Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk (née Peña, born June 27, 1966) is an American politician and attorney serving as the 109th speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates since 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, she has represented the 21st district since 2007.
Born in the Dominican Republic, Peña-Melnyk immigrated to New York with her family when she was eight years old. She graduated from Buffalo State College and the State University of New York at Buffalo, afterwards starting her law career in the Defender Association of Philadelphia before moving to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office. Peña-Melnyk was elected to the city council of College Park, Maryland, in 2003 and to the Maryland House of Delegates in 2006. She unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in Maryland's 4th congressional district in 2016, coming in third behind Anthony Brown and Glenn Ivey.
In December 2025, after Adrienne A. Jones announced that she would step down as speaker, Peña-Melnyk was unanimously elected to succeed her. She is the first Afro-Latina and second woman, after Jones, to lead the Maryland House of Delegates.
Early life and education Born in the Dominican Republic on June 27, 1966, Peña was raised in a poverty-stricken family who relied on public assistance and welfare programs. When Peña was seven or eight years old, she, her mother, and her sister immigrated to New York on family visas to join their father. Her parents divorced about a year after they arrived to the United States. Peña's mother eventually left welfare and worked in factories, earning enough to move the family to an apartment. Peña returned to the Dominican Republic at age 11 with her sister while her mother stayed behind to work jobs in the Garment District and send money home. She returned to the United States at age 14, and became a U.S. citizen in 1983, attaining citizenship after her mother naturalized.
Peña learned English in school and from watching Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on television. While in New York City, she helped with translation services for her mother and other Spanish-speaking families in the city's Washington Heights neighborhood. Peña moved out after a bad disagreement with her mother, staying with friends and renting a room during her last few months at John F. Kennedy High School. She later attended Buffalo State College, paying her way through school with a series of retail jobs and by volunteering at a shelter for battered women before graduating with a B.S. in criminal justice. She later graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she earned her Juris Doctor degree. Peña was the first in her family to achieve a college degree.
Career Legal career After law school, Peña started her legal career in the Defender Association of Philadelphia before moving to Washington, D.C., to join her then-fiancé Markian Melnyk after failing the bar exam. She later passed the test in 1993 and became a court-appointed defense attorney, advocating for foster children and abused children in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Peña-Melnyk later joined the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia as a prosecutor before leaving the practice after the birth of her first child in 1999. She continued to be active in public life, joining the board of CASA de Maryland and winning a seat on the College Park City Council in 2003.
Maryland House of Delegates
Peña-Melnyk was a member of the House Health and Government Operations Committee from 2007 to 2025. She served on the Public Health and Long Term Care, Government Operations & Long Term Care, Insurance and Pharmaceuticals, and Public Health and Minority Health Disparities subcommittees. In 2022, she was appointed Chair of the Health and Government Operations Committee, becoming the highest-ranking Latina in the history of the General Assembly.
Peña-Melnyk is also a member of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland and the Women Legislators of Maryland. She is also a founding member of the Maryland Legislative Latino Caucus and served as its first chairperson. In October 2019, Peña-Melnyk, who is Black and Latina, criticized a proposed plan that would require members of both the Legislative Black Caucus and the Legislative Latino Caucus to choose between being a member of either caucus. Following her criticism, the plan was withdrawn for consideration.
Peña-Melnyk was a delegate to the 2012, 2020, and 2024 Democratic National Conventions. She was also a member of the electoral college in the 2012 election, casting her vote for Barack Obama in a ceremony at the Maryland State House.
In 2019, Peña-Melnyk motioned during a meeting of members of the House of Delegates Democratic Caucus to nominate Adrienne A. Jones as the Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, a position to which Jones was eventually elected in May 2019.
During her tenure as county executive, Peña-Melnyk was one of several Latino officials to criticize Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks for not appointing a single person of Hispanic descent to her 39-member cabinet, despite Latinos making up 21.2% of the county's population. During the Democratic primary of the 2024 United States Senate election in Maryland, she declined to endorse Alsobrooks, instead endorsing and appearing in ads for U.S. Representative David Trone. After Trone was defeated by Alsobrooks in the May 2024 Democratic primary, Peña-Melnyk endorsed Alsobrooks in the general election.
2016 congressional campaign
On March 14, 2015, Peña-Melnyk announced that she would run for the United States House of Representatives in Maryland's 4th congressional district, seeking to succeed U.S. Representative Donna F. Edwards, who unsuccessfully ran for United States Senate in 2016. Her platform included raising the federal minimum wage and reducing college loan interest rates. During the Democratic primary, she received endorsements from Democracy for America, EMILY's List, Sierra Club, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Latino Victory Fund. If elected, she would have been the first Dominican American in Congress. Peña-Melnyk was defeated in the Democratic primary by former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland Anthony Brown, placing third with 19.0 percent of the vote.
Speaker of the House of Delegates
In December 2025, after Adrienne A. Jones announced that she would be stepping down as Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, Peña-Melnyk reportedly began making phone calls to her colleagues about a potential run for speaker. She confirmed her candidacy a few days later, announcing that the other candidates in the race—C. T. Wilson, Ben Barnes, and Jheanelle Wilkins—had dropped out of the race and endorsed her candidacy. Peña-Melnyk was unanimously elected speaker by the Maryland House of Delegates on December 16, 2025, becoming the second woman and first Afro-Latina to lead a chamber of the Maryland General Assembly. She is also the first person born in the Dominican Republic to lead either chamber of the Maryland General Assembly, and the first speaker who was not born in Maryland since C. Ferdinand Sybert.
During her tenure as speaker, Peña-Melnyk has adopted a conciliatory approach to leadership focused on relationship building and inclusiveness. Upon her election, she announced plans to create the Government, Labor, and Elections Committee, a new House standing committee dedicated solely to government operations, and the House Rural Caucus to give rural communities a stronger voice in the legislature. She also presided over the override of dozens of bills vetoed by Governor Wes Moore. Among the overridden measures were legislation establishing a commission to study reparations to victims of slavery or their descendants, as well as a bill requiring state agencies to study the economic and environmental impacts of data center development in the state. During her first full session as speaker, Peña-Melnyk supported several bills to restrict immigration enforcement in Maryland, increase government transparency, and address affordability concerns. She also testified in support of bills to better inform patients about mammogram results and require more training and education on menopause, and supported unsuccessful efforts to redraw Maryland's congressional districts.
Political positions Media outlets have described Peña-Melnyk as a progressive.
Energy During the 2026 legislative session, amid increasing electricity prices in Maryland, Peña-Melnyk supported a bill that would prohibit utility companies from using ratepayer funds on executive bonuses. She also introduced the Continuing the Next Generation Energy Act, which would make various adjustments to the state's EmPOWER energy efficiency program, increase the number of data centers with a separate tariff for large load customers, and prohibit utilities from recouping extra costs through additional consumer charges.
Healthcare In November 2008, Peña-Melnyk supported a bill requiring all college students to have health insurance, arguing that all college students should be held to the same standard as student athletes and international students, who are required to have health insurance.
During the 2018 legislative session, Peña-Melnyk introduced a bill to ask the federal government to divert money to Maryland used to offset the cost of high-risk patients on the Affordable Care Act's insurance pool, instead using it under a new "reinsurance program" under the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange. The bill passed and became law with Governor Larry Hogan's signature, and the plan was approved by federal regulators in August 2018.
During the 2019 legislative session, Peña-Melnyk introduced a bill that would require Marylanders without health insurance to pay a state penalty that would go toward purchasing coverage. The bill overwhelmingly passed in the Maryland House of Delegates and unanimously passed the Maryland Senate, and was signed into law by Governor Larry Hogan on May 13, 2019.
During the 2021 legislative session, Peña-Melnyk introduced the Shirley Nathan-Pulliam Health Equity Act, a bill that would create the Maryland Commission on Health Equity to examine racial, ethnic, cultural, or socioeconomic disparities in healthcare. She also introduced a bill that would require the Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities to work with the Maryland Health Care Commission to publish a "health disparity policy report card" comparing the state's racial and ethnic identifiers against the state's population by demographic, and another to require licensed health professionals to undergo implicit bias training when they apply to have their licenses renewed. All three bills passed and became law.
During the 2022 legislative session, Peña-Melnyk introduced bills to provide undocumented pregnant women access to Medicaid and implement a $30 a month cap on insulin, both of which passed and became law. She also introduced a bill that would expand Medicaid for immigrants regardless of their legal status, which failed to move out of committee. Peña-Melnyk supported the bill again when it was reintroduced during the 2024 legislative session, during which it passed and was signed into law by Governor Wes Moore.
During the 2023 legislative session, Peña-Melnyk introduced a bill that would authorize supervised injection sites in Maryland.
Housing During the 2022 legislative session, Peña-Melnyk introduced a bill to allow tenants to petition courts to shield records in eviction cases where the failure to pay rent was due to an income loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill passed and became law on May 29, 2022.
Immigration