Dennis Herrera

Dennis Herrera is an American attorney, currently serving as Public Utilities Commission general manager for San Francisco.

His father was a psychiatrist who immigrated from Colombia after serving as part of a UN Peacekeeping force during the Suez War of 1956.

His mother is the child of Italian immigrants and worked as a nurse in Glen Cove.

Herrera earned his bachelor's degree from Villanova University in Pennsylvania, and his Juris Doctor from the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. Herrera worked various jobs to support himself during his education, from his newspaper route as a young boy, to restocking shelves at the local grocery store, to serving as a short order cook in a local diner.

Born November 6, 1962 in Bay Shore, Long Island, New York, Herrera grew up in the nearby middle class community of Glen Cove.

Upon graduating from law school in 1987, Herrera was offered an associate position at a maritime law firm in San Francisco and moved to the city.

After his move to San Francisco, Herrera joined his local Democratic club and helped to get Democratic candidates elected in the city.

In 1990, he was appointed to the Waterfront Plan Advisory Board, and later served on the Finance Committee for the California Democratic Party.

In 1993 Herrera was appointed to the U.S. Maritime Administration in Washington, D.C. during President Clinton's Administration.

He returned to private practice in San Francisco as a partner in the maritime law firm of Kelly, Gill, Sherburne & Herrera.

Then-Mayor Willie Brown appointed Herrera to the SF Transportation Commission, and later to the San Francisco Police Commission.

Herrera was voted the President of the Police Commission after just one year of service.

He was first elected as City Attorney in 2001, and re-elected without opposition in 2005, 2009, 2013, 2015 and 2019.

In December 2001, Herrera was elected San Francisco City Attorney, becoming the first Latino to hold the office.

He was re-elected in 2005, 2009, 2013, 2015 and 2019.

On August 16, 2006, Herrera sued CitiApartments for unlawful business and tenant harassment practices, which forced out rent-controlled tenants to allow higher rents to be charged for the same units.

The subsequent settlement, with penalties up to $10 million, put the company out of business.

In 2021, Herrera sued a developer who had built 29 apartments in a lot that San Francisco's zoning regulations specified could only have 10 apartments.

Herrera's lawsuit happened amid a severe housing shortage and homelessness crisis in San Francisco.

Herrera was previously City Attorney of San Francisco, known for his longtime legal advocacy for same-sex marriage in California, including the In re Marriage Cases, 43 Cal.4th 757 (2008), and Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570.

He ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of San Francisco in the 2011 election, finishing third in the City's ranked-choice voting system.

After his long-standing position as City Attorney, he was unanimously approved in 2021 to become the general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

U.S. (2013), as well as the legal fight against Proposition 8.

Herrera declared in November 2016 that the state's current cash bail system is unconstitutional and refused to defend it in a federal class-action lawsuit brought by a national civil rights group against San Francisco's sheriff.

This led to a legislative drive to reform the state's system where the only factor in deciding whether an inmate is freed prior to appearing before a judge is if they can pay the amount on the bail schedule.

In December 2016, Herrera reached a settlement with Academy of Art University valued at more than $60 million in cash and property to house low-income seniors.

On January 31, 2017 Herrera brought the first lawsuit in the nation against President Donald Trump over his executive order threatening to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from sanctuary cities and other local and state governments.

Herrera's federal lawsuit alleges that the executive order is unconstitutional and exceeds the president's power.

The trial court ruled in San Francisco's favor, finding Trump's executive order unconstitutional and ordering a nationwide halt to enforcement of it.

The federal government appealed that ruling.

Herrera on August 11, 2017 filed a second lawsuit against the Trump administration, this one seeking to invalidate new grant conditions that U.S. Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions III sought to place on a group of U.S. Department of Justice grants for local law enforcement.

Those grant conditions were issued after the district court had issued a preliminary injunction in April 2017 that halted enforcement of the sanctuary executive order as the case proceeded.

Herrera on September 19, 2017 sued the top five investor-owned fossil fuel companies seeking billions of dollars for infrastructure needed to protect San Francisco against sea-level rise caused by global warming from their products.

In 2017 and 2018, Herrera launched investigations into Uber and Lyft over driver pay and benefits, accessibility, discrimination, public safety issues and potential violations of other state and local laws.

On September 26, 2017, San Francisco became the first city in the country to sue Equifax for failing to protect the personal data of more than 15 million Californians, part of a data breach that compromised the personal information of 143 million U.S. consumers.

Herrera sued the rental car company and its affiliate on March 2, 2017 for charging drivers hidden fees when they cross the Golden Gate Bridge.

Herrera successfully defended San Francisco's short-term rental regulations from legal challenge by Airbnb and HomeAway and secured a settlement in May 2017 that requires the companies to ensure that listings on their site comply with San Francisco law, protecting rent-controlled apartments from being used as de facto hotels.

In May 2017, Herrera secured a court victory that got tenant evictions voided and $5.4 million in court awards against abusive landlord Anne Kihagi, had worked to force tenants from their rent-controlled homes so she could charge more money.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on August 1, 2018 upheld the district court's ruling on the merits in favor of San Francisco, finding that the executive order violates the Constitution's separation-of-powers guarantee, which reserves legislative and spending authority to Congress, not the president.

At a March 2018 climate change tutorial requested by the judge, the fossil fuel companies were compelled to acknowledge that the science of global warming is no longer in dispute.