Sophia Lin Lakin (@sophlin229) is the Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, and assists in the planning, strategy and supervision of the ACLU’s voting rights litigation nationwide. Sophia has an active docket protecting voting rights and combatting voter suppression across the country and has led or worked on successful challenges to discriminatory voting laws in Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. Most recently, Sophia was lead counsel in Missouri NAACP v. Missouri, a challenge to the in-person notary requirement for mail voting in Missouri during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which she led a multi-week remote trial by deposition and argued twice before the Missouri Supreme Court. Her other cases have included: 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 (defending against the Trump Campaign’s attempt to block certification of Pennsylvania presidential election); Common Cause v. Lawson (lead counsel in case challenging an unlawful purge program in Indiana); Trump v. New York (challenging the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from the apportionment count); League of Women Voters of Tennessee v. Hargett (co-lead in case that challenged a Tennessee law that imposes onerous requirements and substantial criminal and civil penalties on community based organizations that conduct voter registration drives); Texas v. Crystal Mason (representing Ms. Mason in her appeal of her conviction and 5-year sentence for allegedly improperly casting a provisional ballot); and Fish v. Kobach (successful challenge to the documentation requirements for voter registration in Kansas).

Sophia is a frequent commentator on voting rights issues, presenting at conferences and conducting voting rights trainings nationwide. She speaks regularly to both national and local media on a wide range of topics that touch on voting rights, and has written opinion pieces for The Hill.

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.