Ann Smith’s life as an advocate began long before she was admitted to the California bar in 1985. Born and raised outside Boston, Massachusetts, Ann left college to become a full-time volunteer for the United Farm Workers Union. She led boycott activities in the greater Boston area and in Rhode Island before relocating to California in 1975 when the State’s landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act gave farmworkers the right to organize.

 

UFW President Cesar Chavez assigned Ann to negotiate first-time labor agreements with unwilling, often hostile, growers in Oxnard, Ventura, Santa Maria, Hemet, San Ysidro, and in the Imperial and Salinas Valleys. Farmworkers taught her to speak Spanish and, through them, she learned what it means to be an advocate giving a voice and hope to those who are hurting.

 

Motivated to strengthen her skills as an advocate, Ann enrolled in night law school at the Monterey College of Law in 1981 and graduated cum laude in 1985. She moved to San Diego where, over the past 37 years, Ann has pursued countless cases for working people to enforce fair employment and discrimination laws and to seek compensation for those who suffered disabling injuries. Since 1985, Ann has also proudly represented the San Diego Municipal Employees Association (MEA), the City of San Diego’s largest public sector union, in litigation and in negotiations.

 

Ann’s crowning litigation achievement for City employees was the recent invalidation of an unlawful ballot measure known as Prop B, after a ten-year legal battle with Ann serving as lead counsel. Prop B had eliminated the security of a modest defined benefit pension for thousands of public servants. This case gave Ann the rarest of opportunities for any lawyer when she argued the merits before the California Supreme Court in 2018 leading to a unanimous 7-0 decision in favor of MEA and three other City employee unions. This landmark case protects the collective bargaining rights of all public employees in California.  City of San Diego employees are now being restored the pensions they were denied and are being made whole for their losses just as the Courts have ordered.

 

Ann’s lifetime of effective advocacy for working people makes her a true “Chavista”and for this reason, she is the Cesar Chavez Service Club’s 2022 Las Mañanitas Celebration Honoree.