Wendy E. Musell

Musell has an inside game and an outside game.

As the chair of the California Employment Lawyers Association, she lobbies in California’s Capitol for laws to protect workers. Last year, CALA helped pass AB 1619, extending the statute of limitations for civil suits in sexual harassment cases from three years to 10.

“We’re thrilled that over the last year we’ve gotten some of the strongest protections for Californians as it relates to sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation,” Musell said. “We’re continuing that work this year. Many of the legislative efforts that had been vetoed we’ve brought back this year.”

Chief among those is AB 51, which would bar employers from requiring workers to sign an arbitration agreement as a condition of employment. Former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill last year, AB 3080, saying it violated the Federal Arbitration Act.

As an employment attorney, the partner with Stewart & Musell LLP in Emeryville brings cases on behalf of whistleblowers like Dr. Michael Golding, who exposed extensive problems in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s prisoner healthcare system. This has made her a player in the long-running prisoner healthcare litigation, Coleman v. Brown, 90CV00520 (E.D. Cal., filed April 23, 1990).

In March, she filed a complaint alleging harassment and discrimination in the Contra Costa District Attorneys’ office on behalf of a Muslim forensic accountant from Yemen. Banafa v. Contra Costa County, 18CV01642 (N.D. Cal., filed March 15, 2018).

Contra Costa’s brand new Democratic District Attorney, Diana Becton, is not named in the complaint. But she has come under fire for heavily redacting a report about prior sexual harassment in the office. In public comments about the case, Musell has made it clear that she’s not going to give a pass to Becton or any other Democrats in power as they face a reckoning with the #MeToo movement.

“We have not seen the end of it,” Musell said. “Some of our venerable institutions, for example looking at state courts, I don’t think they’ve had their #MeToo moment yet.”

— Malcolm Maclachlan