Lisa Ells 

As a partner at Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP in San Francisco, Lisa Ells will not hesitate to “hold feet to the fire” when it comes to housing rights, prison reform, constitutional law and disability access.

She currently represents Stanford professor Kenneth Shotts and a nonprofit housing organization in a suit alleging that Santa Clara County violated the Housing Crisis Act of 2019 when it downzoned an affluent residential area near Stanford University to placate opponents of a higher density, new housing development. California Renters Legal Advocacy & Education Fund (CaRLA), et al. v. County of Santa Clara, et al., 22CV403175, (Santa Clara Sup. Ct., filed Sept. 15, 2022).

Although Stanford faculty are the only ones eligible to live on this property, many of them cannot afford to do so because the county is making it harder to increase density.

“I see housing access as one of the most important civil rights issues in California today,” Ells said. “Despite crisis-level shortages in housing across the state, many communities with money and power continue to try and mandate NIMBY [not-in-my-backyard] restrictions on increased housing … and our job is just to hold their feet to the fire when they’re not complying with the law.”

Ells also continues to play a crucial role in civil rights class action cases on behalf of incarcerated people in California, having previously served on the legal team that secured a historic ruling, proving that overcrowded prisons in California violate Eighth Amendment rights to adequate health care. Brown v. Plata, 131 S.Ct. 1910 (2011). In Coleman v. Newsom, she is currently co-lead counsel concerning the rights of more than 32,000 prisoners’ to access constitutionally adequate mental health care in California.

In another successful outcome, she secured a settlement under the Americans with Disabilities Act on behalf of a deaf woman who was repeatedly denied American Sign Language interpretation services at LAC+USC Medical Center during a hospitalization in which she underwent surgery.

“It’s such an egregious case that it felt very rewarding to be able to help her because it takes a lot of courage to bring a lawsuit like that,” she said.

— Kathryn Stelmach Artuso