The ACLU of New Jersey today announced the appointment of Ezra Rosenberg (headshot here) as the organization’s Director of Appellate Advocacy. In this role, Rosenberg will serve as a leader of the legal department and manage the ACLU-NJ's appellate docket to protect and expand civil rights and civil liberties for all New Jerseyans.
“I’m proud to have Ezra join the ACLU-NJ team,” said ACLU-NJ Executive Director Amol Sinha. “His decades of experience litigating, both in New Jersey and around the country, to advance racial justice, and civil rights and liberties will be instrumental to our vision of building a fair and equitable Garden State. As the country faces another Trump administration, when our democracy is on the line, the ACLU-NJ is more prepared than ever to hold those in power accountable in court for any attempt to undermine fundamental freedoms.”
Rosenberg brings extensive social justice legal expertise, having appeared in courts across the country, including federal appellate courts, state high courts, and as the author of significant briefs on civil rights issues before the Supreme Court of the United States. For the past 10 years, he served as co-director of the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law, a national civil rights organization that uses legal advocacy to achieve racial justice. In that role, he managed a portfolio of over 150 cases. He has litigated cases at trial and on appeal on issues regarding the Trump administration’s attempted changes to the census, racial gerrymandering, and unconstitutionally burdensome and discriminatory voter identification, including as one of the lead attorneys in a case successfully challenging Texas’s stringent photo ID law.
“Ezra’s 50 years of experience litigating cutting edge arguments will be invaluable to our team,” said ACLU-NJ Legal Director Jeanne LoCicero. “The ACLU-NJ has shown what’s possible when civil rights advocacy takes place simultaneously in the courts, in the legislature, and in communities. Ezra’s leadership will be integral in our pursuit of justice for all.”
Before his time with the Lawyers’ Committee, Rosenberg was a partner at Dechert LLP where he served as co-chair of the firm’s nationally ranked Product Liability and Mass Tort Group. While at Dechert, he worked with the ACLU-NJ as pro bono counsel, litigating a class action lawsuit on its behalf challenging inhumane conditions at the Passaic County Jail. And in 2013, he authored the ACLU-NJ’s successful amicus brief in State v. Skinner arguing that the state violated the constitution by using an artist’s rap lyrics against a defendant in a criminal trial.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to join the team at the ACLU-NJ who have brought milestone victories to New Jersey since the organization’s founding in 1960,” said ACLU-NJ Director of Appellate Advocacy Ezra Rosenberg. “In many ways, the ACLU-NJ’s mission to preserve and expand rights and liberties for all is even more important today, and I know our work will continue moving us toward a fairer, more just New Jersey.”
Rosenberg began his career as a law clerk in the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey, before joining the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate, Office of the Public Defender, focusing on criminal appeals and arguing several times before the New Jersey Supreme Court, including a landmark case that set the standard for judicial review of prosecutorial denials of pretrial intervention. He later served in the Lands and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice as a Senior Trial Attorney, where he litigated major cases relating to this country’s resources.
