Partner, Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC
Ben Flowers, a partner at Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers LLC, is an accomplished litigator with experience briefing, arguing, and winning high-stakes cases in courts throughout the country.
Before joining the law firm, Ben served as Ohio's 10th Solicitor General. In that role he regularly represented the State of Ohio before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of Ohio. Most prominently, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Ben led a multi-state challenge to OSHA's vaccine mandate, ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court.
Ben is a graduate of The Ohio State University and the University of Chicago Law School. Following law school, Ben clerked for Judge Sandra Ikuta of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of this United States. Ben lives in Upper Arlington, Ohio with his wife Denise and their three very active children.
Partner, Holtzman Vogel
Mohammad “Mo” Jazil is a partner with Holtzman Vogel. His broad litigation practice includes state and federal constitutional cases, financial disputes, environmental disputes, white-collar criminal matters, and government investigations. Mohammad has served as first chair in federal and state court trials. He has briefed and argued dispositive motions and appeals before the federal courts, state appellate courts, and state supreme courts. He has also briefed cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, though he has never argued a case there.
Chambers USA calls Mohammad “a very good thinker,” “fantastic,” and “an excellent litigator.”
Since the summer of 2018, Mohammad has represented two Florida Governors and four Florida Secretaries of State on election-related and redistricting matters before federal and state trial courts, the Florida Supreme Court, the Eleventh Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Notably, this work includes wins in nine federal cases related to Florida’s 2018 recounts; the successful defense of Florida’s felon re-enfranchisement program; federal and state-court decisions upholding Florida’s most recent congressional plan; and the defense of various election-related statutes.
Mohammad represents other public officials as well. He has represented two Speakers of the Florida House of Representatives on issues as varied as cannabis regulation and transportation policy. And he has represented Florida’s Surgeon General, members of Florida’s Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine, and the head of Florida’s Medicaid agency on health-policy issues.
Finally, Mohammad routinely represents companies and individuals on a variety of issues. This work includes pricing and tax disputes involving some of the country’s largest companies, commercial disputes where he has obtained and collected on eight-figure trial judgments, and criminal proceedings.
Florida Surgeon General
Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD, serves as Florida's Surgeon General. Dr. Ladapo is a physician and health policy researcher whose primary research interests include clinical trial interventions and reducing the population burden of cardiovascular disease. Dr. Ladapo was recently granted a professorship at the University of Florida (UF) College of Medicine. Prior to joining UF, he was an Associate Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine caring for hospitalized patients. Previously, he served as a faculty member in the Department of Population Health at NYU School of Medicine and as a Staff Fellow at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. Ladapo's research program, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, focuses on patient-centered approaches to improving the health of individuals evaluated for coronary artery disease; and behavioral economic interventions to promote sustainable cardiovascular health, including among adults with HIV. He also leads the health economic and quality of life evaluation of multiple NIH-funded randomized trials focused on cardiovascular disease and tobacco cessation. His national honors include the Daniel Ford Award for health services and outcomes research, and he was also a regular columnist for the Harvard Focus during medical school and residency, where he discussed his experiences on the medical wards and perspectives on health policy issues.
Dr. Ladapo graduated from Wake Forest University and received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his PhD in Health Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Dr. Ladapo was born in Nigeria. He immigrated to the United States when he was 5 years old, along with his family, as his father, a microbiologist, came to the country to continue his studies.
During his time at Wake Forest University, Dr. Ladapo was a decathlete on the university’s varsity track and field team, serving as the team’s captain. Dr. Ladapo has a passion for mentoring middle and high school students, which he has done for much of his career.
Dr. Ladapo and his wife have three young children.
Judge, Florida Third District Court of Appeal
Judge Norma S. Lindsey was appointed to the Third District Court of Appeal by Governor, now Senator, Rick Scott and took her seat on the Court on June 19, 2017. She was previously appointed to the Circuit Court of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit in 2011 by then Governor Scott, where she served until she joined the appellate bench. Judge Lindsey began her judicial career in January of 2006 when she was appointed to the Miami-Dade County Court by Governor Jeb Bush.
Judge Lindsey is the Chief Judge Elect and currently serves as Chair of the Education Committee for the Florida Conference of District Court of Appeal Judges, as a member of the Florida Court Education Counsel, and as a member of the District Court of Appeal Budget Commission.
She previously served as a member of the District Court of Appeal Performance and Accountability Commission, and as a member of the Florida Supreme Court Committee on Standard Jury Instructions in Civil Cases. She also previously served as the Third DCA Representative to the Appellate Practice Section of the Florida Bar and as a member of the Florida Supreme Court Work Group on Appellate Court Reporting Requirements. And, she is a former member of the Florida Supreme Court Work Group on County Court Jurisdiction, and a former Judicial Liaison to the Real Property and Probate Section of the Florida Bar.
Prior to her appointment to the Third District Court of Appeal, Judge Lindsey served as an Associate Judge on Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal in December of 2014 and in July of 2016. She also served on more than two dozen Circuit Appellate Panels in the Appellate Division of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit during her time as a Circuit judge.
Judge Lindsey has been active throughout her career in judicial education having served as a faculty member and co-chair of the Civil Track for the Florida College of Advanced Judicial Studies and as a faculty member of the Florida Judicial College, the Florida Conferences of Circuit Court Judges and the Florida Conference of County Court Judges. In addition, she has lectured and taught numerous CLE courses at events sponsored by national, state and local bar associations, law schools and community groups.
Outside of the courtroom, Judge Lindsey is an active volunteer judge of student competitions. She has served as a volunteer judge for the Orseck Memorial Moot Court Competition at the annual Florida Bar Conference, the University of Miami School of Law Mock Trial and Moot Court Competitions, as well as student competitions at St. Thomas University College of Law and Florida International College of Law, the Legal Services of Greater Miami First Annual Legal Eagle Closing Argument Competition, the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Student Trial Advocacy Program, and the Southeastern United States Regional Black Law Students Association Mock Trial Competition.
Judge Lindsey is the recipient of the University of Miami School of Law Alumni Achievement Award, the Dade County Bar Association Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America National Service to Youth Award. She is a former Big Sister in the Big Brothers Big Sisters School to Work Program and has been recognized for her work on the Women’s Committee of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Miami. Judge Lindsey earned Hon. Mention Recognition as a High School All-American in Track and Field after winning the Virginia State AA High School high jump championship two years in a row.
Prior to taking the bench, Judge Lindsey practiced commercial litigation. She also served as a member and chair of the Judicial Nominating Commission for Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal, the Executive Director of Florida’s Growth Management Study Commission, and as Associate General Counsel for Boys and Girls Clubs of Miami-Dade.
Judge Lindsey earned her law degree at the University of Miami School of Law. She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration in Economics from Marshall University, where she was the Captain of the Women’s Track and Field Team and the recipient of the Arlene Stooke Award for Leadership Excellence.
She is married to attorney H. Eugene Lindsey, III, and they are the proud parents of a beautiful daughter.
Deputy General Counsel, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Emily Mimnaugh is the Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with a portfolio that includes the Office for Civil Rights, the Administration for Children and Families, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health. She previously served as Deputy Chief Counsel for a national non-profit law firm, where she spent nearly a decade defending civil rights. During the pandemic era, the firm litigated more covid-related religious accommodation cases than any other national non-profit law firm. Emily has personally litigated successfully before the federal appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court: her victory in Gateway v. Newsom secured from the U.S. Supreme Court the reversal of covid-mandated closures of churches in California. She also has a background in corporate and securities law, working in international capital markets in London at a “Magic Circle” law firm and within the Office of the General Counsel for Citigroup (ECM-EMEA). She received her B.A. from Yale University, her M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge, and her J.D. from the University of Michigan.
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.
Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
President, Center for Individual Rights
Todd Gaziano is the President of the Center for Individual Rights. Mr. Gaziano received his J.D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He received his B.A. from West Virginia University, summa cum laude in 1985. He was selected as a Truman Scholar from West Virginia while an undergraduate.
Mr. Gaziano’s previous legal work includes service as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, as a chief subcommittee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Houston trial attorney, and as a chief corporate legal officer. He also served a six-year term as commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2008-2013), where he helped conduct oversight and investigations of civil rights agencies.
For most of the last 25 years, Mr. Gaziano was a legal scholar and public interest law leader, promoting individual liberty in the Supreme Court and Congress. From 1997 to 2013, he was the founding director of the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. From 2014 until he joined CIR, he was the Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research, and Director of the Center for the Separation of Powers, at Pacific Legal Foundation.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights, University of North Carolina School of Law
Theodore M. Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Professor Shaw teaches Civil Procedure and Advanced Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment. Before joining the faculty of UNC Law School, from 2008-2014 Professor Shaw taught at Columbia University Law School, where he was Professor of Professional Practice. During that time he was also “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright (formerly Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP). His practice involved civil litigation and representation of institutional clients on matters concerning diversity and civil rights.
Professor Shaw was the fifth Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., for which he worked in various capacities over the span of twenty-six years. He has litigated education, employment, voting rights, housing, police misconduct, capital punishment and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate courts, and in the United States Supreme Court.From 1982 until 1987, he litigated education, housing, and capital punishment cases and directed LDF's education litigation docket. In 1987, under the direction of LDF's third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Mr. Shaw relocated to Los Angeles to establish LDF's Western Regional Office. In 1990, Mr. Shaw left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Civil Rights. While at Michigan, he played a key role in initiating a review of the law school's admissions practices and policies, and served on the faculty committee that promulgated the admissions program that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In 1993, Mr. Shaw returned to LDF as Associate Director-Counsel, and in 2004, he became LDF's fifth Director-Counsel. Mr. Shaw's legal career began as a Trial Attorney in the Honors Program of the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1979 until 1982.
Mr. Shaw has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and before state and local legislatures. His human rights work has taken him to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. In addition to teaching at Columbia and at Michigan Law School, Professor Shaw held the 1997-1998 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law at Queens College and the 2003 Phyllis Beck Chair at Temple Law School. He was a visiting scholar at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia in 2008-2009. He is a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute (PLI).
Mr. Shaw served on the Obama Transition Team after the 2008 presidential election, as team leader for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
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.
Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
President, Center for Individual Rights
Todd Gaziano is the President of the Center for Individual Rights. Mr. Gaziano received his J.D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He received his B.A. from West Virginia University, summa cum laude in 1985. He was selected as a Truman Scholar from West Virginia while an undergraduate.
Mr. Gaziano’s previous legal work includes service as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, as a chief subcommittee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Houston trial attorney, and as a chief corporate legal officer. He also served a six-year term as commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2008-2013), where he helped conduct oversight and investigations of civil rights agencies.
For most of the last 25 years, Mr. Gaziano was a legal scholar and public interest law leader, promoting individual liberty in the Supreme Court and Congress. From 1997 to 2013, he was the founding director of the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. From 2014 until he joined CIR, he was the Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research, and Director of the Center for the Separation of Powers, at Pacific Legal Foundation.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights, University of North Carolina School of Law
Theodore M. Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Professor Shaw teaches Civil Procedure and Advanced Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment. Before joining the faculty of UNC Law School, from 2008-2014 Professor Shaw taught at Columbia University Law School, where he was Professor of Professional Practice. During that time he was also “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright (formerly Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP). His practice involved civil litigation and representation of institutional clients on matters concerning diversity and civil rights.
Professor Shaw was the fifth Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., for which he worked in various capacities over the span of twenty-six years. He has litigated education, employment, voting rights, housing, police misconduct, capital punishment and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate courts, and in the United States Supreme Court.From 1982 until 1987, he litigated education, housing, and capital punishment cases and directed LDF's education litigation docket. In 1987, under the direction of LDF's third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Mr. Shaw relocated to Los Angeles to establish LDF's Western Regional Office. In 1990, Mr. Shaw left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Civil Rights. While at Michigan, he played a key role in initiating a review of the law school's admissions practices and policies, and served on the faculty committee that promulgated the admissions program that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In 1993, Mr. Shaw returned to LDF as Associate Director-Counsel, and in 2004, he became LDF's fifth Director-Counsel. Mr. Shaw's legal career began as a Trial Attorney in the Honors Program of the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1979 until 1982.
Mr. Shaw has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and before state and local legislatures. His human rights work has taken him to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. In addition to teaching at Columbia and at Michigan Law School, Professor Shaw held the 1997-1998 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law at Queens College and the 2003 Phyllis Beck Chair at Temple Law School. He was a visiting scholar at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia in 2008-2009. He is a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute (PLI).
Mr. Shaw served on the Obama Transition Team after the 2008 presidential election, as team leader for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
Panel 4: When Science Becomes Dogma: COVID-19, Gender Medicine, and Vaccines
2026 Florida Chapters Conference
Lake Buena Vista, FLEEOC 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
Topics
President Trump Issues An Executive Order Recognizing Only Two Sexes
On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Defending Women...
Topics
“Oral-argument Affirmative Action?" Nonprofit’s Ethics Complaint Against Three Federal Judges Raises Questions on the Judicial Role
Do federal judges violate judicial ethics codes and the constitutional equal protection guarantee when they...
Topics
HHS Proposes Facilitating Abortions and Medical “Gender Transitions” for Unaccompanied Children
On October 4, 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children...
Debate: Does the First Amendment Protect Hate Speech?
Dallas, TXCivil Rights in the Age of Obama
Roger B. Clegg, Todd F. Gaziano, Gail L. Heriot, Jocelyn Samuels, Theodore M. Shaw
Some of President Obama’s admirers and detractors have suggested that his election as President and...
Civil Rights in the Age of Obama
Civil Rights Practice Group and The Heritage Foundation
Washington, DC