Marissa Roy wins city attorney race, becomes LA’s new legal powerhouse

(Nov 13, 2026) Marissa Roy, the daughter of an Indian immigrant mother, has been elected Los Angeles city attorney, and will lead an office of more than 550 lawyers representing America’s second-largest city. Serving alongside India-born Mayor-elect Nithya Raman, she will put women of Indian heritage in two of the city’s three citywide elected offices. The mayor heads the city’s executive branch, while the city attorney represents Los Angeles in legal matters, advises its officials and prosecutes misdemeanours within the city.

“I think this is really a significant moment, not just for the Asian American community, but for the immigrant community to have an immigrant mayor, to have a city attorney who is the daughter of an immigrant,” Marissa told the Los Angeles Times. “This is Los Angeles sending a message about who it is.”

The moment was felt in India too. Marissa said relatives there had followed the race closely and sent her WhatsApp messages after her victory. A California deputy attorney general, Marissa beat Los Angeles County deputy district attorney John McKinney in the 3 November runoff, winning roughly two-thirds of the votes counted so far. McKinney conceded, saying he accepted the outcome and would be “rooting for her”.

Marissa Roy takes office on 14 December 2026. She succeeds Hydee Feldstein Soto, who was knocked out in the June primary, a rare defeat for a sitting citywide official in Los Angeles. According to MyNewsLA, Marissa will be only the second woman to hold the office.

From Monrovia to Yale

Marissa grew up in Monrovia, a small city in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles, raised by an Indian immigrant mother and an American father. She put her family’s immigrant story at the centre of her campaign, and her heritage showed in its style too, with Bollywood music in her Instagram videos and a signature line in purple and jewel-toned blazers.

After Flintridge Preparatory School, she studied at the University of Southern California, earning a bachelor’s in philosophy, politics and law and a master’s in public diplomacy. She graduated from Yale Law School in 2017, having worked in a legal clinic with the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office as a student.

Taking on wage theft and Big Tech

Marissa was admitted to the California bar in December 2017 and began her career in the very office she will now lead, as a Justice Catalyst fellow in the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, where she says she worked on wage theft cases. She went on to the Public Rights Project as a staff attorney and served as outside counsel for Los Angeles County before joining the California Department of Justice as a deputy attorney general, working on consumer protection and tenants’ rights.

“A lot of people don’t realize how much their city attorney’s office could be doing for them,” Marissa said in a pre-election interview with Fox Local. “In Los Angeles, our city attorney’s office can sue any business for anything that is unlawful, unfair, or deceptive.”

Marissa has described the multistate lawsuit against Meta, which accused the company of designing Facebook and Instagram to be addictive for children, as the most complex litigation she has worked on. Meta agreed in August 2026 to settle the case for about $17 billion. Marissa is also a founding board member of Asian Democrats of Los Angeles County.

A ‘public interest law firm’ for Los Angeles

The race was a clear contrast in approach. Marissa Roy ran as a progressive, backed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu and the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. McKinney, a county prosecutor, was backed by the Los Angeles police union.

Marissa Roy has pledged to turn the city attorney’s office into Los Angeles’ largest “public interest law firm”, using it to take on landlords, corporations and employers accused of exploiting residents.

When Angelenos are struggling with corporate polluters like the Lineage Logistics warehouse fire, with unaffordability because of wage theft, with landlords that are evicting people into homelessness, their city attorney could be the strongest fighter for them.

Marissa Roy

The road to City Hall

Roy launched her challenge to Feldstein Soto, a sitting city attorney, in March 2025. In the 2 June 2026 primary she topped a four-candidate field with 43.1% of the vote, well ahead of McKinney on 28.6%, while Feldstein Soto finished third and was eliminated. By the final week of October, a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times showed Roy leading McKinney by 17 points.

Much of her pitch focused on the office’s own record. The city has faced costly legal payouts, and the office has come under scrutiny in recent years, including over leaked police records. Roy blamed rising costs partly on work sent to outside firms. “Every taxpayer wants to see our taxpayer dollars spent on services, not costly liabilities,” she told Fox Local, promising to cut “the outsourcing and exorbitant spending” and keep more cases in-house.

She also campaigned on morale inside the office.

I want to restore integrity of the city attorney’s office.

Marissa Roy

Her priorities for the office

Marissa links homelessness directly to the office’s work on housing. “If the city attorney is enforcing against the abusive landlords, we can keep people housed and keep our homelessness problem from growing,” she said.

On public safety, she argues for a mix of prosecution and court-supervised diversion for low-level offences. “When you have a violent misdemeanor or a public safety threat, that’s where prosecution makes sense,” she said. “When you have something where it’s nonviolent, where it’s a first-time offense, where we have the ability to get someone on the right track, that’s where diversion can really help.”

Her first-year promises include reviving the neighbourhood prosecutor programme and building up the office’s public interest litigation. “I hope a year later we are able to quantify the millions of dollars that we’ve been able to put back in workers’ pockets as stolen wages,” she said, adding that she wants to keep “hundreds, I hope thousands of tenants housed by proactive tenant protections.”

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