Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Page 3
Brown Names Five Lawyers to Fair Employment and Housing Council
By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer
Gov. Jerry Brown yesterday named five attorneys, including the top in-house lawyer for the California Commerce Club, to the new Fair Employment and Housing Council.
Andrew Schneiderman, 57, a resident of South Pasadena, has been vice president and general counsel at the California Commerce Club Inc. since 1994. He joined the Commerce Club from Parker Milliken Clark O’Hara and Samuelian, where he began as an associate in 1987 and became an equity partner.
Schneiderman was an associate at Sternberg and Associates from 1982 to 1987. He is a board member at Imagine LA and has performed pro bono work at Public Counsel Law Center since 2008.
Schneiderman is a graduate of The Ohio State University and Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
The council is a creation of SB 1038, which changed the system used to adjudicate claims for violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act where the Department of Fair and Employment and Housing does not issue a right-to-sue letter permitting a claimant to sue in superior court.
Under the old system, those claims were adjudicated by the Fair Employment and Housing Commission, which had both regulatory and adjudicatory functions. Under the new law, effective this past Jan. 1, the council has taken over the commission’s regulatory functions.
But instead of litigating before the commission, the department may itself sue in superior court, if the case cannot be resolved by its internal dispute resolution process.
Besides Schneiderman, the governor appointed the following attorneys to the council:
•Chaya Mandelbaum, 33, who was named council chair. Mandelbaum has worked at Sanford Heisler LLP in San Francisco.
He was a trial attorney for the Office of the Solicitor at the United States Department of Labor from 2007 to 2011 and an associate at Morgan Lewis and Bockius LLP from 2005 to 2007. He is a graduate of UC San Diego and the University of Michigan Law School.
•Dale Brodsky, 62, a partner at Oakland’s Beeson Tayer and Bodine, where she has worked since 2002. She was associate editor for the California Public Employee Relations Program at UC Berkeley from 2000 to 2002 and was an attorney in private practice from 1997 to 2002.
Brodsky was an adjunct law professor at the University of San Francisco from 1997 to 2001 and a public school teacher before that. She was an associate at Saperstein Seligman and Mayeda from 1989 to 1991 and an attorney in private practice from 1984 to 1989, and held multiple positions at the DFEH 1978 to 1983, after having been a San Francisco deputy public defender.
She is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of San Francisco School of Law.
•Chanee Franklin Minor, 37, a staff attorney for the Rent Stabilization Board at the City of Berkeley since 2011. She was an associate at Cooley Godward Kronish LLP from 2006 to 2009, and a staff attorney at the Eviction Defense Center in 2005.
Franklin Minor served as commissioner at the Oakland Residential Rent Adjustment Board from 2008 to 2009. She is a graduate of UCLA and Cornell Law School.
•Patricia Perez, 45, president and chief executive officer at Puente Consulting APC since 2001. She was human resources director and in-house employment counsel at Skadden Arps Slate and Meagher from 2000 to 2001 and project director at the National Center for State Courts from 1998 to 1999.
Perez was an attorney at Barnhorst Schreiner and Goonan from 1996 to 1998 and at Balestreri Dorigan and Pendleton from 1993 to 1996. She served as vice-chair of the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission from 2008 to 2011.
Perez earned her undergraduate and law degrees at UCLA.
Schneiderman, Mandelbaum, Brodsky, and Franklin Minor are Democrats. Perez is registered decline-to-state.
The appointees require Senate confirmation and the compensation is $100 per diem when on council business.
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