Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Patrick J. Bumatay was confirmed as a U.S. Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in December 2019. He is based in San Diego, California.
Prior to his appointment, Judge Bumatay served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, where he was a member of the Appellate and Narcotics Sections. He also served as a Counselor to the Attorney General on criminal law issues, including on national opioid strategy and combating transnational organized crime.
Judge Bumatay has also worked in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office of the Associate Attorney General, and the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice. Judge Bumatay has twice received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award.
Judge Bumatay previously worked as an associate at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, and Bohrer in New York, New York. Judge Bumatay clerked for the Honorable Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the Honorable Sandra L. Townes of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Judge Bumatay earned his B.A., cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Dean, Widener University Commonwealth Law School
André Douglas Pond Cummings is the incoming Dean of Widener University Commonwealth Law School. Dean cummings currently serves as associate dean for faculty development and the Charles C. Baum distinguished professor of law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law. During his time at the Bowen School of Law, cummings served for five years on the university Diversity Counsel and three years on the chancellor’s race and ethnicity advisory committee. Prior to joining the Bowen School of Law, cummings taught at the West Virginia University College of Law and clerked for Associate Chief Justice Christine M. Durham of the Utah Supreme Court and Chief Judge Joseph W. Hatchett of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Dean cummings is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Howard University School of Law.
Vice President of Domestic and Economic Policy, The Heritage Foundation
Roger Severino is Vice President of Economic and Domestic Policy, and the Joseph C. and Elizabeth A. Anderlik Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
Severino is a national authority on civil rights, conscience and religious freedom, the administrative state, and information privacy, particularly as applied to health care law and policy. Find his tweets at @RogerSeverino_.
Severino spearheaded the HHS Accountability Project while a Senior Fellow at EPPC from 2021 to 2023. Previously, Severino was Director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, where he led a team of over 250 staff enforcing our nation’s civil rights, conscience and religious freedom, and health information privacy laws. He served from 2017 to 2021 and was the longest-serving OCR director of the past three decades.
Prior to joining HHS, Severino served for two years as Director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at Heritage, advocating for life, family, and religious-freedom policies. Before that, he was a trial attorney for seven years at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division where he enforced the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Severino started his legal career at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, where he was Legal Counsel and Chief Operations Officer and defended the rights of people of all faiths under federal and international law.
Severino has been profiled in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill and has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS, among others. In 2020, The New York Times dubbed him and his wife Carrie, “a conservative power couple” to be reckoned with.
Severino holds a JD from Harvard Law School, a master’s degree in public policy, with highest distinction, from Carnegie Mellon University, and a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Southern California. He was appointed by President Trump to the Administrative Conference of the United States and is a member of the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Virginia bars.
As OCR director, Severino founded the federal government’s first division dedicated exclusively to conscience and religious freedom compliance and enforcement. He enforced the Weldon Amendment for the first time against a state (California) after it coerced families and religious organizations into paying for abortion insurance coverage, leading to a $200 million federal funding disallowance. He also enforced laws protecting pro-life pregnancy resource centers from discrimination by states hostile to their message and enforced laws prohibiting forced participation in abortions by medical professionals.
With respect to civil rights, Severino protected older persons and people with disabilities from being denied life-saving care due to discriminatory “quality of life” judgments, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also achieved a landmark sexual harassment resolution with Michigan State University in the wake of the Larry Nassar sexual assault scandal and protected the rights of non-English speakers to have equal access to health and human services.
In the area of health privacy, he secured the largest HIPAA monetary settlement in history and achieved the largest number of enforcement resolutions both in a single year and across four years. He also facilitated the transformational use of Skype, Zoom, and Facetime for delivery of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
His regulatory reform activities resulted in a comprehensive conscience protection regulation and proposed a life-affirming disability rights regulation. He achieved regulatory savings of $3.6 billion in health care industry costs over five years and identified and proposed an additional $3.2 billion in cost savings from the repeal of ineffective and unnecessary regulatory burdens.
Severino is a Spanish speaker who teaches salsa and west coast swing in his spare time.
General Counsel, Saronic Technologies
Tobi Young is the General Counsel of Saronic Technologies. Her responsibilities include managing global legal affairs, regulatory compliance, litigation, risk management, and government security, and corporate governance.
Tobi brings over 20 years of experience with sophisticated legal, regulatory, and compliance issues through leadership roles in all three branches of the federal government and in Fortune 500 companies. Among other governmental positions, she has been an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Office of the White House Counsel; a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch; and a press secretary for Congressman J.C. Watts. Tobi also currently serves as the Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee on the Halliburton Board of Directors (NYSE: HAL).
Tobi grew up in Oklahoma and is a proud member of the Chickasaw Nation. She recently became the youngest inductee into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. Tobi now lives in Austin with her husband Evan, a Justice on the Texas Supreme Court, and their daughter Romilly.
Chair, Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights
Attorney Giovanni D. Cicione is a business attorney with over 25 years of corporate and legal management experience. Since 2019, he has served as general counsel for North American Crane and Rigging, LLC, a regional crane, rigging and heavy hauling business which he helped expand from a New England footprint to a respected east coast regional presence. He previously practiced as a corporate attorney at prominent Rhode Island law firms including Cameron & Mittleman, LLP and Adler Pollock & Sheehan PC, and in his own private practice where he specialized in government affairs, legislative review and drafting, and permitting. Attorney Cicione also served as lead counsel at the RI Economic Development Corporation, where he focused on contract structuring and negotiation, corporate financing and commercial transactions, corporate compliance, brownfields redevelopment, business development and intergovernmental relations.
Attorney Cicione is a founder and current chairman of the Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights, a public interest litigation firm whose mission is to represent citizens, regardless of means, to enforce their constitutional rights to free speech, property and economic liberty. For over a decade the Hopkins Center, under Attorney Cicione’s leadership and direction, has quietly and diligently pursued cases consistent with its mission, resulting in significant awards for its clients and real change in unconstitutional government practices throughout the state.
A 1988 graduate of Cranston High School East, Attorney Cicione graduated from George Mason University and received his law degree from Boston University School of Law. He is a member of the RI Bar, Massachusetts Bar, and the Federal District Court of RI.
In addition to Attorney Cicione’s professional accomplishments, he has served numerous community organizations including roles as senior policy and legal advisor to the RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity, advocate and deputy grand knight to Bishop Hickey Council of Knights of Columbus, and trustee to the RI Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. He has also been very involved with Boy Scouts of America and has served as scoutmaster to Barrington Boy Scout Troop 46, as well as committee chair, treasurer and cubmaster to Nayatt Cub Scout Pack 1.
Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
William A. Jacobson is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic.
He is a 1981 graduate of Hamilton College and a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School. At Harvard he was Senior Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal and Director of Litigation for the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.
Prior to joining the Cornell law faculty in 2007, Professor Jacobson had a highly successful civil litigation and arbitration practice in Providence, Rhode Island, concentrating in investment, employment, and business disputes in the securities industry, including many high profile cases reported in leading newspapers and magazines.
Professor Jacobson has argued cases in numerous federal and state courts, including the Courts of Appeal for the First, Fifth and Sixth Circuits, and the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
Professor Jacobson has a national reputation as a leading practitioner in securities arbitration. He was Treasurer, and is a former member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, a professional organization of attorneys dedicated to protecting public investors. He frequently is quoted in national media on issues related to investment fraud and investor protection, and in the past has served as one of a small number of private practice attorneys who trained new arbitrators for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Professor Jacobson is co-author of the Securities Arbitration Desk Reference (Thomson-Reuters), updated annually.
Professor Jacobson also is the founder and publisher of Legal Insurrection, a popular politics and law website. He is frequently quoted in the media on political and legal topics, has authored many Op-Eds in major publications, and appears on television and radio to discuss politics and the law.
Staff Attorney, Women Against Abuse Inc.
Nicole Levitt is a family law attorney who represents domestic violence victims in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is an active member of the Philadelphia Jewish community and is a founding volunteer of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values.
Solicitor, U.S. Department of Labor
Jonathan Berry is Solicitor at the U.S. Department of Labor, in service to President Trump’s agenda to put American workers first. He leads the Department’s lawyers in advising the Secretary and agency leadership on all aspects of law and in representing the Department in court. He was previously managing partner at Boyden Gray PLLC, where he provided strategic counsel and litigated on issues at the intersection of law, politics, and public policy. Earlier, he headed the regulatory office at Labor, and also served at the Department of Justice, in the first Trump Administration. Mr. Berry served as a law clerk to Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and to Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Founder & CEO, Edelson PC
Jay Edelson is the founder of Edelson PC. He is considered one of the nation’s leading plaintiff’s lawyers, with his firm having helped secure over $45 billion in settlements and verdicts on behalf of classes, individuals, and governmental entities. Law360 described Jay as a “Titan of the Plaintiff’s Bar.” Jay has been recognized as one of “America’s top trial lawyers” in the mass action arena. LawDragon named him one of the top Plaintiff Financial Lawyers in the country. He has been called “probably the best known, and most innovative, consumer privacy lawyer on the planet,” with he and his firm holding records for the largest trial verdict in a consumer privacy case ($925m), the largest consumer privacy settlement ($650m) and the largest TCPA settlement ($76m).
Jay has been appointed to represent state and local regulators on some of the largest issues of the day, ranging from opioids suits against pharmaceutical companies, to environmental actions against polluters, to breaches of trust against energy companies and for-profit hospitals, to privacy suits against Google, Facebook, and others.
Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School
Stacy Hawkins is a frequent writer and sought-after speaker on the issue of employment law and diversity. She’s served on the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group and the Pennsylvania Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession Diversity Task Force. She worked as a senior labor and employment attorney and as the director of diversity for major law firms.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher
Jason C. Schwartz is a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson Dunn, co-chair of the Labor & Employment Practice Group, General Counsel of the law firm and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. Jason was recognized as an MVP in employment law five times, awarded by Law360 to “attorneys whose achievements in major litigation or transactions have set a new standard for accomplishment in corporate law.” Law360 referred to Jason as “an expert dismantler of worker class actions.”
Jason is ranked in Band 1 in Labor & Employment by Chambers USA, which stated, “He is a whip-smart, results-oriented and zealous advocate who is really committed to the client. His judgment is impeccable.” According to Chambers USA, “[c]lients note: He’s an excellent litigator with a good sense of the client’s needs in a business environment. He’s just a pleasure to work with. He’s disciplined, a great writer and gets great results.” Jason has been recognized as a Top 20 Labor & Employment Litigator in the U.S. by Benchmark Litigation; on the Top 100 list of the Nation’s Most Powerful Employment Attorneys by Human Resource Executive magazine; as a Top Lawyer in Employment Defense by Washingtonian Magazine; as a Leading Lawyer in Labor & Employment Disputes by The Legal 500 US; by Lawdragon 500 Leading Corporate Employment Lawyers for Labor & Employment (Litigation); in The Best Lawyers in America in the Employment Law-Management category; as a Super Lawyer by Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers; and as an Am Law Litigation Daily “Litigator of the Week” for his win in an independent contractor misclassification/wage-and-hour class action. He is a Fellow of the College of Labor & Employment Lawyers.
The practice group Jason co-leads was named by The American Lawyer as the Labor & Employment Litigation Department of the Year in its most recent competition. The American Lawyer noted, “with novel labor and employment issues swirling, Gibson Dunn’s litigators set standards and settle the law,” and that a case “typical for Gibson Dunn’s labor and employment team” is “high-profile,” “cutting-edge,” and “a victory.” The group was also recognized ten times as a Law360 Employment Practice Group of the Year and won The National Law Journal’s D.C. Labor & Employment Litigation Department of the Year competition for the last seven years in a row.
Jason’s practice includes sensitive workplace investigations, high-profile trade secret and non-compete matters, wage-hour and discrimination class actions, Sarbanes-Oxley and other whistleblower protection claims, executive and other significant employment disputes, labor union controversies, and workplace safety litigation.
Recent representative matters include:
Jason has also successfully tried several sensitive whistleblower matters for major national employers, and he prevailed in a precedent-setting Labor Department appeal of one of the first Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower cases to proceed to trial. He prevailed for Enterprise Rent-A-Car in a case of first impression in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit created a new joint employer test (the Enterprise test) and affirmed summary judgment for a parent corporation in a series of wage-hour class actions, defeating the plaintiffs’ effort to form a nationwide class (In re Enterprise Rent-A-Car Wage & Hour Employment Practices Litig. (3rd Cir. 2012)). In another case of first impression, he successfully argued in the Utah Supreme Court against the recognition of a tort for spoliation of evidence. In addition, he served as lead trial counsel for a retailer in a highly-publicized OSHA enforcement action relating to crowd control at a day-after-Thanksgiving sale.
Jason also has significant experience in administrative law and rulemakings. He served as counsel to the Fair Labor Standards Reform Coalition, and he played a leading role in preparing comments on behalf of the business community relating to the U.S. Department of Labor’s overtime exemption regulations.
Jason served for many years as the Secretary of the Retail Litigation Center, and he testified before Congress regarding OSHA enforcement programs on behalf of the U.S. Chamber. He frequently speaks and writes on employment law and trade secret related topics. He is the co-author of the treatise Whistleblower Law: A Practitioner’s Guide, published by American Lawyer Media/Law Journal Press, and he previously authored the annual “Trade Secrets Litigation Round-Up” published by Bloomberg BNA.
Jason earned his law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and received the George Brent Mickum III Prize and the Charles A. Keigwin Award for the best academic record in first year courses. From 1995 to 1996, he worked as a Legislative Assistant to Congressman Jon D. Fox. Jason received a B.A. degree in international affairs cum laude in 1994 from The George Washington University.
Jason is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland, as well as in numerous federal courts. He served for many years as an officer and board member of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, currently serves as a member of the Washington Lawyers Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and provides pro bono employment counsel to numerous community organizations.
Attorney, Writer and Consultant
Dennis Saffran is an appellate attorney and political and policy writer based in Queens, NY. He has served as chief of appellate litigation for Nassau County, NY, chief lawyer of the New York State Division of Housing, and a Special Assistant to the New York State Attorney General, and was the founder of the New York office and then national Executive Director of the Center for the Community Interest, a public interest group that supported anti-crime and quality-of-life initiatives like those of the Giuliani and Bloomberg Administrations in New York City.
Dennis has litigated constitutional and municipal law cases in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the New York State Court of Appeals, and other appellate courts, and has submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court and other courts supporting the plaintiffs in the landmark case of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, as well as in the pending case before SCOTUS of Chiles v. Salazar concerning the constitutionality of bans on so-called "conversion therapy." He has also written on legal, political and public policy issues for various publications including the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News and New York Post, Newsweek, RealClear Policy and Quillette, and has been a guest on various television and radio news and talk shows.
In 2001 and 2013, Dennis was the Republican candidate for the New York City Council from Northeast Queens, one of the few competitive districts in the city, receiving 48% of the vote and losing by a 1% margin in 2001 in the closest election in the city that year.
Dennis grew up in Queens and is an honors graduate of Forest Hills High School, Harvard College and New York University Law School. He and his wife Jane Stewart Saffran live in Douglaston, NY, where they raised their two children: Kristina, the founder of Equip, a telehealth treatment program for eating disorders, and Nick, a senior editor at the Manhattan Institute.
Attorney, Writer and Consultant
Dennis Saffran is an appellate attorney and political and policy writer based in Queens, NY. He has served as chief of appellate litigation for Nassau County, NY, chief lawyer of the New York State Division of Housing, and a Special Assistant to the New York State Attorney General, and was the founder of the New York office and then national Executive Director of the Center for the Community Interest, a public interest group that supported anti-crime and quality-of-life initiatives like those of the Giuliani and Bloomberg Administrations in New York City.
Dennis has litigated constitutional and municipal law cases in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the New York State Court of Appeals, and other appellate courts, and has submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court and other courts supporting the plaintiffs in the landmark case of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, as well as in the pending case before SCOTUS of Chiles v. Salazar concerning the constitutionality of bans on so-called "conversion therapy." He has also written on legal, political and public policy issues for various publications including the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News and New York Post, Newsweek, RealClear Policy and Quillette, and has been a guest on various television and radio news and talk shows.
In 2001 and 2013, Dennis was the Republican candidate for the New York City Council from Northeast Queens, one of the few competitive districts in the city, receiving 48% of the vote and losing by a 1% margin in 2001 in the closest election in the city that year.
Dennis grew up in Queens and is an honors graduate of Forest Hills High School, Harvard College and New York University Law School. He and his wife Jane Stewart Saffran live in Douglaston, NY, where they raised their two children: Kristina, the founder of Equip, a telehealth treatment program for eating disorders, and Nick, a senior editor at the Manhattan Institute.
Vice President, Practice Groups, The Federalist Society
Special Assistant and Counsel to Commissioner Peter Kirsanow of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Carissa Mulder is a 2009 graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School and a member of the Virginia Bar. She is a special assistant and counsel to Commissioner Peter Kirsanow of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Litigation Practice Group: Diversity and Modern Litigation
Patrick J. Bumatay, andré douglas pond cummings, Roger Severino, Tobi Young
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. In recent years, the legal profession...
CLE: Is DEI Legal After The Harvard Case?
Giovanni Cicione, William Jacobson, Nicole Levitt
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives...
Race at Work: Can Businesses Treat People Differently on the Basis of Race?
Jonathan Berry, Jay Edelson, Stacy Hawkins, Gregory G. Katsas, Jason C. Schwartz
In June of last year, the Supreme Court held that consideration of applicants’ race in...
Diversity and Elimination of Bias CLE Teleforum: An update to the Harvard Case and the Meaning of Diversity in a Multi-Racial Era
Dennis J. Saffran
Electronic Sign In: Click Here (Sign-in now!) Written Materials: Click Here Certificate of Attendance: Click Here (Fill in the form...
Diversity and Elimination of Bias CLE Teleforum: The Harvard Case and the Meaning of Diversity in a Multi-Racial Era
Dennis J. Saffran
*** Please note: CLE is no longer available for this teleforum/podcast.*** Electronic Sign In: Click...
Fisher v. UT–Austin and the Future of Racial Preferences in College Admissions
Elizabeth Slattery
Note from the Editor: This article discusses the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fisher v. University...
The Kudzu of Civil Rights Law: Disparate Impact Spreads Into Educational “Resource Comparability”
Carissa Mulder
Note from the Editor: This article is about a Dear Colleague letter from the Department...