Alexandra Brodsky

Alexandra Brodsky

Senior Attorney

Alexandra Brodsky is a senior attorney at Public Justice. She specializes in cases challenging sex and race discrimination in schools, and also litigates suits concerning access to justice, workers’ rights, disability discrimination, and civil rights violations within the criminal legal system. Alexandra has briefed and argued appeals and dispositive motions in federal courts across the country, including the en banc Ninth Circuit. She also helps civil rights plaintiffs preserve their court of appeals victories by opposing cert in the Supreme Court. Her ongoing and recent cases include:

• Brown v. State of Arizona, in which the en banc Ninth Circuit held that schools may be liable under Title IX for causing their students to be harassed off school grounds; Alexandra joined the case after the plaintiff’s panel loss to write a successful petition for rehearing en banc and argue before the en banc court
• Williamson v. Heritage Preschools LLC, a Section 1981 case in the Northern District of Alabama in which Alexandra and co-counsel represent the family of a Black child disciplined and ultimately expelled from his preschool because of his race
• Grabowski v. Arizona Board of Regents, a Ninth Circuit appeal establishing that Title IX protects students from discrimination based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation; Alexandra argued on behalf of nineteen amici civil rights organizations, whose positions the court adopted
• Doe v. Fairfax County School Board, in which Alexandra successfully argued a post-trial appeal in the Fourth Circuit concerning Title IX’s “actual knowledge” standard; Alexandra also served as counsel of record in successfully opposing the defendant’s cert petition
• Doe v. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, a pending Seventh Circuit appeal, which Alexandra briefed and argued, about what constitutes a cognizable educational injury under Title IX, among other issues
• Orozco v. Garland, a successful D.C. Circuit appeal establishing the availability of a private right of action under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act for federal employees with disabilities
• 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
• 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; Alexandra led the plaintiffs’ successful opposition to Ohio State’s cert petition
• 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
• K.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 the plaintiffs survived summary judgment
• 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
• Conviser v. DePaul, a retaliation suit that established independent contractors are protected by Title IX
• Doe v. Crestwood School District, an administrative complaint against a Pennsylvania school district on behalf of a child subjected to harassment and discriminatory discipline based on their gender identity
• Hernández v. School District of Pennsylvania, in which Alexandra and co-counsel secured a settlement for an asylum-seeking student whose principal threatened to call immigration authorities when he reported he was being harassed based on his national origin and perceived sexual orientation

Before joining Public Justice in 2019, 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 has also taught a class on sex discrimination in education as a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law.

Alexandra 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 number of academic articles, including one that inspired a new California civil remedy for non-consensual condom removal 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, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits; and the U.S. District Court for the District of D.C.