Throughout most of Steve’s career, he has represented public employee organizations in labor negotiations and litigation to enforce the contractual and statutory rights of their members. He has also defended public employees who have been the subject of disciplinary and criminal prosecution.

For the past several years, Steve has been selected by his peers as a Super Lawyer in Southern California and as a member of the elite group of Best Lawyers in America. On numerous occasions Steve has been called upon to lecture other attorneys in the areas of administrative law and labor law. He has authored portions of reference books widely used by practicing attorneys in those specialized areas.

Most recently, Steve gained statewide acclaim for persuading the California Supreme Court to overturn an unchallenged 14-year-old Court of Appeal decision that incorrectly denied pension benefits to County employees. This groundbreaking Ventura decision and a group of subsequent class action cases Steve prosecuted dramatically altered the manner in which retirement allowances must be calculated and produced enhanced pension benefits valued in the billions of dollars. Steve has also been involved in a number of lawsuits that have interpreted the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act and the Public Safety Officers’ Procedural Bill of Rights Act.

One of Steve’s earliest successes was the landmark California Supreme Court decision in People v. Marsden. 

Steve earned his undergraduate degree at UCLA, majoring in mathematics and accounting. In 1965, he graduated in the top one percent of his class at the University of California, Hastings College of Law. After working in the California Attorney General’s Office and with a business litigation firm in San Francisco, he joined a small firm in Santa Monica where he was introduced to the needs of public safety officers for legal representation. In 1971, Steve formed what is now Silver Hadden Silver Wexler + Levine.