News & Commentary written by Sophia Lin Lakin

Sophia Lin Lakin (@sophlin229) is the Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, and directs and supervises the ACLU’s voting rights litigation strategy nationwide.

Sophia has an active docket protecting voting rights and combatting voter suppression and discriminatory redistricting plans across the country and has led or worked on successful challenges to discriminatory voting laws in Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Currently, Sophia is lead counsel in Alpha Phi Alpha v. Raffensperger, a redistricting challenge to Georgia’s state legislative maps, Arkansas State Conference NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment, a redistricting challenge to Arkansas’s state House plan, and the ACLU’s lead counsel in 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.

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); Texas v. Crystal Mason (representing Ms. Mason in her appeal of her conviction and 5-year sentence for allegedly improperly casting a provisional ballot); 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); and Fish v. Kobach (successful challenge to the documentation requirements for voter registration in Kansas).

Sophia 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 on television programs including The ReidOut and the 11th Hour; and has written opinion pieces for The Hill and The Boston Globe.

Before joining the ACLU, Sophia clerked 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.

Sophia received her J.D. from Stanford Law School. She also received her M.S. in Management Science & Engineering and B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University.