Representative Melissa Wells Contact information

Melissa R. Wells, born on October 3, 1983, is an American politician who has been serving as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates representing District 40 since 2019. She was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and is a member of the Democratic Party.

Wells attended the University of California at Riverside in 2006, where she earned a B.A. degree in political science and law and sociology. She later attended American University in 2010, where she earned a M.A. degree in public policy. After graduating, she worked as a policy assistant for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies until 2014 and as a field advisor at Triple Point Interactions and program associate at PolicyLink until 2015. She is currently the regional director of the Baltimore-DC Building Trades Union.

Wells was sworn into the Maryland House of Delegates on January 9, 2019. She served as a member of the Environment and Transportation Committee from 2019 to 2022, afterwards serving in the Ways and Means Committee. In November 2019, Wells unsuccessfully ran for assistant majority leader of the House of Delegates, losing to state delegate Wanika B. Fisher in a 25-13 vote among the class of freshman Democratic legislators. Since 2020, she has served as Deputy Majority Whip. Since 2023, she has served as chief deputy majority whip.

In terms of political positions, Wells has been active in various areas. In March 2019, she voted against a bill that would allow Johns Hopkins University to have its own private police force. During the 2021 legislative session, Wells introduced bills that would require prosecutors to undergo implicit bias training, and another that would create a referendum in Baltimore on transferring control of the Baltimore Police Department back to the city. In March 2022, Wells said that she would “reluctantly” vote for the Climate Solutions Now Act, an omnibus bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by 2030, saying that she felt that the bill “did not do enough to ensure strong labor standards”. During the 2019 legislative session, Wells voted against a bill that would allow school resource officers to carry guns in Baltimore schools. During the 2021 legislative session, Wells introduced legislation to codify and extend the state’s COVID-19 pandemic eviction moratorium until April 2022, and another that would extend judges’ ability to delay eviction proceedings.