lawsuits.” He said Morales targeted minorities and his meeting with Ednna showed that Arias knew the plan was illegal.
Arias’s attorney, Darryl Exum, said that lawyers were allowed to file lawsuits that made them money. He also said it was impossible for Arias to know if the lawsuits were fraudulent. Morales said that the state failed to present any evidence that the filings of the lawsuits were unlawful.
In his jury instructions, Judge Diaz defined extortion and the state’s gender discrimination law. He also said: “A defendant is not guilty of burglary, extortion by threatening letter, attempted extortion, and attempted grand theft if he or she made an honest or good faith mistake about the law, if that mistake show[s] that he or she did not have the specific intent required for the crimes of burglary, extortion by threatening letter, attempted extortion, and attempted grand theft.”
On December 3, 2018, the jury convicted Morales on 62 counts of extortion, burglary, attempted theft, stalking, filing a false instrument, and disobeying a restraining order. It convicted Arias on 31 counts of extortion, burglary, and attempted theft. The convictions carried hate-crime enhancements. Morales received a sentence of 22 years in prison. Arias received a sentence of seven years and eight months in prison.
Exum said after the verdict, “I’m still not sure that Mr. Morales’s conduct wasn’t constitutionally protected, but now it’s for another court to review.”
Morales and Arias appealed, arguing that there had been insufficient evidence to support their convictions, and that Judge Diaz had given flawed instructions that lowered the state’s burden of proof and failed to instruct the jury on the affirmative defense of litigation privilege.
On June 18, 2021, a three-judge panel from California’s Fourth District Court of Appeals vacated all of Arias’s convictions. It also vacated Morales’s convictions for burglary, attempted grand theft, and extortion, but affirmed his convictions for stalking, disobeying a restraining order, and filing a false instrument.
In its ruling, the appellate court did not condone the actions of Morales and Arias, but it said there was insufficient evidence they committed a crime.
“While defendants may have an abhorrent motivation for bringing the gender discrimination lawsuits, no evidence supports that they believed them to be false or unmeritorious,” the court said.
“Simply, there was no proper evidence presented upon which the jury could determine that the gender discrimination lawsuits were unlawful when filed,” the court said. It noted that the gender discrimination law placed the burden on the business owner to justify price differences for male and female customers receiving the same service. But at the criminal trial, the court said, the burden had been improperly placed on Morales and Arias.
Arias had been released from prison on July 30, 2020. The state dismissed her case on September 3, 2021. On April 26, 2023, a judge in Riverside County ruled that she was factually innocent.
Morales was disbarred in 2023.
On January 2, 2024, Arias submitted a claim to the California Victim Compensation Board, seeking compensation for her wrongful conviction. She requested $136,080. The board awarded her $85,960 on April 24, 2025.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 10-14-2025
