Ryan McGinley-Stempel

ABOUT

Ryan is a partner in the firm’s Government and Litigation Practice Groups. He has experience advising on and litigating constitutional and statutory issues involving education law, employment law, public pensions and vested rights, voter initiatives, land use, public records, class actions, free speech, preemption, professional responsibility and religious discrimination before state and federal courts and administrative agencies, including the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court, the California Court of Appeal, CalPERS and the Public Employment Relations Board.

RELATED EXPERIENCE

Ryan has experience both bringing suits on behalf of and defending public agencies in actions involving the Federal and California Constitutions, the County Employees Retirement Law of 1937, the Meyers-Milias Brown Act, the Fair Employment and Housing Act, the Public Records Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Ryan also advises public agencies on Joint Powers Authority creation under Government Code section 6500 et seq.; worker classification in the wake of Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court; and state and federal requirements for employee drug testing.

Before joining Renne Public Law Group, Ryan was an attorney at Gibson Dunn for two years, focusing primarily on cases involving education law, employment law, the Anti-Terrorism Act and class actions. He represented the Brennan Center for Justice and several California constitutional law professors in the California Supreme Court as amici curiae in the constitutional challenge to Proposition 66, which changed the process for imposing the death penalty in California. He also assisted with the successful defense of the City of Tallahassee, Mayor Andrew Gillum, and several city commissioners in an action brought under a state preemption statute that authorizes private individuals to sue local public officials for enacting or enforcing firearm regulations.

Ryan draws further perspective and experience from his time as a law clerk, when he served Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar of the California Supreme Court; Judge Scott M. Matheson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; and Judge Lee H. Rosenthal of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. During his clerkship with Judge Rosenthal, Ryan also worked on cases in the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Sixth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits.

During law school, Ryan served as a student attorney in the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where he participated in the certiorari and merits briefing for Salinas v. Texas, 133 S. Ct. 2174 (2013). He also served as teaching assistant to Dean Larry Kramer’s Constitutional Law course, research assistant to Professor Barton H. Thompson on issues involving property law and land use, and associate editor for the Stanford Law and Policy Review.

Before law school, Ryan worked as a squash director for StreetSquash, a comprehensive youth enrichment program for at-risk youth in Harlem, New York.

PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS

University of California Law San Francisco Panel, April 8, 2025.
Which Labor Code And Wage Order Obligations Apply To Public Employees?, California Public Employers Labor Relations Association, Annual Training Conference, November 14, 2024.
Pulling the Sword of Sovereignty from Stone: Recent Case Law Exposing Liability under Wage Laws and PAGA, California Public Employers Labor Relations Association, Annual Training Conference, November 17, 2023.
Public Pensions in California: No More Pension Spiking and Limitations of the California Rule, County Counsels’ Association of California, Spring Employment Law Study Section Meeting, February 24, 2022.
Vested Pension Rights: How Courts Are Applying the New Standards?, California Public Employers Labor Relations Association, Annual Training Conference, November 2021.
COVID-19, the Census Delay, and Local Redistricting: What Local Public Agencies Can Do to Prepare, PublicCEO, June 25, 2020.
Navigating Fiscal Emergencies in the Time of Coronavirus: Tools from the Great Recession Revisited, PublicCEO, May 19, 2020.
Threading the Needle: Crafting a Defensible Drug Testing Policy, California Public Employers Labor Relations Association, Annual Training Conference, November 2019.
Europe’s Immigration Problem Is Ours As Well, S.F. Chronicle, January 20, 2016.
Beyond the Water Cooler: Speech and the Workplace in the Era of Social Media, 30 Hofstra Lab.& Emp. L.J. 75, 2012.