Heather Morgan

Bar Admissions

California

Heather Morgan

Partner

Heather Morgan represents and counsels employers in all aspects of employment law, with an emphasis on defending equal employment opportunity cases, including “high stakes” discrimination class actions. Heather devotes a significant portion of her practice to helping employers develop or revamp personnel processes, build “best practices,” and ensure compliance with federal and state laws and regulations impacting recruitment, hiring, promotion, compensation, performance evaluation, termination, affirmative action compliance, voluntary diversity and inclusion programs, succession planning, and other personnel practices. In particular, Heather has significant experience partnering with employers who seek to design improved and compliant personnel processes through a transition to new or upgraded workforce-related software and HR technologies. As part of this counseling, Heather regularly provides compliance advice regarding multi-jurisdiction background check laws, e-signature and data retention requirements, and the use of computer algorithms in hiring and other personnel processes. Heather’s practice also includes a special focus on the development and analysis of statistics used in case defense, to conduct preventative, privileged diagnostic reviews of employers’ personnel practices (such as pay equity audits), and to develop diversity and inclusion metrics.

Prior to joining GBG, Heather was a partner in the Employment Law department of Paul Hastings LLP and the Global Chair of the firm’s Workforce Data and Technology practice.

Education

  • University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, J.D., 1994
  • University of Wisconsin Madison, B.A. (with distinction), 1988
Key Practice & Industry Experience

Key Practice Experience

  • Discrimination class action litigation (pay, promotions, hiring, etc.)
  • Systemic investigations (EEOC, DFEH, OFCCP, DLSE)
  • Complex compliance advice focused on company-wide personnel processes and related HR software programs

Key Industries

  • Technology
  • Healthcare
  • Hospitality
  • Entertainment
Professional & Civic

Publications & Presentations

Heather has given numerous presentations over the past 20 years for bar association meetings, other employment law symposiums and client CLEs on a variety of labor and employment law topics, including diversity and inclusion initiatives, proactive risk mitigation and best practices in personnel processes impacting pay equity, promotion, performance management, and other subjects of interest to employers. She also has written numerous articles on all of these topics.

Professional Associations

  • American Bar Association, Labor & Employment Law (LEL) Section, current Track Co-Chair for the 2021 ABA LEL Conference
  • Past Employer Co-Chair, ABA’s Technology in the Practice & Workplace Committee, ABA LEL Section
  • Board Member, UCLA Law Women LEAD
Recognitions & Honors

Recognitions & Honors

  • Played a lead role in obtaining denial of class certification in a nationwide hiring discrimination lawsuit against Cintas Corporation.
  • Defended and successfully resolved a number of discrimination class actions, most recently several race or gender pay and promotion discrimination cases against a large insurance company and a large healthcare provider.