Now Reading
President-elect Joe Biden to Tap Former Obama Official Vanita Gupta as Associate Attorney General

President-elect Joe Biden to Tap Former Obama Official Vanita Gupta as Associate Attorney General

  • Currently the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, she served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. 

President-elect Joe Biden is poised to name former civil rights leader Vanita Gupta as Associate Attorney General. As per reports in various media outlets including the New York Times and NPR, Biden will tap federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland as the Attorney General, as well as former prosecutor and national security official Lisa Monaco as deputy attorney general. 

According to the New York Times, one of Gupta’s responsibilities “will be to oversee the division of the department that argues on behalf of the federal government in court, a division that has been demoralized and decimated during the Trump years.” 

As the Indian-American daughter of immigrants, Gupta would be the first woman of color to serve in this role.

Gupta is currently the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights coalition to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States. Before joining the conference in June 2017, Gupta served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. 

Appointed in October 2014 by President Barack Obama as the chief civil rights prosecutor for the United States, “Gupta oversaw a wide range of criminal and civil enforcement efforts to ensure equal justice and protect equal opportunity for all during one of the most consequential periods for the division,” according to her profile on The Leadership Conference website. â€śUnder Gupta’s leadership, the division did critical work in a number of areas, including advancing constitutional policing and criminal justice reform; prosecuting hate crimes and human trafficking; promoting disability rights; protecting the rights of LGBTQ individuals; ensuring voting rights for all; and combating discrimination in education, housing, employment, lending, and religious exercise,” the profile said. 

Selected high profile matters during her tenure included the investigations of the Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago police departments; the appeals of the Texas and North Carolina voter ID cases; the challenge to North Carolina’s HB2 law and other transgender rights litigation; enforcement of education, land use, hate crimes, and other statutes to combat Islamophobia and other forms of religious discrimination; the issuance of statements of interest on bail and indigent defense reform, and letters to state and local court judges and administrators on the unlawful imposition of fines and fees in criminal justice system; and the administration’s report on solitary confinement.

Prior to joining the Justice Department, Gupta served as Deputy Legal Director and the director of the Center for Justice at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She joined the ACLU in 2006 as a staff attorney, where she subsequently secured a landmark settlement on behalf of immigrant children from around the world detained in a privately-run prison in Texas that ultimately led to the end of “family detention” at the facility. 

See Also

“In addition to managing a robust litigation docket at the ACLU, Gupta created and led the organization’s Smart Justice Campaign aimed at ending mass incarceration while keeping communities safe,” her profile said. She worked with law enforcement agencies, corrections officials, advocates, stakeholders, and elected officials across the political spectrum to build collaborative support for pretrial, drug, and sentencing policies that make our federal, state, and local criminal justice systems more effective and more just.

Gupta began her legal career as an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, where she successfully led the effort to overturn the wrongful drug convictions of 38 individuals in Tulia, Texas, who were ultimately pardoned by Governor Rick Perry. She then helped negotiate a $6 million settlement on behalf of her clients. She also consulted with European civil society organizations working to advance the rights of the Roma.

She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and received her law degree from New York University School of Law, where she later taught a civil rights litigation clinic for several years. She is married to Chinh Q. Le, legal director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, and has two young sons.

What's Your Reaction?
Excited
0
Happy
1
In Love
0
Not Sure
1
Silly
0
View Comments (0)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

© 2020 American Kahani LLC. All rights reserved.

The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of American Kahani.
Scroll To Top