Vanita Gupta served as the 19th United States Associate Attorney General, overseeing the Department of Justice’s civil litigating divisions, grantmaking offices, and key initiatives on policing, civil rights, and economic justice. She led efforts to implement the President’s Executive Order on policing, strengthen environmental justice enforcement, and improve fairness in student loan bankruptcy proceedings. She also chaired the Justice Department’s Reproductive Rights and Opioid Epidemic Civil Litigation Task Forces and worked to combat unjust fines and fees practices.
Gupta is currently a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law, teaching classes and engaging students on criminal justice, policing, civil rights, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the intersection of law and policy. Previously, Gupta was President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division under President Obama. She led investigations into police departments in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago, and worked on voting rights, LGBTQ+ protections, and religious discrimination cases. Earlier in her career, she held leadership roles at the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. Gupta is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University and earned her law degree from NYU School of Law, where she later taught a civil rights litigation clinic.
