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Sophia Lin Lakin (@sophlin229) is the Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, and a leading voting rights attorney who has dedicated her career to protecting and expanding voting rights across the United States, successfully challenging discriminatory voting laws and redistricting plans across the country. In her leadership role, she directs the Project’s strategic litigation efforts that have helped secure voting access and fair representation for millions.

Her current high profile cases include serving as lead counsel in League of Women Voters Education Fund v. Trump, a challenge to President Trump’s sweeping and unprecedented Executive Order seeking, among other things, to require a documentary-proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal voter registration form; lead counsel in Alpha Phi Alpha v. Raffensperger, a redistricting challenge to Georgia’s state legislative maps; and part of the counsel team in Callais v. Landry, where we are defending Black Louisianians’ right to a fair and equitable representation; Sixth District of The African Methodist Episcopal Church v. Kemp, a federal lawsuit challenging multiple provisions of Georgia’s sweeping new voter suppression law S.B. 202; and Texas v. Crystal Mason, where we representing Ms. Mason in her appeal of her conviction and 5-year sentence for allegedly improperly casting a provisional ballot.

Her other cases have included: Common Cause Indiana v. Lawson (lead counsel in case successfully challenging an unlawful purge program in Indiana); Hotze v. Hollins (co-lead counsel in case defending against attack on the use of drive-thru voting in Harris County, Texas); Trump Campaign v. Boockvar (represented voters against attempt to block certification of 2020 presidential election results); Missouri NAACP v. Missouri (lead counsel in case challenging the in-person notary requirement for mail voting in Missouri during the COVID-19 pandemic, which she argued before the Missouri Supreme Court twice); League of Women Voters of Tennessee v. Hargett (co-lead counsel in successful challenge to a Tennessee law that imposed onerous requirements and substantial criminal and civil penalties on community based organizations that conduct voter registration drives); Fish v. Schwab (successful challenge to the documentation requirements for voter registration in Kansas); League of Women Voters of North Carolina v. North Carolina (successful challenge to omnibus voter suppression law in North Carolina); and Missouri NAACP v. Ferguson Florissant School District (successful challenge to Ferguson-Florissant School District’s discriminatory at-large method of election school board members).

Beyond the courtroom, Sophia is a sought-after expert who has testified on election law issues before Congress numerous times and has presented at conferences and conducted voting rights trainings nationwide. She is a frequent commentator on voting rights issues, appearing in major media outlets such as the , Washington Post, NPR, The Guardian, CNN, Mother Jones, and television programs including The ReidOut and the 11th Hour; and has written opinion pieces for and .

A Stanford Law School graduate with additional degrees in Management Science & Engineering and Political Science from Stanford University, Sophia previously served as a federal law clerk for the Honorable Raymond J. Lohier, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Honorable Carol Bagley Amon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.