David Cole

David Cole is the National Legal Director of the ACLU, and the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books and is legal affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has published many books, including No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System, and Engines of Liberty: How Citizen Movements Succeed.

David has litigated many constitutional cases in the Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman, which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the ACLU represented a gay couple refused service by a bakery because they sought a cake to celebrate their wedding; Bostock v. Clayton County, which established that Title VII bans discrimination on the basis of transgender status and sexual orientation; and Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L. which extended First Amendment protection from school discipline to student online, off-campus speech.