Melissa M. Blanco

Melissa’s practice focuses on appellate and business litigation in Pennsylvania’s state and federal courts and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, with a particular expertise in petitions for allowance of appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (allocatur). She has briefed and argued complex matters for individuals, businesses, and governmental entities, including cases involving Medicaid compliance, municipal transactions, restrictive covenants, trade secrets, Right-to-Know Law issues, and business-related disputes. 

Before joining Obermayer, Melissa clerked for Chief Justice Thomas G. Saylor of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. She draws on that experience to guide Obermayer’s trial teams on standards of review, issue preservation, and appellate‑ready briefing. Melissa graduated from Penn State Law, where she served as Managing Editor of the Penn State Law Review, and earned her B.A., cum laude, from the University of Florida.

A Latina, first-generation college graduate, and daughter of blue-collar workers, Melissa brings a practical, common‑sense perspective to her work. She is known for cutting through complexity, making the “why” behind her position unmistakable and her desired outcome feel inevitable.  Her guiding principle is simple: the harder you work, the luckier you get.

When not working, Melissa and her husband like experiencing Philadelphia’s booming food culture and playing tabletop board games.

Former law clerk for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Melissa brings a court-side perspective to appellate and complex litigation.  Her experience includes:

• Successfully briefing appeals before the Commonwealth Court and Pennsylvania Supreme Court on regulatory approvals and municipal transactions.
• Presenting oral argument to the full Commonwealth Court in a precedent-setting case on public-utility law.
• Securing Pennsylvania Supreme Court review and a win on the merits in a landmark decision clarifying non-parent child-support obligations.
• Obtaining Pennsylvania Supreme Court review on issues of quasi-judicial immunity and appellate standards.
• Crafting a novel transparency argument never before raised in Pennsylvania in a Right-to-Know Law appeal, leading briefing in a bet-the-company appeal.
• Reversing an adverse agency decision in the Commonwealth Court, securing a win on independent contractor and unemployment eligibility issues.
• Securing dismissal with prejudice of all claims against a client in a multi-defendant contract action.
• Successfully defending attorneys against DB-7 inquiries from the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board.
• Successfully securing an injunction preventing a former employee from disclosing trade secrets to a major competitor.
• Persuaded opposing counsel to abandon threatened litigation by crafting a compelling factual narrative in pre-litigation that exposed critical weaknesses in their client’s position.

Melissa was included in the Pennsylvania Rising Stars® list for Business Litigation in 2023 – 2025. She was one of five Penn State Law students selected to teach Mongolian lawyers about the U.S. legal system. She was a legal teaching assistant at The National University of Mongolia.

Melissa was also one of three Penn State Law students selected to participate in a roundtable discussion with Yale Law School Professor, James Forman, Jr., regarding the war on drugs and its ultimate relationship to mass incarceration.

Publications:

Sex Trend or Sexual Assault?: The Dangers of Stealthing and the Concept of Conditional Consent
123 Penn. St. L. Rev. 217 (2018)

Police Sexual Violence: Police Brutality, #MeToo, and Masculinities
108 Calif. L. Rev. 1487 (2020)

Awards Won*

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