Biography
Sophia Lin Lakin is the Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. Sophia has active cases protecting voting rights and combatting voter suppression across the county. Her current cases include League of Women Voters of Tennessee v. Hargett (challenging a Tennessee law that imposes onerous requirements and substantial criminal and civil penalties on community based organizations that conduct voter registration drives); Common Cause v. Lawson (challenging an unlawful purge program in Indiana); Texas v. Crystal Mason (representing Ms. Mason in her appeal of her conviction and 5-year sentence for allegedly improperly casting a provisional ballot); Fish v. Kobach (challenging documentation requirements for voter registration in Kansas); and Missouri NAACP v. Missouri (challenging Missouri’s failure to provide adequate public education and fund the implementation of the state’s voter ID requirement).
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.
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.