Vanita Gupta

Vanita Gupta (born November 15, 1974) is the United States Associate Attorney General, serving since April 22, 2021. Gupta served as the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and as the head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she was the chief civil rights prosecutor for the United States from 2014 to 2017.

Formerly, she was a civil rights lawyer and the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she oversaw its national criminal justice reform efforts. She has also served as Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Throughout her career, she has drawn support from a wide range of liberal and conservative activists, as well as law enforcement groups, for building support for policing and criminal justice reform.

On January 7, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Gupta to serve as Associate Attorney General. She was confirmed by the Senate on April 21, 2021.

Gupta was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Indian immigrant parents. She is the daughter of Rajiv L. Gupta and Kamla Varshney. She received her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Yale University. She received her Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law in 2001.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Gupta's first case, while working for the LDF directly after law school, involved 40 African Americans and six white or Latino people who were romantic partners of African Americans in Tulia, Texas, who had been convicted by all-white juries of dealing drugs. In almost every case, the only evidence was the testimony of an undercover agent, Tom Coleman. Coleman did not use wiretaps or marked money and records showed that he had "filed shoddy reports". He had previous misdemeanor charges for stealing gasoline from a county pump and abuse of official capacity. Gupta won the release of her clients in 2003, four years after they were jailed, then negotiated a $6 million settlement for them. Paramount is making a film, Tulia, about the case.

ACLU

In 2007, after becoming a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, Gupta filed a lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about detention conditions for children whose parents were asylum seekers. In August 2007, a landmark agreement was reached between ACLU and ICE, under which the conditions in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center improved and several children were released from the center.

On August 6, 2009, the Department of Homeland Security announced intentions to improve the nation's immigration detention system, including ending family detention at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center.

After her time as a staff attorney at the ACLU, Gupta served as its deputy legal director and director of its Center for Justice. She has been credited with pioneering the ACLU's National Campaign to End Mass Incarceration. She built bipartisan coalitions to advance pre-trial and sentencing reforms around the country.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights (2014-2017)

In October 2014, President Barack Obama appointed Gupta as the United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and head of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.

Under Gupta's leadership, the Civil Rights Division worked to advance criminal justice reform and constitutional policing, including by investigating and working to reform police departments in Ferguson, Missouri; Cleveland; Baltimore, and Chicago, among other cities. Gupta also oversaw a wide range of other enforcement efforts for the Division, including prosecuting hate crimes and human trafficking, promoting disability rights, protecting LGBT rights, and combating discrimination in education, employment, housing, lending and voting.

Gupta's tenure was marked by several high-profile matters, including the investigations of the Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago police departments; the appeals of the Texas and North Carolina voter ID cases; the challenge to North Carolina's HB2 law and other LGBTQ rights litigation; enforcement of education, land use, hate crimes, and other statutes to combat religious discrimination; the issuance of statements of interest on bail and indigent defense reform, and letters to state and local court judges and administrators on the unlawful imposition of fines and fees in the criminal justice system; and the administration's report on solitary confinement.

In 2016, under Gupta's leadership, the division sued North Carolina, alleging that the state's implementation of House Bill 2 discriminated against transgender individuals in violation of federal civil rights laws.

In August 2016, an investigation by Gupta's division concluded that the Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct that violated the Constitution and federal statutory law, including unconstitutional stops, searches, arrests, excessive force, and enforcement strategies that produced an unjustified disparate impact on African-American residents.

Associate Attorney General (2021-presnt)

On January 7, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Gupta to serve as the United States Associate Attorney General. On March 9, a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was held on her nomination. Her nomination was supported by a broad range of civil rights and law enforcement groups, as well as by prominent conservatives who had worked with her on criminal justice reform and voting rights. She faced strong opposition from Republicans who criticized her civil rights advocacy, particularly during the Trump administration. The Senate confirmed Gupta to the position by a 51-49 vote on April 21 after Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski agreed to vote to confirm her, and she was sworn in on April 22.

Gupta has indicated that the Department of Justice intends to take a hard line toward "killer acquisitions" as part of the Biden administration's effort to rein in monopolies.

Gupta is married to Chinh Q. Le, the legal director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia. They have two sons.