Yvonne Mere

Bio

Yvonne R. Meré is the Chief Deputy City Attorney with the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, overseeing all of the Office’s litigation: affirmative and defensive, in state and federal court, in trial and on appeal.  She is the first Latina to hold the position of Chief Deputy City Attorney.  During her more than 21 years at the Office, Yvonne has supervised dozens of lawyers litigating complex affirmative and defensive matters filed by and against the City and County of San Francisco.  Yvonne has served as both the Chief of the Complex and Affirmative Litigation Team as well as the Chief of the Code Enforcement and Resident Protection Team.  During her tenure with the City Attorney’s Office, Yvonne has also personally litigated a wide variety of matters, in particular affirmative unfair competition cases, public nuisance matters, and constitutional challenges, including those listed below:

• People of the State of California v. Recology, et al., lead attorney responsible for securing a $100M settlement to reimburse San Francisco rate payers who were overcharged for residential refuse collection services;
• People of the State of California v. Uber, Lyft, et al., led a team litigating an unfair competition action filed in conjunction with the California Attorney General’s Office and the City Attorneys of Los Angeles and San Diego challenging the misclassification of TNC drivers;
• People of the State of California, et al. v. CitiApartments, et al., lead attorney in an unfair competition and public nuisance action filed against a very large residential property owner in San Francisco challenging their pernicious business practices targeting vulnerable tenants. The matter was settled for more than $10,000,000 and significant injunctive relief that protected tenants from the defendants’ unlawful and harassing tactics;
• People of the State of California v. Exxon, et al., led a team litigating a public nuisance action filed against the largest fossil fuel producers challenging their role and contributions to climate change;
• People of the State of California v. Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, worked as part of a team of lawyers who achieved a victory at trial against an educational regulator who resorted to using unfair and unlawful tactics in its accreditation review of City College of San Francisco. Gave opening at trial and took three witnesses;
• Abbott Laboratories v. Superior Court of Orange County, successfully argued at the California Supreme Court on behalf of a coalition of local governments that the California Legislature had vested city and county prosecutors’ coextensive authority along with the Attorney General to seek and secure statewide remedies in unfair competition actions. The Court agreed with amici and now all authorized civil prosecutors across California can bring actions seeking statewide relief for the benefit of California consumers;
• City and County of San Francisco v. Donald J. Trump, led a team challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s Executive Order 13768, “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” and of 8 U.S.C. § 1373, which resulted in the entry of a nationwide permanent injunction enjoining Section 9(a) of the Executive Order;
• City and County of San Francisco and County of Santa Clara v. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, et al., led a team that successfully challenged DHS’s revisions to the public charge rule to make it harder for individuals who use any public benefits to adjust their immigration status; and
• City and County of San Francisco v. Alex M. Azar, II, et al., led a team that successfully challenged the “conscience rule”, an effort that would have permitted anyone in the healthcare industry to refuse to provide care to patients on religious or moral grounds.

Recently, Yvonne developed and championed groundbreaking litigation challenging the unlawful and unfair business practices conducted by websites who use AI to create nonconsensual, deepfake nude images of women and girls.  And since January 20, 2025, Yvonne has overseen the Office’s affirmative litigation against the federal government fighting against the Executive Branch’s unlawful and unconstitutional actions.

In addition to supervising and litigating cases, Yvonne has served as a guest lecturer at Yale Law School as part of the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project, a collaboration between Yale Law School and the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, and served on the Office’s Amicus Committee.  She is also actively involved in the Office’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, previously co-chairing the Office’s Racial Equity Task Force and serving as a member of the Women’s Initiative and La Alianza officewide affinity groups.

Prior to joining the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, Yvonne worked at Stanford Law School as a lecturer and clinical supervising attorney with the Stanford Community Law Clinic, at the San Francisco Bar Association’s Justice and Diversity Center, and at the New York County District Attorney’s Office.  She is a graduate of Pace University School of Law and the University of California, Los Angeles.

As a proud Cuban Latina, Yvonne’s practice and values have always been grounded and informed by who she is and where she is from.  She lives in San Francisco in an old two-unit Victorian building with her husband, daughter, and parents.