Hydee Feldstein Soto | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2023 | |
| 43rd City Attorney of Los Angeles | |
| Assumed office December 12, 2022 | |
| Mayor | Karen Bass |
| Preceded by | Mike Feuer |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1958 (age 66–67) San Juan,Puerto Rico,U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Education | Swarthmore College (BA) Columbia University (JD) |
Hydee Feldstein Soto (born 1958) is an American attorney and politician,who is the incumbent City Attorney of Los Angeles. She is a member of the Democratic Party. [1]
Feldstein Soto was born in 1958 in San Juan,Puerto Rico and moved to the mainland United States at age 17 to attend Swarthmore College and Columbia Law School,graduating from the latter in 1982. [2] As an attorney,she served as a general counsel and worked in several private practices. [3]
In 2021,Feldstein Soto announced her candidacy for Los Angeles City Attorney. [4] [5] She was endorsed by the Los Angeles Times. [1] She prevailed in the general election,becoming the first female City Attorney in L.A. history,and the first Latina elected to citywide office in Los Angeles. [6] [7]
On September 12,2023,Feldstein Soto announced that the City Attorney’s Office had filed a lawsuit against the owners and operator of a motel in South Los Angeles that has served as a “hub for prostitution”for several years. [8]
At the start of Labor Day Weekend,on September 1,2023,Feldstein Soto joined Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martínez and Tim McOsker to unveil new legislation to strengthen the enforcement of wage theft violations. [9] [10]
On August 15,2023,Feldstein Soto announced her office had filed a lawsuit against a company,Nightfall Group,that offers luxury party houses for short term rentals saying that they violate city laws and create a public nuisance. Feldstein Soto said that police have been called more than 250 times in the last two years because of problems at houses that the business rents out in the Hollywood area. [11] [12] [13]
In June 2024,Michelle McGinnis,a veteran prosecutor in the City Attorney's office,filed a legal claim alleging that Feldstein Soto retaliated against her for reporting “legal and ethical violations. McGinnis claimed that Feldstein Soto based some of the office's decisions on prosecutions on “personal relationships”or “perceived political gain,”including telling employees she wanted to stop prosecuting corporate defendants and singling out an individual protestor for prosecution. McGinnis reported that after objecting to these decisions,she was “subjected to a series of adverse employment actions and ultimately placed on administrative leave,removed from the office,and prohibited from further contact with office colleagues and employees.” [14] In July,another employee claimed that Feldstein Soto routinely read her employees' emails without their knowledge,and two more former employees filed retaliation claims. In August,Feldstein Soto requested $500,000 from the City of Los Angeles to fund a legal response to the claims. However,the City Council only authorized $50,000. [15]
While running for office,Feldstein Soto opposed the construction of 140 units of affordable housing in Venice,an affluent neighborhood of L.A. In 2023,the Los Angeles Times reported that Feldstein Soto had instructed city agencies to not interact with the developers of the project on city-owned parking lot in Venice. The project had previously been approved by the City Council and survived multiple lawsuits,but Feldstein Soto's actions delayed its progress. [16] [17]
In July 2024,advocates for low-income housing sued the city of Los Angeles,accusing Feldstein Soto of violating fair housing laws by blocking the housing development in Venice. [18] [19] The Los Angeles Times editorial board criticized Feldstein Soto for derailing the housing development. [20]
In 2025,Feldstein Soto sent a letter to a state senator expressing her opposition to Senate Bill 79 which allows six-story buildings near light rail stations and rapid bus stops. She argued that more housing would increase local tax burdens. [21]
Between 2022,before Soto took office,and 2025,liability payments by the city of Los Angeles —which settle claims and lawsuits against the city for wrongdoing,including internal staff harassment,police use of force and injuries ––increased dramatically to a projected $320 million,more than three and a half times the budgeted $87 million. [22] The Los Angeles Times reported that these legal settlements contributed significantly to the city's FY2025 budget crisis,and reported that Soto's office took a "combative stance" against plaintiffs that contributed to this increase in payouts. The Times sited multiple plaintiffs attorneys who asserted that Soto's office is taking more cases to trial,resulting in larger verdicts than if she settled. One attorney "said he recently went to trial in five cases and won all of them,for a total payout of more than $40 million," but said he "would have been happy to settle all five cases for a total of less than $10 million." [23]
Feldstein Soto announced a settlement in her office's lawsuit against Polymer80,the nation's largest manufacturer of weapons parts kits and components,permanently prohibiting the company from selling its weapons parts kits its in California without first conducting background checks of buyers and serializing its products. In addition,the company and its founders were ordered to pay $5 million in civil penalties. [24] The lawsuit had been filed in February 2021,almost two years before Feldstein Soto took office,and was prosecuted by staff who predated Feldstein Soto's election along with Everytown Law and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart &Sullivan. [25] [26] [27]
In March 2023,Feldstein Soto asked a court to appoint Mark Adams as a receiver for the Skid Row Housing Trust,which holds a collection of 29 buildings home to 1,500 formerly unhoused people. Feldstein Soto described Adams as "the most experienced health and safety receiver we were able to locate in the state of California". [28] A Los Angeles Times review of Adams's record showed that he had a history of overbilling local governments,failing to maintain the conditions of his properties and putting vulnerable tenants at risk of eviction and homelessness. In June 2023,after scrutiny from the Times and other city officials,Feldstein Soto's office reported to the Los Angeles City Council that Adams had misrepresented his fundraising ability,shown little progress in improving conditions for tenants,failed to provide required spending reports,and that his property management company had issued hundreds of illegal eviction notices to residents. [29] [30] In June,Los Angeles City Council authorized a $10 million emergency loan to stabilize the trust on the condition that Adams resign. [31] Two weeks later,the Los Angeles Times revealed that Adams had hosted a fundraiser for Feldstein Soto during her 2022 election campaign. [32]
Under Feldstein Soto's leadership,her office sued journalist Ben Camacho and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition,a local advocacy organization,to return a flash drive containing photographs of LAPD officers. The City of Los Angeles had given Camacho the pictures in response to a public records request,and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition subsequently published them on the website WatchTheWatchers.net as well as for download on the Internet Archive [33] A coalition of media organizations denounced the lawsuit as limiting the freedom of the press. [34] Constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky commented that "the city is on very weak legal grounds". [35] In June of 2024,The city of Los Angeles agreed to pay $300,000 in a tentative settlement to Knock LA journalist Ben Camacho and the group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition for their legal fees. [36]
Following the LAPD picture release,Feldstein Soto suggested to several California state legislators to weaken the California Public Records Act of 1968 by exempting "images or data that may personally identify an individual". The ACLU described Feldstein Soto's proposal as a "gutting" of the Public Records Act. [37]