Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Partner, Jones Day
Eric Dreiband represents clients in investigations, litigation, and counseling in civil rights, employment discrimination, whistleblower, wage and hour, and other matters. Prior to rejoining Jones Day in 2021, Eric served as the 18th Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and he also served as the 12th General Counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Under Eric's leadership, DOJ's Civil Rights Division set enforcement records for prosecutions of law enforcement officers and sexual harassment, religious liberty, and servicemember cases; charged the highest number of hate crimes cases in decades; significantly expanded resources for human trafficking prosecutions; prosecuted race and other forms of illegal discrimination in education, employment, housing, lending, and voting; reached historic disability rights settlements with several states; opposed unlawful COVID-19-related civil liberty restrictions; and successfully litigated to protect the Constitutional and civil rights of all people in the United States.
As EEOC general counsel, Eric led the Commission's litigation of the federal employment antidiscrimination laws, and he issued the Regional Attorneys' Manual, which established the policies of EEOC's litigation program. Eric also served at the Department of Labor (DOL) as deputy wage and hour administrator and directed DOL's enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and other laws.
From 1997 to 2000, Eric served as a prosecutor in the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
Eric has spoken and written extensively about civil rights and other employment laws, and he has testified about these subjects before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Shareholder, Littler
Bradford J. Kelley has a broad practice representing employers in employment anti-discrimination and wage and hour matters. He focuses on advising clients about emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), and their impact in the workplace.
Brad is an internationally recognized workplace AI authority. He advises clients on how to maximize the benefits of using AI in the workplace while minimizing potential legal and business risks. His deep background in this area provides employers with the tools and insights they need to develop, deploy, and monetize AI and other emerging technologies to bolster business operations and efficiency.
Associate Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Ryan H. Nelson joined the faculty at South Texas College of Law Houston in 2021. His research focuses on leveraging the civil litigation and other dispute resolution systems to advance the rights of poor and other marginalized workers, most often with respect to discrimination, harassment, wages, leaves of absence, and accommodations. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review, Fordham Law Review, BYU Law Review, Yale Law and Policy Review, and the online companions to the NYU Law Review, California Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. He has advised state attorneys’ general offices and other administrative agencies on employment law reforms and helped to draft associated proposed legislation and regulations. Moreover, he has provided legal commentary for Fox 26 Houston, KPRC 2 News | Houston, and in periodicals like Slate, USA Today, the Texas Tribune, and the Houston Chronicle.
Before joining South Texas, Ryan completed a research fellowship with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and taught on the adjunct faculty at Boston University School of Law, New England Law | Boston, and New York Law School. He also spent nearly a decade practicing labor and employment law, including as in-house employment law counsel for one of the world’s largest financial services companies and as an attorney with one of the top labor and employment law firms in the country where he specialized in workplace affirmative action law. He obtained his LL.M. from Harvard Law School where he was awarded the Irving Oberman Memorial Prize for Best Paper on Law and Social Change; his J.D., cum laude, from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, where he served on the Editorial Board of the Moot Court Honor Society; and his B.S.B.A. with a major in economics from the University of Florida where he was a National Merit Scholar and became an avid fan of Florida Gators football.
Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy, Georgetown Law
David Cole is the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He writes about and teaches constitutional law, freedom of speech, and constitutional criminal procedure. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and is the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation.
David has published widely in law journals and the popular press, including The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He is the author or editor of ten books, several of which have won awards. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, published in 2007, and co-authored with Jules Lobel, won the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for best book on national security and civil liberties. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism received the American Book Award in 2004. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and best book on an issue of national policy in1999 by the American Political Science Association.
David received his bachelor’s degree and law degree from Yale University. He worked as a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights from 1985 to 1990. He has continued to litigate as a professor and, from 2017 to 2024, as National Legal Director of the ACLU. He has litigated many significant constitutional cases at the Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson (1989), which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are prohibited forms of sex discrimination under Title VII; Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L. (2021), which protected student online speech from school discipline; and National Rifle Association v. Vullo (2024), which held that government officials violate the First Amendment when they use their regulatory authority to coerce private parties to blacklist a disfavored political group.
David has received two honorary degrees and numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Norman Dorsen Presidential Prize from the ACLU for lifetime commitment to civil liberties. The late New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called David “one of the country’s great legal voices for civil liberties today.” Nat Hentoff called him “a one-man Committee of Correspondence in the tradition of patriot Sam Adams.”
Partner, BakerHostetler, Adjunct Fellow, The Manhattan Institute
Andrew Grossman leads BakerHostetler’s Appellate and Major Motion team. He has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly all the federal courts of appeals, as well as some state appellate courts, litigating high-profile and complex commercial, administrative and constitutional issues.
Andrew works with practice groups across BakerHostetler to identify and tackle complex issues, advise on administrative law and strategy, tee up issues for appeal and tackle appeals. He has developed and implemented litigation and administrative strategies for clients in several fields and industries.
In addition to his practice, Andrew advises members of Congress on matters of constitutional and administrative law, having testified more than a dozen times before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. He has been a frequent legal commentator on radio and television, having appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR and its affiliates, CBN and elsewhere. His legal commentary has also appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and many others.
Andrew is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Buckeye Institute, an Adjunct Fellow the Manhattan Institute and a member of the leadership of the Federalist Society. He previously served as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Director of the Higher Education Reform Initiative, America First Policy Institute
Dr. Christopher Schorr, Ph.D., is from San Diego, California and serves as Director for AFPI’s Higher Education Reform Initiative. In this role, Chris works to develop the Initiative’s research agenda and advance its policy priorities, including eliminating divisive DEI and gender theory-based practices, promoting academic freedom, combating antisemitism, and reforming student loans and accreditation. Prior to joining AFPI, Chris supported the Defense Health Board, a Department of Defense federal advisory committee, as a research analyst. He coauthored the Amazon best seller Black Eye for America: How Critical Race Theory is Burning Down the House.
Chris is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in American Government from Georgetown University, and his B.A. in political science (summa cum laude) from the University of California, San Diego. With three children, Chris’s “free time” is largely accounted for; however, he and his wife enjoy reading, fitness, shooting, and the outdoors.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy, Georgetown Law
David Cole is the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He writes about and teaches constitutional law, freedom of speech, and constitutional criminal procedure. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and is the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation.
David has published widely in law journals and the popular press, including The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He is the author or editor of ten books, several of which have won awards. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, published in 2007, and co-authored with Jules Lobel, won the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for best book on national security and civil liberties. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism received the American Book Award in 2004. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and best book on an issue of national policy in1999 by the American Political Science Association.
David received his bachelor’s degree and law degree from Yale University. He worked as a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights from 1985 to 1990. He has continued to litigate as a professor and, from 2017 to 2024, as National Legal Director of the ACLU. He has litigated many significant constitutional cases at the Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson (1989), which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are prohibited forms of sex discrimination under Title VII; Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L. (2021), which protected student online speech from school discipline; and National Rifle Association v. Vullo (2024), which held that government officials violate the First Amendment when they use their regulatory authority to coerce private parties to blacklist a disfavored political group.
David has received two honorary degrees and numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Norman Dorsen Presidential Prize from the ACLU for lifetime commitment to civil liberties. The late New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called David “one of the country’s great legal voices for civil liberties today.” Nat Hentoff called him “a one-man Committee of Correspondence in the tradition of patriot Sam Adams.”
Partner, BakerHostetler, Adjunct Fellow, The Manhattan Institute
Andrew Grossman leads BakerHostetler’s Appellate and Major Motion team. He has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly all the federal courts of appeals, as well as some state appellate courts, litigating high-profile and complex commercial, administrative and constitutional issues.
Andrew works with practice groups across BakerHostetler to identify and tackle complex issues, advise on administrative law and strategy, tee up issues for appeal and tackle appeals. He has developed and implemented litigation and administrative strategies for clients in several fields and industries.
In addition to his practice, Andrew advises members of Congress on matters of constitutional and administrative law, having testified more than a dozen times before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. He has been a frequent legal commentator on radio and television, having appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR and its affiliates, CBN and elsewhere. His legal commentary has also appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and many others.
Andrew is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Buckeye Institute, an Adjunct Fellow the Manhattan Institute and a member of the leadership of the Federalist Society. He previously served as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Director of the Higher Education Reform Initiative, America First Policy Institute
Dr. Christopher Schorr, Ph.D., is from San Diego, California and serves as Director for AFPI’s Higher Education Reform Initiative. In this role, Chris works to develop the Initiative’s research agenda and advance its policy priorities, including eliminating divisive DEI and gender theory-based practices, promoting academic freedom, combating antisemitism, and reforming student loans and accreditation. Prior to joining AFPI, Chris supported the Defense Health Board, a Department of Defense federal advisory committee, as a research analyst. He coauthored the Amazon best seller Black Eye for America: How Critical Race Theory is Burning Down the House.
Chris is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in American Government from Georgetown University, and his B.A. in political science (summa cum laude) from the University of California, San Diego. With three children, Chris’s “free time” is largely accounted for; however, he and his wife enjoy reading, fitness, shooting, and the outdoors.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Executive Director & Secretary, American Civil Rights Project
Dan Morenoff is the executive director at the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
His work focuses on protecting and, where necessary, restoring the primacy of all Americans' shared civil rights against the identitarian alternative.
Before practicing law, Morenoff served on the legislative staff of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). Morenoff holds a B.A. from Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He has also served as an officer or director of several community organizations in Dallas, Texas.
Partner, Jones Day
Eric Dreiband represents clients in investigations, litigation, and counseling in civil rights, employment discrimination, whistleblower, wage and hour, and other matters. Prior to rejoining Jones Day in 2021, Eric served as the 18th Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and he also served as the 12th General Counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Under Eric's leadership, DOJ's Civil Rights Division set enforcement records for prosecutions of law enforcement officers and sexual harassment, religious liberty, and servicemember cases; charged the highest number of hate crimes cases in decades; significantly expanded resources for human trafficking prosecutions; prosecuted race and other forms of illegal discrimination in education, employment, housing, lending, and voting; reached historic disability rights settlements with several states; opposed unlawful COVID-19-related civil liberty restrictions; and successfully litigated to protect the Constitutional and civil rights of all people in the United States.
As EEOC general counsel, Eric led the Commission's litigation of the federal employment antidiscrimination laws, and he issued the Regional Attorneys' Manual, which established the policies of EEOC's litigation program. Eric also served at the Department of Labor (DOL) as deputy wage and hour administrator and directed DOL's enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and other laws.
From 1997 to 2000, Eric served as a prosecutor in the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
Eric has spoken and written extensively about civil rights and other employment laws, and he has testified about these subjects before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Shareholder, Littler
Bradford J. Kelley has a broad practice representing employers in employment anti-discrimination and wage and hour matters. He focuses on advising clients about emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), and their impact in the workplace.
Brad is an internationally recognized workplace AI authority. He advises clients on how to maximize the benefits of using AI in the workplace while minimizing potential legal and business risks. His deep background in this area provides employers with the tools and insights they need to develop, deploy, and monetize AI and other emerging technologies to bolster business operations and efficiency.
Associate Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Ryan H. Nelson joined the faculty at South Texas College of Law Houston in 2021. His research focuses on leveraging the civil litigation and other dispute resolution systems to advance the rights of poor and other marginalized workers, most often with respect to discrimination, harassment, wages, leaves of absence, and accommodations. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review, Fordham Law Review, BYU Law Review, Yale Law and Policy Review, and the online companions to the NYU Law Review, California Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. He has advised state attorneys’ general offices and other administrative agencies on employment law reforms and helped to draft associated proposed legislation and regulations. Moreover, he has provided legal commentary for Fox 26 Houston, KPRC 2 News | Houston, and in periodicals like Slate, USA Today, the Texas Tribune, and the Houston Chronicle.
Before joining South Texas, Ryan completed a research fellowship with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and taught on the adjunct faculty at Boston University School of Law, New England Law | Boston, and New York Law School. He also spent nearly a decade practicing labor and employment law, including as in-house employment law counsel for one of the world’s largest financial services companies and as an attorney with one of the top labor and employment law firms in the country where he specialized in workplace affirmative action law. He obtained his LL.M. from Harvard Law School where he was awarded the Irving Oberman Memorial Prize for Best Paper on Law and Social Change; his J.D., cum laude, from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, where he served on the Editorial Board of the Moot Court Honor Society; and his B.S.B.A. with a major in economics from the University of Florida where he was a National Merit Scholar and became an avid fan of Florida Gators football.
Partner, Jones Day
Eric Dreiband represents clients in investigations, litigation, and counseling in civil rights, employment discrimination, whistleblower, wage and hour, and other matters. Prior to rejoining Jones Day in 2021, Eric served as the 18th Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and he also served as the 12th General Counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Under Eric's leadership, DOJ's Civil Rights Division set enforcement records for prosecutions of law enforcement officers and sexual harassment, religious liberty, and servicemember cases; charged the highest number of hate crimes cases in decades; significantly expanded resources for human trafficking prosecutions; prosecuted race and other forms of illegal discrimination in education, employment, housing, lending, and voting; reached historic disability rights settlements with several states; opposed unlawful COVID-19-related civil liberty restrictions; and successfully litigated to protect the Constitutional and civil rights of all people in the United States.
As EEOC general counsel, Eric led the Commission's litigation of the federal employment antidiscrimination laws, and he issued the Regional Attorneys' Manual, which established the policies of EEOC's litigation program. Eric also served at the Department of Labor (DOL) as deputy wage and hour administrator and directed DOL's enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and other laws.
From 1997 to 2000, Eric served as a prosecutor in the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
Eric has spoken and written extensively about civil rights and other employment laws, and he has testified about these subjects before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Shareholder, Littler
Bradford J. Kelley has a broad practice representing employers in employment anti-discrimination and wage and hour matters. He focuses on advising clients about emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), and their impact in the workplace.
Brad is an internationally recognized workplace AI authority. He advises clients on how to maximize the benefits of using AI in the workplace while minimizing potential legal and business risks. His deep background in this area provides employers with the tools and insights they need to develop, deploy, and monetize AI and other emerging technologies to bolster business operations and efficiency.
Associate Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Ryan H. Nelson joined the faculty at South Texas College of Law Houston in 2021. His research focuses on leveraging the civil litigation and other dispute resolution systems to advance the rights of poor and other marginalized workers, most often with respect to discrimination, harassment, wages, leaves of absence, and accommodations. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review, Fordham Law Review, BYU Law Review, Yale Law and Policy Review, and the online companions to the NYU Law Review, California Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. He has advised state attorneys’ general offices and other administrative agencies on employment law reforms and helped to draft associated proposed legislation and regulations. Moreover, he has provided legal commentary for Fox 26 Houston, KPRC 2 News | Houston, and in periodicals like Slate, USA Today, the Texas Tribune, and the Houston Chronicle.
Before joining South Texas, Ryan completed a research fellowship with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and taught on the adjunct faculty at Boston University School of Law, New England Law | Boston, and New York Law School. He also spent nearly a decade practicing labor and employment law, including as in-house employment law counsel for one of the world’s largest financial services companies and as an attorney with one of the top labor and employment law firms in the country where he specialized in workplace affirmative action law. He obtained his LL.M. from Harvard Law School where he was awarded the Irving Oberman Memorial Prize for Best Paper on Law and Social Change; his J.D., cum laude, from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, where he served on the Editorial Board of the Moot Court Honor Society; and his B.S.B.A. with a major in economics from the University of Florida where he was a National Merit Scholar and became an avid fan of Florida Gators football.
Deputy Counsel, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty
Dan Lennington serves as Deputy Counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), where he directs the Equality Under the Law Project. Started in early 2021, the EUL Project has represented dozens of individuals and businesses nationwide, successfully advocating for race neutrality in both public and private programs.
Before joining WILL, Dan served as Assistant Deputy Attorney General in Wisconsin and Assistant U.S. Attorney in Oklahoma. He is a graduate of Hillsdale College.
Dan can be reached at dan@will-law.org. More information about the EUL Project can be found at www.defendequality.org.
Eric Criss is an independent scholar who recently published The Boss of New Orleans: Martin Behrman and Machine Politics in the Crescent City with the LSU Press. He taught advanced public policy at Florida State University, where he earned his PhD in history. Eric earned his MA in Government at John's Hopkins University and BA in Political Science at the University of Florida. Eric began his career with U.S. Senators Don Nickles of Oklahoma and Phil Gramm of Texas at the National Republican Senatorial Committee in Washington, D.C. He later served as staff member or consultant to Fortune 500 corporations, political parties, and presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial campaigns.
Discriminatory Communication and Viewpoint Expression (Dinner and H&D CLE Program)
Maine Lawyer Chapter
Portland, MECombating Antisemitism on College Campuses: A Look at the Trump Administration's Civil Rights Enforcement Efforts One Year In
David D. Cole, Andrew Grossman, Erik S. Jaffe, Christopher Schorr, Ilya Shapiro
In March 2025, the U.S. Department of Education began investigating dozens of colleges - including...
Combating Antisemitism on College Campuses: A Look at the Trump Administration's Civil Rights Enforcement Efforts One Year In
David D. Cole, Andrew Grossman, Erik S. Jaffe, Christopher Schorr, Ilya Shapiro
In March 2025, the U.S. Department of Education began investigating dozens of colleges - including...
Topics
How the Law Protects Whistleblowers
The American Civil Rights Project has produced a guide to whistleblower rights that you should...
Disparate-Impact Liability: Unfounded, Unconstitutional, & Not Long For This World
Dan Morenoff
For more than fifty years—ever since the Supreme Court decided Griggs v. Duke Power Co.[1]—almost...
EEOC in the Trump Era
Eric Dreiband, Bradford J. Kelley, Ryan H. Nelson
Shortly after taking office, President Trump reportedly removed two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) commissioners...
EEOC in the Trump Era
Eric Dreiband, Bradford J. Kelley, Ryan H. Nelson
Shortly after taking office, President Trump reportedly removed two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) commissioners...
EEOC in the Trump Era
A Regulatory Transparency Project Webinar
The Twin Commands: Streamlining Equality Litigation Based on Students for Fair Admissions
Daniel Lennington
Each year, government contracting programs dole out tens of billions of dollars to businesses that...
Integrity or Interference?: Evaluating the Constitutionality of Georgia's Election Integrity Act
Eric Criss
Recent political earthquakes such as the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump and President...