This exclusive list recognizes leading attorneys based in California who have made significant contributions in national labor and employment law. It is Gehrke's fifth time in a row being named to this list.

As the Daily Journal noted in its June 29, 2022, profile of Gehrke’s multifaceted practice, “Only a small percentage of employment lawyers also represent employers dealing with unions under the National Labor Relations Act. An even smaller number … also represent airlines in labor matters, which all fall under the Railway Labor Act rather than the NLRA. Michele Haydel Gehrke does all three.”

The Daily Journal’s profile of Gehrke highlights her 2022 employment-side work for a major restaurant chain in California Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) wage and hour suits. In those cases, she and her team advanced “novel legal arguments to win stays of the later filed cases while she worked out a settlement in the first.”

On the labor side, the journal looked at her high-profile work on the first unionization effort in the video game industry, as well as cases for a leading airline involving issues of discrimination and COVID-19 vaccination policies.

For example, last September, Gehrke obtained “one of the first rulings upholding a company's mandatory vaccination policy when a federal judge in Colorado denied a flight attendant’s motion for a temporary restraining order.”

"I think a lot of employers have been able to look at [the ruling] for guidance," said Gehrke.