About the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office
The Los Angeles City Attorney plays a leading role in shaping the future of our city by fighting to improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods, reducing gang activity, preventing gun violence, standing up for consumers and the elderly, protecting our environment and so much more. The City Attorney's office writes every municipal law, advises the Mayor, City Council and all city departments and commissions, defends the city in litigation, brings forth lawsuits on behalf of the people and prosecutes misdemeanor crimes such as domestic violence, drunk driving and vandalism. This office strives every day to make Los Angeles a better and safer place to live, work, raise a family and visit.
About Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer
Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer has long been one of California's leading lawyers and lawmakers. As LA's chief lawyer and prosecutor since July, 2013, he has brought an innovative, problem-solving focus that combines fair and effective prosecution with initiatives to improve public safety
and the quality of life throughout the city. Feuer’s office also has been at the forefront of key national issues ranging from gun violence prevention and consumer protection to justice system reform and successful challenges to Trump Administration policies that threaten fundamental rights, public safety, and the fair allocation of federal funding and political representation.
In 2017, the American Bar Association presented its top
award in the nation for a public sector law office to Feuer’s
office—the first City Attorney’s office ever to receive the distinguished Hodson Award, recognizing "sustained, outstanding performance or a specific and extraordinary
service by a government or public sector law office."
Feuer has focused on neighborhoods, tripling the Neighborhood Prosecutor Program and creating the Community Justice Initiative - an array of neighborhood-based programs focused on quality of life crimes, truancy, human trafficking, homelessness and more - to address root causes, improve communities and turn lives around. His Neighborhood Justice Program, for example, is based on restorative justice, engaging hundreds of volunteers who assign community obligations and interventions to the thousands of non-violent offenders who’ve gone through it. Its recidivism rate is a remarkable 5%. Because communities sometimes must contend with problem properties that are sources of guns, drugs and violence—often close to schools and other sensitive sites—Feuer expanded his program that transforms these locations and makes neighborhoods safer.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Los Angeles in early March, 2020, Mike has been a national leader in grappling with a broad array of issues, including:
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Targeting price gouging of protective gear, hand sanitizer and other essential items on Amazon and in brick and mortar stores;
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Taking action against dangerous advertising claims about purported preventions, cures and fake at-home tests;
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Launching #BehindClosedDoors to help victims of in-home crimes amid the crisis, including domestic violence, child abuse and elder abuse;
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Enforcing the Safer at Home Order for nonessential businesses;
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Cracking down on possible “Super Spreader” events at party houses; and
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Holding a virtual town hall to protect Asian-American residents who have been the targets of a dramatic rise in hate incidents, after the President and other federal officials called COVID-19 the “Asian flu,” “Kung flu,” or similar titles.
Feuer has brought a wide range of lawsuits to protect consumers and vulnerable workers and residents. Feuer’s office was the first government agency to take action against Wells Fargo over its opening of unauthorized accounts. He achieved an historic settlement with federal partners, requiring Wells Fargo to pay restitution to its customers, put protections in place to stop the illegal behavior and pay $185 million in fines and penalties. He sued The Weather Channel App claiming privacy violations, and the App and its parent company IBM agreed to make revisions to their privacy disclosures to help ensure transparency and informed consent. Feuer is suing Intuit (the parent company of Turbo Tax) and H&R Block, for allegedly deceiving low-income taxpayers into paying for tax preparation services to which they were entitled for free.
His office has sued to protect low-income car wash workers and home health care workers from wage theft, obtaining back wages and penalties. Feuer’s office now is suing to protect port truckers from allegedly being improperly classified as independent contractors. He has sued medical facilities for unlawfully discharging homeless patients, successfully improving discharge policies and obtaining millions of dollars in penalties.
A national leader in preventing gun violence, Feuer created the City Attorney’s Gun Violence Prevention Unit and has worked aggressively to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children. He has brought charges against adults who did not properly store firearms which later fell into the hands of children, and, with the LAPD, created protocols to assure domestic violence perpetrators do not have weapons.
In a groundbreaking national effort, Feuer joined with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. to co-found and chair Prosecutors Against Gun Violence - an independent, non-partisan coalition devoted to prosecutorial and policy solutions to the public health and safety crisis of gun violence. In the wake of the Parkland school massacre, he convened the Los Angeles Blue Ribbon Panel on School Safety, which held eight hearings and produced a comprehensive report with over 30 recommendations.
Feuer’s office also has been a leader in challenging the Trump Administration on key national issues with implications for Angelenos. His office obtained a permanent, nationwide injunction preventing the Trump Administration from imposing civil immigration enforcement considerations on the federal Community-Based Policing grant program. He joined with other jurisdictions, the Urban League and others to successfully overturn the Administration’s efforts to prematurely stop Census outreach and counting—an issue with huge implications for federal funding and fair political representation for Los Angeles.
Feuer's office leads a coalition of major cities and counties on a brief opposing the Trump Administration’s attempt to halt the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. The office has participated in cases opposing the Muslim Travel Ban (Feuer himself went to L.A. International Airport to attempt to secure the release of early detainees) and the proposed rollback of environmental protections.
Feuer's office was also counsel of record supporting marriage equality on a brief for 226 mayors, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, National League of Cities and others in the U.S. Supreme Court, and joined with New York City and Santa Clara County in leading seventy local governments and 80 mayors on an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the rights of LGBTQ people to be protected from sexual orientation-based discrimination.
Long a champion for our animal community, Feuer has led his office’s Animal Protection Unit to be at the forefront of preventing and prosecuting animal abuse. Under his leadership, his office has prosecuted the sale of ivory and other products from threatened species. He has prosecuted cases of animal hoarding and abuse and the theft of endangered sea life. As City Attorney, he has led public awareness campaigns warning against the danger of locking pets in cars and puppy sale scams on the internet.
Previously Feuer served as the Majority Policy Leader of the California Assembly and Chair of the Assembly's Judiciary Committee, writing many of California's most important public safety, children's health, transportation, consumer protection and environmental laws. Feuer jointly-authored the Homeowners' Bill of Rights and the Iran Contracting Act. He wrote the Crime Gun Identification Act and the Sargent Shriver Civil Counsel Act, as well as the nation's most comprehensive law to remove cancer-causing chemicals from consumer products, the law requiring insurance companies to insure children with pre-existing conditions, the law authorizing L.A. County's transformative transportation initiative, Measure R, the law authorizing same-day voter registration, measures protecting LGBTQ rights, and much more.
As a Los Angeles City Council member, Feuer chaired the Budget and Finance Committee, delivering on-time, balanced budgets, fighting successfully for after-school programs, jobs for disadvantaged youth, meals for indigent seniors and the expansion of basic city services. Feuer wrote some of America's toughest laws to curb gun violence, initiated L.A.'s 311 non-emergency services system and spearheaded business tax and ethics reforms.
Feuer previously served as the Executive Director of the non-profit public interest law firm, Bet Tzedek Legal Services. Under Feuer’s leadership Bet Tzedek provided free legal assistance to more than 50,000 of indigent, elderly and disabled clients confronting unlawful eviction, the loss of their health care or basic government benefits, scam artists trying to steal their homes, and other critical problems. One newspaper wrote that Feuer transformed Bet Tzedek into a “national success story.”
Feuer is the recipient of dozens of awards for his work protecting seniors and children, preventing gun violence, making the legal system more just, safeguarding the environment, standing up for consumers, improving public education, advancing equality and civil rights, and more.
City Attorney Feuer has been married to his wife of 37 years, Gail Ruderman Feuer, and they have two adult children.
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Download City Attorney Mike Feuer's bio.