LOS ANGELES, CA – This week, Thomas A. Saenz, President and General Counsel, announced important developments in the leadership of the MALDEF national litigation team. Longtime senior MALDEF attorney Nina Perales has become the Director of Litigation. In this capacity, she will oversee MALDEF litigation efforts throughout the country.
Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF President and General Counsel, stated "I am very pleased to have Nina Perales as our national Director of Litigation. Nina has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the nation's top civil rights litigators. With her expertise and dedication to the MALDEF mission, she will ensure that our docket of civil rights cases flourishes and our roster of significant courtroom victories expands in the years to come."
Nina Perales Biography
Ms. Perales is a leading civil rights litigator and an expert on a range of issues, including immigrants' rights, voting rights, and redistricting litigation. For the past 8 years, she has been MALDEF's Southwest Regional Counsel and has also served as National Senior Counsel and Staff Attorney.
Among her current cases, Ms. Perales recently successfully argued in the lawsuit challenging Arizona's anti-immigrant law known as SB 1070; she also leads the litigation that has struck down repeated anti-immigrant laws in Farmers Branch, Texas. In the area of voting rights, Ms. Perales recently secured a Ninth Circuit ruling invalidating a discriminatory Arizona voter registration law and is currently defending a test case involving the constitutional guarantee of equality in redistricting.
Ms. Perales' voting rights work has included representing Latino intervenors in the defense of the federal Voting Rights Act in 2009 and successful statewide redistricting cases in Texas and Arizona. Ms. Perales also served as lead counsel for Latino challengers in the Texas 2003 congressional redistricting lawsuit and argued the case successfully to the U.S. Supreme Court (LULAC v. Perry, 548 U. S. 399 (2006)).
Ms. Perales received her Bachelor's degree from Brown University and earned her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law.
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