Maggy Krell is an American lawyer, author and politician currently serving in the California State Assembly. She is a Democrat representing the 6th district, encompassing the majority of the city of Sacramento and surrounding unincorporated communities. Before successfully running for the Assembly, Krell served as a Deputy Attorney General and Special Assistant United States Attorney prosecuting high profile cases throughout California.[1] She also served as Chief Legal Counsel for Planned Parenthood California where she led the organization’s national litigation efforts.[2]
Legal career
Krell received her J.D. from University of California, Davis King School of Law in 2003, and started her career as a deputy district attorney for San Joaquin County in Stockton, California. She subsequently moved to the California Department of Justice where she prosecuted a wide variety of cases including cold case murders, white collar offenses and multi-jurisdictional cases. She was promoted to Supervising Deputy Attorney General and led California’s Special Prosecution Unit.[3]
In that role, Krell distinguished herself as a prosecutor of human traffickers and advocate for survivors. She led a successful prosecution of executives of Backpage.com, then the largest online human trafficking platform in the world,[4] that resulted in the site being shut down in 2018.[5] Krell described her work against the cite in her 2022 book Taking Down Backpage: Fighting the World’s Largest Sex Trafficker: A Prosecutor’s Story.[6] The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children honored Krell with a career achievement award for her work on the Backpage case.[7] As an advocate for survivors, Krell helped secure the early release of a sex-trafficking survivor who had been imprisoned as a teenager for crimes stemming from her victimization.[8] Krell has been outspoken about the need for better treatment of victims by the criminal justice system.[9]
In 2018, Krell joined Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California as their Chief Legal Counsel, seeking to help combat efforts by the Trump Administration to cut funding and curtail access to low-cost reproductive healthcare. In that role, she filed an amicus brief defending a California law that sought to reduce targeted dissemination of misinformation about reproductive healthcare from a suit that was being heard by the Supreme Court.[2] She also defended access to federal family planning funds by seeking an injunction to the federal government’s Title X Rule.[10]
After the Trump Administration began a policy of separating families arrested for crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Krell served as a volunteer lawyer, helping to reunite separated parents and children, and worked to challenge the federal government’s policy through legal action.[11]
Political career
Krell won election to the California State Assembly in 2024 on a platform promising to prioritize public safety, protect access to reproductive healthcare, address high prices and homelessness, and improve programs benefiting vulnerable youth.[12][13] She had previously run for Sacramento County District Attorney in 2014 and lost to Anne Marie Schubert.[14] In 2024, Krell won her primary by a more than 10-point margin in a large field that included six other Democrats.[15] She focused her general election campaign on a ballot measure in Nevada to enshrine access to abortion as a right in the state constitution, bussing dozens of volunteers from Sacramento to Reno to campaign.[16][17] Krell secured 66% of the vote[18] and Nevada’s constitutional initiative also passed.[19] Upon taking office, Krell introduced legislation to protect Californians' access to medication abortion.[20]
