Vanita Gupta (born November 15, 1974) is an American attorney who has served as United States Associate Attorney General since April 22, 2021. From 2014 to 2017, Gupta served as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama.
A career civil rights attorney, Gupta served as 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. Gupta served as president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights from 2017 until her nomination as Associate Attorney General in 2021.
Early life and education
Gupta was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Indian immigrant parents. She is the daughter of Muzaffarnagar-born businessman Rajiv L. Gupta and Kamla Varshney. Her father is the chairman of Aptiv, an automotive parts company.
As a child, Gupta regularly moved with her family, and lived in the United Kingdom and France before returning to Philadelphia. She received her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Yale University. Gupta credits her experience at Yale with helping form her "passion for social activism". She received her Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law in 2001.
Legal advocacy
NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Gupta's first case, while working for the Legal Defense Fund directly after law school, involved 40 African Americans and six white or Latino people who were romantic partners of African Americans in Tulia, Texas. They 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. In 2004, she received the Reebok Human Rights Award. As of 2018, 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.
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
In 2017, Gupta became president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. In this role, she criticized the Trump administration for its response to the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and accused then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions of trying to increase mass incarceration.
In June 2020, Gupta testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the murder of George Floyd and the need to end police brutality in the United States.
During her time at the organization, Gupta worked to combat harmful online misinformation, and "often sat shoulder-to-shoulder with tech leaders including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg" to discuss content moderation strategies. She took a leave from the organization in January 2021 and formally left once confirmed as Associate Attorney General in April 2022.
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.