Maggy Krell

In 2024, Maggy Krell bused dozens of volunteers from Sacramento to Reno to campaign for a Nevada ballot measure establishing abortion access as a right in the state constitution. The initiative passed, and Krell won 66% of the vote in her own election to the California State Assembly. She now represents Assembly District 6 after a career spent prosecuting criminal cases, leading California’s Special Prosecution Unit and handling reproductive-health litigation for Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. Her campaign also promised work on public safety, high prices, homelessness and programs for vulnerable youth. Upon taking office, she introduced legislation protecting Californians’ access to medication abortion.

THE JOB BEFORE THE JOB

Krell received her law degree from the University of California, Davis School of Law in 2003 and began as a deputy district attorney for San Joaquin County in Stockton. She later moved to the California Department of Justice, where her cases included cold-case murders, white-collar crime and matters crossing multiple jurisdictions. She rose to supervising deputy attorney general and led California’s Special Prosecution Unit.

Human trafficking became a substantial part of that record. Krell led the successful prosecution of executives of Backpage.com, which was shut down in 2018. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children gave her a career achievement award for her work on the case. She recounted it in her 2022 book, *Taking Down Backpage: Fighting the World’s Largest Sex Trafficker: A Prosecutor’s Story*.

Her work was not limited to prosecuting traffickers. Krell helped secure the early release of a sex-trafficking survivor who had been imprisoned as a teenager, and she has argued publicly that the criminal justice system must treat victims better.

THE PATH TO OFFICE

Krell first sought elected office in 2014, when she ran for Sacramento County district attorney and lost to Anne Marie Schubert. Four years later, she joined Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California as chief legal counsel, working against Trump administration efforts to cut funding and restrict access to low-cost reproductive health care.

That work proceeded through the courts. Krell filed an amicus brief defending a California law concerning misinformation about reproductive health care. She also sought an injunction under the federal government’s Title X rule to defend access to federal family-planning funds. After the Trump administration began separating families arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border, she volunteered as a lawyer helping to reunite parents and children.

Krell returned to electoral politics in 2024. She won the Assembly primary by more than 10 points in a field that included six other Democrats. Her general-election campaign included the Sacramento-to-Reno volunteer effort for Nevada’s constitutional abortion measure, while her district platform joined reproductive access with public safety, affordability, homelessness and vulnerable-youth programs.

THE THROUGH LINE

Krell’s clearest policy signature is reproductive health care, first as a lawyer and now as a legislator. At Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, she used an amicus brief and an injunction request to defend state law, federal family-planning money and access to low-cost care. During her Assembly campaign, she bused dozens of volunteers from Sacramento to Reno to campaign for the Nevada constitutional initiative. Once in office, she moved to protect access to medication abortion through legislation.

The rest of the record identifies the interests she has repeatedly put before institutions: trafficking survivors, crime victims, separated parents and children, people seeking reproductive care and vulnerable young people. Public safety is also part of that record, not only as a campaign promise but through murder, white-collar and multi-jurisdictional prosecutions and the Backpage case.

The mechanism has changed with the office. As a prosecutor, Krell brought cases and led a state unit. As counsel, she pursued litigation. As a candidate, she organized volunteers and won votes. In the Assembly, the instrument is legislation; her documented emphasis there continues the reproductive-access work she pursued at Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.