Gouya Ranekouhi is a Partner at O’Hagan Meyer in the Labor and Employment Litigation Group. Ms. Ranekouhi’s litigation practice focuses on defending employers in employment actions under the Fair Employment and Housing Act including gender, pregnancy, race, ancestry, age, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, wrongful termination claims, retaliation matters, and wage and hour class actions.

Prior to joining O’Hagan Meyer, Ms. Ranekouhi was a solo practitioner practicing Civil Litigation in the areas of business litigation, employment law, and consumer protection.  During her solo practice, Ms. Ranekouhi served as General Counsel for a pharmaceutical company and Of Counsel for a boutique law firm in Newport Beach, California, focused on the practice of employment law, including employment law advice and counseling, human resources training and defense of employment disputes. Ms. Ranekouhi also performed wage and hour audits for companies to ensure compliance with Federal and California employment legal standards.

Ms. Ranekouhi began her legal career as an Associate at a boutique law firm in Costa Mesa that specialized in consumer protection, with an emphasis in consumer class actions.  She litigated consumer class actions and individual claims in state and primarily federal court, focusing on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (RFDCPA), the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), California’s Invasion of Privacy Act, California’s Unfair Competition Law, the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, California’s Lemon Law, and various other consumer financial statutes.

Ms. Ranekouhi earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Irvine, where she received a Bachelor’s of Arts in Criminology, Law and Society, and a Minor in French. Immediately thereafter, she pursued her passion for law and advocacy and earned her Juris Doctor from California Western School of Law in San Diego, California. While in law school, she served as Student Director for the San Diego Chapter of the Iranian American Bar Association and President of the Middle Eastern Student Law Association.  She also studied International Law in Santiago de Chile at the Heidelberg Center for Latin America, where she witnessed firsthand and participated in the transformation of the Chilean justice system.

Ms. Ranekouhi is involved in and passionate about the Iranian-American legal community having served as the National Board of Directors for the Iranian American Bar Association (IABA), and fundraising director of the Orange County Chapter.  She has been involved with the IABA since 2010 and has played an active role in raising scholarship funding for deserving law students, organizing networking events for lawyers, mentorship programs for law students, and contributing to amicus briefs on behalf of the IABA concerning legal issues directly affecting the Iranian American community at large.