Anne Bellows joined Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho in 2017, and became a partner in January 2022. Anne’s practice focuses on housing, consumer, and voting rights cases. Prior to joining GBDH, Anne worked at Public Advocates, Inc., using fair housing law and other tools to challenge tenant harassment and displacement. Before that, Anne clerked for the Honorable Eric L. Clay on the Sixth Circuit and litigated fair housing and employment discrimination cases as a civil rights fellow at Relman, Dane & Colfax PLLC in Washington, DC. Anne was selected by SuperLawyers as a Rising Star each year from 2020 through 2024.
Education
- J.D., University of California Berkeley School of Law
- B.A. (magna cum laude), Dartmouth College
Bar and Court Admissions
California, 2013
District of Columbia, 2014
U.S. District Courts: Northern District of California, Central District of California, Eastern District of California
U.S. Court of Appeals: Sixth Circuit
Awards
Thelen Marrin Award for Writing (2013)
Prior Employment
- Public Advocates, Inc.; Equal Justice Works Fellow
- Law Clerk for the Honorable Eric L. Clay of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
- Relman, Dane & Colfax, PLLC; Civil Rights Fellow
Representative Cases
Munguia-Brown v. Equity Residential (N.D. Cal.) (certified class action challenging exorbitant late fees charged to more than 190,000 residential tenants in California resulting in a verdict for the plaintiffs and the class following a three week bench trial)
U.S. ex rel. Terry v. Wasatch (E.D. Cal.) (class action and False Claims Act case challenging landlord’s practice of requiring Section 8 tenants to pay additional services charges as part of their lease in violation of HUD regulations and HUD-mandated contracts resulting in a settlement securing full reimbursement of the unlawful charges and new protections against required fees and threats of evictions for class members and recovery for the federal government on the FCA claim) See 2022 WL 17178388 (Nov. 23, 2022) & 2024 WL 382139 (Feb. 1, 2024).
Pico Neighborhood Association v. City of Santa Monica (California Supreme Court) (led briefing in the California Supreme Court in a case challenging at-large city council elections that dilute Latino voting rights in Santa Monica, resulting in a landmark opinion affirming the California Voting Rights Act’s broad protection against vote dilution). See 5 Cal. 5th 292 (2023)
Yumori-Kaku v. City of Santa Clara (Superior Court, Santa Clara) (represented plaintiffs at successful trial in California Voting Rights Act case; verdict affirmed on appeal) See 59 Cal.App.5th 385 (2020)
Martinez v. Optimus Properties, LLC, 2017 WL 1040743 (C.D. Cal. March 14, 2017) (group action challenging discriminatory harassment and attempts to displace tenants from apartment buildings in gentrifying neighborhood of Koreatown, L.A.)
Representative Publications
Voting Rights Litigation May Become A Contradiction in Terms, (with Ginger L. Grimes) Daily Journal (Nov. 23, 2022).
Anne Bellows & Michael Allen, The Fair Housing Imperative to Address the Displacement Crisis, Civil Rights Insider (Winter 2018).
Disparate Impact Claims In Employment And Housing, (with William Jhaveri-Weeks) Plaintiff Magazine (Feb. 2018).
Holding Local Governments Accountable for Environmental Discrimination: The Promise of California Government Code Section 65008, 41 Ecology Law Quarterly 1 (2014).
Discriminatory Maintenance of REO Properties as a Violation of the Federal Fair Housing Act (with Stephen Dane & Tara Ramchandani), 17 CUNY Law Review 383 (2015).