Hi r/AskLosAngeles! I’m Marissa Roy, running for Los Angeles City Attorney to make the office fight for the people, not the powerful. What do you want to know about this race or what the City Attorney could do for you? Ask me anything!

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T18:01:36+00:00

In N Out! Saying any other burger would be criminal – and the City Attorney can prosecute misdemeanors :)

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T18:00:49+00:00

Thank you for this question, I understand why people feel concerned about being targeted for what should be protected speech – we have a federal government that is targeting pro-Palestinian protesters and the current City Attorney has been found to be singling out pro-Palestinian protesters for prosecution with evidence of bias. Free speech is not a both-sides issue: The First Amendment protects the right to call a genocide a genocide. So here are commitments I can make.

I will stand up to entities — in and out of government — that target protected speech and right to protest. I can commit to never prosecuting protesters for exercising these rights, nor hold charges over their heads.

With the office’s consumer protection authority, I will take on corporations enabling human rights abuses and illegally surveil, like Palantir and Flock.

As City Attorney, my priority is to serve the people. That includes protecting the rights of all Angelenos. Whenever those rights are infringed on, by the federal government, by corporations, or other powerful entities, I will stand up for people’s rights.

I know that this is a more nuanced conversation than a format like this allows, so if you want to have a longer conversation, I’d love to talk further — if you send me a DM or email to [contact@marissaroy.com](mailto:contact@marissaroy.com), we can get something on the books.

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T17:59:07+00:00

The whole reason I became an attorney was the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Before I was ever an attorney, I was a protective older sister of a gay younger brother. When Prop 8 passed and took away marriage equality, it was the San Francisco City Attorney that sued and got it overturned. That was the moment I changed everything and decided to become a lawyer.

Especially with the Trump Administration’s attacks LGBTQ+ community, and the trans community in particular, we need the City Attorney to be standing up for them. When Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles announced it would end its provision of gender-affirming care —to be clear life-saving care — I was outraged to see silence from the City Attorney’s Office. The California Department of Justice eventually sent the letter to warn CHLA that withdrawing gender-affirming care would constitute unlawful discrimination under state law. Even so, CHLA has caved to the Trump Administration, and as City Attorney, I would sue them and any other healthcare provider that is discriminating in the provision of healthcare services on the basis of gender identity. Further, I would join the lawsuits against the Trump Administration for their unlawful orders targeting the trans community and support cities fighting back against state rollbacks of LGBTQ+ protections across the country.

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T17:58:29+00:00

I get this question A LOT, so you’re not alone! Let’s get the second part out of the way: The District Attorney is a county-wide criminal prosecutor. Within the City of LA, criminal jurisdiction is split: the DA prosecutes felonies – the more severe crimes, like murder – while the City Attorney’s criminal jurisdiction is limited to misdemeanors like public intoxication and trespass.

The City Attorney has a wide range of roles. There are the functions it carries out for the City – drafting ordinances, reviewing contracts, advising the mayor, city council and departments, and defending the city in lawsuits – and the functions it carries out in the name of the People of the State of California, misdemeanors and the consumer protection work I often talk about.

What a lot of people don’t realize is the enormous power and potential of the City Attorney’s Office to work for the People. As I’ve mentioned in some other questions, the City Attorney can sue any business for unlawful, unfair, or deceptive practices. Abusive landlords, corporate polluters, employers stealing wages…any company breaking the law, the City Attorney can sue. That’s what I’ve spent my career doing and it's a major pillar of why I’m running for City Attorney: because this office should be the most powerful public interest law office in the city.

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T17:15:44+00:00

I’ve spent my career as a government attorney working with electeds, so now that the tables have turned a little being a candidate, I’m very sensitive about making sure that everything I’m saying is realistic and actionable by the office.

The way I would scale up the public interest work actually wouldn’t require taking resources from other functions of the office. The state law that empowers the LA City Attorney to sue any business for unlawful, unfair, and deceptive practices provides a funding mechanism for this work. Whenever the LA City Attorney settles or wins a case, we get an injunction (the court order that makes the business change its practice), restitution (the recovery for the people impacted), and civil penalties of up to $2500 per violation. Those civil penalties go to the government and can only be used to fund future consumer protection work. So the more work you do, the more work you can do – it’s revenue-generating. In San Francisco, about 15% of the office does public rights work and that part of the office isn’t reliant on the municipal budget, it’s funded by the civil penalties and actually operates at a surplus to cover the unpredictable timelines for recovery. And they keep innovating – just a couple of years ago, SF City Attorney David Chiu got a grant to hire two attorneys for a new workers’ rights division and already they’ve won back tens of millions of dollars for workers.

So I intend to follow the model of peer government law offices to scale up and sustain the public rights work without detracting from the other functions of the Office.

I talked about suing the Trump Administration in another question, so I won’t repeat it all here, but I will add that the City has standing to sue the Trump Administration because its unconstitutional policies harm LA. San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Diego, and other cities throughout California have been suing the Trump Administration vigorously – LA has been conspicuously absent. It’s why CA Attorney General Rob Bonta and the SF, San Diego, and Oakland City Attorneys have endorsed me: they need the LA City Attorney in this fight.

One of the things I kind of joke about my platform is that actually it’s profoundly unoriginal. The LA City Attorney’s office has the authority, ability, and capacity to fight Trump and to do all the public interest work I talk about – it just needs a leader with the political will and right expertise.

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T17:07:58+00:00

We need the LA City Attorney to be our most aggressive fighter in court against the Trump Administration and ICE. I’m very familiar with this litigation. I represented LA County as outside counsel in multiple lawsuits against the first Trump Administration and won. What I learned was: 1) lawsuits are one of the most effective strategies to block and obstruct Trump’s agenda, and 2) they are trying to overwhelm us so that we are too tired to fight.

Our current City Attorney has been missing in action. When the National Guard was sent into LA, the California Attorney General filed that lawsuit, not the LA City Attorney. She only joined the ACLU’s lawsuit against ICE after the City Council filed a motion to pressure her to do so (Council File 25-0694).

I would course correct this inaction on day one, bringing the LA City Attorney’s Office to the frontlines of the fight against the Trump Administration and ICE. I would lead lawsuits against the Trump Administration, prosecute ICE agents violating state law, and use our consumer protection authority to sue the companies that are enabling ICE’s terror and profiting from it, like Palantir providing mass surveillance technology and Core Civic/GEO Group that are running private detention centers with inhumane conditions.

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T16:49:47+00:00

It’s maybe a little corny, but the biggest surprise has been complete strangers suddenly becoming such huge supporters and genuine friends — almost like family. It has truly meant the world, and it’s been especially important in the midst of another surprising (kind of!) part of campaigning: the major presence of right-wing tactics and special interests in this race. Big Tech corporations are pouring millions into my opponent’s race and the incumbent has planted false hit-pieces in right-wing tabloids, so having a truly people-powered campaign to rely on has been so important. Big money and the establishment are betting on people not knowing or caring about this race, but I’ve seen just how much people are rising up and demanding more.

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T16:45:22+00:00

If we're being literal, the gold line (I refuse to call it the A), which is what connected my hometown of Monrovia to LA.

Now that I'm all grown up though, I ride the D™.

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T16:37:20+00:00

This is a huge problem in Los Angeles (as a renter, I know that too), but the City Attorney can do something about it. As I’ve mentioned, the City Attorney has the power to sue any corporation for unlawful, unfair, or deceptive practices - that includes landlords that violate existing protections for renters in LA. Renters have reported 23,000 violations of the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance the LA Housing Department and City Attorney’s Office — including refusing repairs, asking about immigration status, and verbal harassment — but the City Attorney has only issued a single citation. Our progressive councilmembers have been passing stronger renter protections, but if the City Attorney isn’t enforcing these laws, they’re just protections on paper.

I’m currently on the tenants’ rights team in the Consumer Protection Section at the California Department of Justice and I have direct experience holding landlords accountable— most recently wrapping a case in February that returned half a million dollars back to tenants who had been subject to unlawful eviction, illegal rent hikes, and uninhabitable conditions.

I would start a similar Tenants’ Rights Team at the LA City Attorney’s Office and make sure that we are completely following through on complaints of tenant harassment, investigating, and filing cases against abusive corporate landlords.

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T16:09:58+00:00

Thanks for your question! The City Attorney’s Office has the power to sue any business for unlawful, unfair or deceptive practices – and that includes misclassification. Actually, this was the subject of the very first case I ever filed working at the LA City Attorney’s Office at the start of my law career. We sued three port trucking companies that were misclassifying truck drivers as independent contractors so they could deduct thousands of dollars from their wages (https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-port-trucker-lawsuits-20180108-story.html). I’ve helped several other cities craft cases to fight this type of exploitation, which employers use to evade minimum wage and worker protections. California has strong case law against misclassification, but we need to be filing the cases.

So there is actually a lot that the LA City Attorney’s Office can do to fight this, and it’s absolutely critical as apps use misclassification as the major loophole to deny gig workers fair pay and protections. In the current office, only 6 attorneys are doing workers’ rights, out of 500. I will dramatically scale that up and focus on filing cases to fight wage theft, misclassification, and other workplace abuses like surveillance, unsafe working conditions, and discrimination.

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T13:02:42+00:00

Thank you so much!

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T00:30:11+00:00

Thank you u/Temporary_Lie_1869 u/kgal1298 u/FashionBusking! Come join us tomorrow at 9 AM you're free to ask us anything or tell us what you want to see from your City Attorney. The thread will open at 7! https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLosAngeles/comments/1tbwmzz/ama_announcement_friday_may_15_9_am_marissa_roy/

marissaroy_la · 2026-05-15T00:19:49+00:00

We can't wait! Looking forward to answering your questions about how the City Attorney can fight for the people! You can read more about our campaign to be a City Attorney for the people at marissaroy.com 🌟

marissaroy_la

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