Yaman Salahi
Partner San Francisco
ysalahi@edelson.com (415) 638-9903
I represent workers, consumers, and other populations whose rights have been violated, and I focus on confronting corporate and government misconduct. I received my J.D. from Yale Law School and obtained a degree in Rhetoric from U.C. Berkeley.
Favorite Vacation
Walking around new cities and learning new languages
Favorite Sport
Cycling
Cups of Coffee
2
How I Get Around
Vespa
Curriculum Vitae
YAMAN SALAHI is a Partner at Edelson PC. Yaman has broad-ranging experience with consumer protection, antitrust, civil rights, and administrative law claims, including in complex class action proceedings and multi-district litigation.
Yaman clerked for the Honorable Edward M. Chen in the Northern District of California. Prior to joining Edelson, Yaman was a partner at another prominent plaintiff-side class action firm in San Francisco. He was also a Staff Attorney in the National Security and Civil Rights Program at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, where he focused on legal issues surrounding government surveillance and freedom of speech, and an Arthur Liman Fellow at the American Civil liberties Union of Southern California. In 2018, Yaman volunteered for several weeks with Centro de los Derechos del Migrante in Mexico City, advising Mexican migrant workers about their rights under the H-2A, H-2B, and TN temporary visa programs.
- Sheepherder Wage-Fixing Litigation. Yaman represents migrant sheepherders in a proposed class action alleging that ranches in the Western states agreed to fix the wages of their workers and not to compete for their labor, in violation of the antitrust laws.
- Money Transfer Privacy Litigation. Yaman represents a proposed class of individuals who used money transfer services like Western Union, RIA, Viamericas, and DolEx in a lawsuit alleging that the companies violated customer privacy rights by disclosing transaction data en masse as part of a dragnet government surveillance program.
- Bail Bond Co-Signer Litigation. Yaman represents California co-signers of bail bonds sold on installment plans by Aladdin Bail Bonds and Bail Hotline Bail Bonds in a case alleging that the defendants failed to include a required disclosure to co-signers, and thus acted unlawfully when they collected from the co-signers on those bonds.
- Doe v. Roblox. Yaman obtained a settlement valued at $10 million on behalf of a class of Roblox users who alleged that the company unlawfully deleted virtual items from user accounts without refunds.
- CARES Act Stimulus Payments for Incarcerated People. At a prior firm, Yaman devised the legal strategy, researched the legal theories, and briefed all merits motions challenging the Trump administration’s denial of COVID-19 stimulus relief under the CARES Act to people in prison. Yaman was the lead author of the winning motion for class certification, preliminary injunction, and summary judgment, which ultimately resulted in over $465 million in cash assistance to over 385,000 people living in prison, and preventing the IRS from seeking over $1 billion already issued from recoupment. Yaman also authored a successful opposition to the IRS’s attempt in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the district court’s rulings pending appeal. The case is Scholl v. Mnuchin, No. 20-cv-5309-PJH (N.D. Cal.).
- In antitrust no-poach litigation, obtained a $54.5 million settlement for medical professors and $19 million for other faculty at Duke University and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and $48.95 million for railway industry workers.
- Rising Star, Northern California, SuperLawyers 2021.
- Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Employment & Civil Rights Lawyers, 2021-2023.
- Outstanding Private Antitrust Litigation Achievement, American Antitrust Institute, 2017 & 2019
- Kathi Pugh Award for Exceptional Mentorship, U.C. Berkeley School of Law, 2015.
- ABA Employment Law Section Practice & Professionalism Track Co-Chair (2021-2022).
- C. Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric, Lecturer, Summer 2021, Rhetoric 166: Law & Politics (Between the Street & the Gavel: How Law & Social Movements Change One Another).
- Commissioner, Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission (2017).
- Board Member, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus (2018-present).
- No Poach Agreements, Florida Bar Association Labor & Employment Law Section, Dec. 8, 2021, Co-Presented with U.S. Department of Justice Attorney James J. Fredricks.
- Covid-19 Issues in Employment Law, Panelist on Practicing Law Institute’s Employment Conference September 2020.
- Employment Law in the COVID Era, June 3, 2020, Panelist for Berkeley Law Summer Speaker Series,
- Los Angeles Times, Immigrants Sue ICE for Spying on their Financial Records, Dec. 13, 2022.
- Bloomberg Law, Competition Authority Gives FTC New Tool on Gig Worker Policies, Oct. 3, 2022.
- KQED, Bail Bonds Companies Failed to Reveal Full Consequences of Co-Signing, Lawsuits Say, Mar. 25, 2022.
- KQED, Incarcerated Californians Are Still Struggling to Collect Their Stimulus Payments, Dec. 15, 2021.
- NPR, Stimulus Debit Cards Unusable for Prison Inmates in At Least Four States, Feb. 6, 2021.
- Forbes, Prisoners Eligible for $600 Stimulus Checks; Stimulus Bill Language Doesn’t Exclude Them, Jan. 6, 2021.
- Forbes, IRS Must Pay $100 Million Worth of $1,200 Stimulus Checks, Judge Orders in Prisoners’ Lawsuit, Oct. 5, 2020.
- SF Chronicle, Formerly interned Japanese Americans stand up against Muslim hate, Dec. 22, 2015.
- NY Times, Yemeni-Americans, Thrust Into Limbo, Say U.S. Embassy Unfairly Revokes Passports, May 27, 2015.
- SF Chronicle, S.F. man says U.S. fraudulently kept him from leaving Yemen, Apr. 20, 2015.
- SF Chronicle, FBI reports show widespread domestic surveillance, Sep. 19, 2013.
- Co-Author, with Dean M. Harvey, Comments of the Antitrust Law Section of the ABA in Connection with the FTC Workshop on “Non-Competes in the Workplace: Examining Antitrust and Consumer Protection Issues,” April 2020.
- Yaman Salahi & Nasrina Bargzie, Talking Israel & Palestine on Campus: How the U.S. Department of Education Can Uphold the Civil Rights Act and the First Amendment, 12 Hastings Race & Poverty L.J. 155 (2015).
- Arabic
- Spanish
- California, N.D. Cal., C.D. Cal., S.D. Cal., N.D. Ill., E.D. Mich., D.D.C., District of Columbia, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 11th & Fed. Cir.