CCJ Directory

Yasmin Cader is a deputy legal director at the ACLU and leads the organization’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality, which encompasses the National Prison Project, the Criminal Law Reform Project, the Racial Justice Program, the Capital Punishment Project, and the John Adams Project.

In her 30-year career as a civil rights lawyer and public defender in Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles, Cader has been on the front lines of the fight for racial justice. Her time with the Public Defender Service aligned with the height of the “war on drugs” and with a soaring juvenile murder rate in DC. Her time at the Federal Defenders of New York coincided with the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy, the 9/11 attacks, subsequent passage of the Patriot Act, and the escalated monitoring and prosecution of Muslims.

Prior to joining the ACLU, Cader co-founded Cader Adams Trial Lawyers, a women-owned litigation boutique in Los Angeles. Cader continues to be involved in the Los Angeles community through the Board of Police Commission’s Advisory Committee on Building Trust and Equity and the Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent’s Reimagining School Safety Task Force.

Cader is involved in Gideon’s Promise, the National Criminal Defense College, and Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop. She also served as the director of training for the Federal Public Defenders in Los Angeles, is vice president of the Yale Law School Association Executive Committee, and is a member of the Leadership Advisory Council for The Tsai Leadership Program at Yale Law School.

Cader began her career as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Afterwards, she served as an Honors Program Trial Lawyer with the Employment Litigation Section of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she litigated individual and class-action claims of sexual and racial harassment and discrimination. She is a graduate of Howard University and Yale Law School.