Diana Nobile is a Partner at McGillivary Steele Elkin LLP. Since joining the firm in the fall of 2009, she has represented clients nationwide in Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and state Wage and Hour litigation, including multi-plaintiff class and collective actions against private and public employers, recovering millions of dollars for clients. As lead counsel for uniformed members of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Diana recovered more than $6 million in unpaid overtime and liquidated damages under the FLSA. She was also on the trial team in Perry v. City of New York, a three-week collective action jury trial involving FLSA claims of 2,519 FDNY EMTs and paramedics that resulted in a plaintiff verdict and a final judgment exceeding $19,000,000; the verdict was upheld on appeal in 2023.
Diana advocates on behalf of numerous federal sector unions in grievances to recover unpaid overtime and liquidated damages for bargaining unit members who were wrongly exempted from the FLSA, denied overtime for work performed before or after their tour of duty, or denied pay for work during uncompensated meal breaks. These matters have produced tens of millions of dollars in recoveries for union members nationwide.
She also represents union officials facing adverse employment actions for associational activities and speech on matters of public concern, challenging such actions under the First Amendment and state law. Diana has successfully represented union members and officers in grievance arbitrations that resulted in reinstatement and full back pay after unlawful terminations.
In 2024, Diana successfully argued before the Texas Supreme Court on behalf of the Austin Firefighters Association, which upheld as constitutional the union leave provision of the collective bargaining agreement between the union and the City of Austin. The decision capped a nearly eight-year effort defending the Austin Firefighters Association against challenges brought by individual plaintiffs, the Goldwater Institute, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the Texas Attorney General.
Diana advises union officials on a wide range of labor-management matters, including negotiation of collective bargaining agreements, grievance processing, administrative appeals, unfair labor practice complaints, and analysis of state and federal law affecting bargaining unit members.
Active in the labor and employment law community, Diana has taken on expanding responsibilities and practice areas. For the last three years she has served as Union/Employee Co-Chair of the American Bar Association’s Family and Medical Leave Act Subcommittee and is an editor of the FMLA Treatise. As Co-Chair, she presented on FMLA hot topics at the ABA Wage and Hour Committee’s Mid-Winter Meeting from 2024-2026. She presented the employee/union perspective on a panel titled “Recent FLSA Cases and Development” at the ABA’s 19th Annual Labor and Employment Law Section Conference (2025); spoke on “Litigating Wage and Hour Collective Actions, Part 1: Intake through Discovery” at the ABA’s 18th Annual Labor and Employment Law Section Conference (2024); presented on “Innovative Strategies for Crafting State-of-the-Art Settlement Agreements” at the ABA 14th Annual Labor and Employment Law Section Conference (November 2020); spoke on “New Developments in Pay Equity Law” at the ABA Fair Labor Standards Legislation Committee’s Mid-Winter Meeting (February 2018); and moderated “Class Arbitrability and Class Waiver: Where Are We Now, and Where Do We Go from Here?” at the ABA Labor and Employment Law Annual Section Conference (November 2017). In 2018 she spoke at the Wonder Woman Tech Conference in a presentation called “Wonder Women Who Know Their Rights About Fair and Equal Pay Fly Higher.”
Consistent with her commitment to workplace equity, Diana is a member of the Legal Network for Gender Equity and the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund and continues to work to ensure safe and fair workplaces for women.
Prior to joining the firm, Diana graduated cum laude from the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, where she served as Lead Articles Editor of the Catholic University Law Review. Immediately after law school, she began her career with the firm, where she has continued to develop her practice representing workers, unions, and their members.
