Vanita Gupta

Vanita Gupta has devoted her career to advancing civil rights, strengthening democratic norms, and building safe communities, both within national organizations and in the federal government. She is the Director of the Center for Law and Public Trust and a distinguished scholar in residence at NYU School of Law, where she teaches and speaks about constitutional democracy, the US Department of Justice, and the intersection of public policy and law.

From 2021 to 2024, Gupta served as the 19th associate attorney general of the United States. Nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the US Senate, she was the first civil rights lawyer in a top-three leadership position at the department. As associate attorney general, she supervised 13 components of the department, including its civil litigating divisions and grantmaking offices. She also spearheaded initiatives focused on building police-community trust, reproductive rights post-Dobbs, environmental justice, mental health, and gun violence prevention.

Before that, Gupta served as president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the nation’s oldest and largest coalition of nonpartisan civil rights organizations in the United States. She led national campaigns on the 2020 census (CensusCounts.org), voting rights and election administration, federal courts, justice and police reform, and COVID relief. She testified numerous times in Congress, built a business council of Fortune 500 companies, and engaged tech CEOs to protect civil rights.

Gupta led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the final two and a half years of the Obama Administration. As 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. Under her watch, the department investigated the police departments in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago and litigated groundbreaking LGBTQ and voting rights cases.

Prior to leading the Civil Rights Division, Gupta served as deputy legal director and director of the Center for Justice at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she worked for eight years. She created the ACLU’s Smart Justice Campaign, which promoted bipartisan justice reform while keeping communities safe.

Gupta began her legal career as an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, where she successfully led the effort to overturn wrongful drug convictions for 38 individuals in Tulia, Texas, and secured a $6 million settlement on their behalf.

Gupta graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and received her law degree from New York University School of Law.