Alexandra Brodsky

Staff Attorney

Alexandra Brodsky is a staff attorney at Public Justice. She litigates cases concerning sex and race discrimination in schools, among other civil rights issues, and specializes in appeals. Alexandra’s recent and ongoing cases include:

Doe v. Fairfax County School Board, in which Alexandra successfully argued an appeal in the Fourth Circuit concerning Title IX’s “actual knowledge” standard, resulting in a powerful opinion ordering a new trial for a student victim of sexual assault; Alexandra also served as counsel of record in successfully opposing the defendant’s cert petition
Brown v. State of Arizona, a Ninth Circuit appeal about the geographic scope of schools’ Title IX responsibilities that Alexandra joined to write a successful petition for rehearing en banc; Alexandra will argue the case before the en banc Ninth Circuit in March 2023
Hyman v. Devlin, an appeal in the Third Circuit in which Alexandra and co-counsel defended a jury verdict against a police officer who unconstitutionally assisted a private debt collection through threats of violence
Carter v. City of Montgomery, a putative class action against public and private actors who engaged in a systemic practice of jailing low-income municipal court defendants too poor to pay traffic tickets and other fines, with significant briefing at the district court and the Eleventh Circuit
Doe v. Gwinnett County School District, in which Alexandra served as lead appellate counsel in the Eleventh Circuit on behalf of a girl of color suspended by her high school after she reported that she had been raped by a white classmate; the case settled on appeal
Doe v. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, a Seventh Circuit appeal, in which Alexandra serves as counsel of record, about what constitutes an educational injury for purposes of Title IX
R. v. Duluth Public Schools Academy, a suit on behalf of Black children subjected to discriminatory discipline and a racially hostile environment at a charter network, which settled after surviving summary judgment
Snyder-Hill v. The Ohio State University, a successful Sixth Circuit appeal concerning the federal discovery rule, arising out of Ohio State University’s deliberate indifference to years of sexual abuse of student-athletes and others by a campus doctor, Richard Strauss
The Women’s Student Union v. U.S. Department of Education, an Administrative Procedure Act challenge to key portions of the Title IX sexual harassment regulation promulgated by the Trump Administration; the lawsuit was prominently featured in ESPN’s 2022 documentary about Title IX, 37 Words
Doe v. Crestwood School District, an administrative complaint against a Pennsylvania school district on behalf of a child subject to harassment and discriminatory discipline based on their gender identity
Conviser v. DePaul, a retaliation suit that established independent contractors are protected by Title IX
Orozco v. Garland, a D.C. Circuit appeal about the availability of a private right of action under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act for federal employees with disabilities

Before joining Public Justice, Alexandra clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked to end discriminatory school push out at the National Women’s Law Center, where she was a Skadden Fellow. At the Law Center, Alexandra was one of the authors of Dress Coded: Black Girls, Bodies, and Bias in DC Schools, a nationally heralded study, co-written with 21 students, on the harmful effects of school dress codes. During and before law school, she served as a senior editor at Feministing.com and founding co-director of Know Your IX, a youth-led organization combatting gender violence in schools. For her work on sexual harassment, Alexandra received a Ms. Wonder Award from the Ms. Foundation and was named to POLITICO Magazine’s “50 Thinkers, Doers, and Visionaries” and Forward Magazine’s Forward 50.

Alexandra received her B.A. from Yale College and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she received the Charles G. Albom Prize for excellence in appellate advocacy and the Reinhardt Fellowship for public interest law. She is now a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law, where she teaches a course on sex discrimination in education.

Alexandra is frequently quoted in the media on matters related to gender violence and other civil rights issues. She is the author of Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt 2021) and the co-editor, with Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, of The Feminist Utopia Project: 57 Visions of a Wildly Better Future (The Feminist Press 2015). She has written for publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Nation, the Atlantic, the American Prospect, and Dissent. She is also the author of A Tale of Two Title IXs: Title IX Reverse Discrimination Law and Its Trans-Substantive Implications for Civil Rights, 55 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 754 (2021), with Dana Bolger and Sejal Singh; Against Taking Rape “Seriously”: The Case Against Mandatory Referral Laws for Campus Gender Violence, 53 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 131 (2018); A Rising Tide: Learning about Fair Process from Title IX, 66 J. Legal Educ. 822 (2017); and “Rape-Adjacent”: Imagining Legal Responses to Nonconsensual Condom Removal, 32 Colum. J. Gender & L. 183 (2017), which inspired a new California civil remedy and proposed federal legislation.

Alexandra is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and New York. She is also admitted to the bars of the U.S. Supreme Court; the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits; and the U.S. District Court for the District of D.C.