Vanita Gupta: One of the Most Progressive Officials in the Biden Administration to Leave the Justice Department
- A strong voice on issues like abortion and police reform, the 49-year-old Indian American is the first woman of color and first civil rights attorney to hold the position of Associate Attorney General.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta will step down early next year, the Department of Justice announced today. A voice on issues like abortion and police reform, the 49-year-old Indian American is the first woman of color and first civil rights attorney to hold the Justice Department’s No. 3 post. She oversees the department’s civil litigation sections including antitrust enforcement, as well as the Civil Rights and the Environmental and Natural Resources divisions.
CNN noted that Gupta’s departure is “expected to come after the Justice Department completes its critical incident review of the law enforcement response to the May 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.” She is “the highest-ranking official to leave the Justice Department since Garland took over in 2021,” The Washington Post reported, adding that her “departure comes as the agency faces critical tests heading into a presidential election year.”
In statement, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said he’s “deeply grateful” to Gupta “for her extraordinary service. Her commitment to the pursuit of justice, and her relentless focus on bringing people together to find common ground, has made her an incredibly effective leader in dealing with some of the most complex challenges facing the American people. She has distinguished herself as the kind of leader who is also a partner to the career and non-career employees who work for her, to the stakeholders the Department works with, and to the public we all work for.”
Last year, Garland tapped Gupta, to lead a Justice Department reproductive rights task force after the Supreme Court struck down federal protections for abortion access. As the chair of the task force, “Gupta is leading the push to scrutinize legal threats to reproductive health rights.” She is credited with helping to oversee major legal settlements in tort cases brought against the federal government by victims in mass shootings, including at Sutherland Springs, Parkland and the Charleston Mother Emanuel AME Church.
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Gupta was confirmed in April 2021over strong GOP opposition. Vice President Kamala Devi Harris’ tie-breaking vote wasn’t necessary as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) supported Gupta and was the lone Republican to vote for the confirmation. Gupta received significant resistance from GOP senators for her views on defunding the police and decriminalizing possession of all illegal drugs. Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee accused her of being a liar and hyper partisan and not fit to serve in the DOJ.
This is her second stint at the Department of Justice. From Oct. 15, 2014, to Jan, 20, 2017, she served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. After that she served as the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the nation’s oldest and largest coalition of non-partisan civil rights organizations in the United States.
She was appointed by President Barack Obama as the chief civil rights prosecutor for the United States, where she oversaw a wide range of civil rights enforcement matters. Before leading the Civil Rights Division, she served as deputy legal director and the director of the Center for Justice at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In addition to managing litigation, she created and led the ACLU’s Smart Justice Campaign, aimed at promoting bipartisan justice reform while keeping communities safe. She began her legal career as an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund.
She 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.
(Top photo, YouTube screen shot)