Edley Center Faculty

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday allowing President Trump’s executive order on mail voting to go forward is stunningly insensitive to the context: Trump is trying to exercise control over elections when he has absolutely no authority to do so,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“The very first desegregation agreements that [OCR] was created by Congress to enforce included requirements that discriminatory discipline practices end,” says Catherine Lhamon, executive director, Edley Center on Law and Democracy. These practices, she says, are “a feature of discrimination. And it’s something that we have seen persist in schools over decades.”

Dean Erwin Chemerisky weighs in on West Virginia v. B.P.J. upholding a West Virginia law prohibiting transgender girls and women from participating in sports corresponding to their gender identity.

Edley Center senior fellow Seth Galanter comments on the department’s decision to abandon the collection of key civil rights data on the nation’s LGBTQ+ students, cutting out data and definitions related to harassment, bullying and assaults.

“No library can buy every book. It always has to make choices,” Chemerinsky said, but a library that chooses to acquire only books that support the current presidential administration would clearly violate the Constitution. “Where is the line to be drawn?”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses notable concurring opinions from the most recent Supreme Court term.

“For the federal government to announce that it will no longer consider particular kinds of discrimination to violate the law, that guarantees that no person will experience that discrimination, is an incredible diminution of the long-standing protection that Congress has guaranteed to all of us,” said Catherine Lhamon, executive director of the Edley Center on Law and Democracy.

“Never before in American history has there been a president who has shown such disregard for the Constitution and laws of the United States.” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “It is imperative that there be an attorney general who will try to stop this, not facilitate it. Todd Blanche is clearly not that person, and his nomination should be rejected.”

“For the first time since 1964, the federal government is closing its eyes to some forms of discrimination, and that leaves more people more vulnerable,” said Catherine Lhamon, executive director of the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California-Berkeley Law School. “It’s unnecessary and incredibly ugly—it’s about closing a door on federal protection against harm.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discusses what surprised him most about the latest Supreme Court term.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky weighs in on the Supreme Court’s Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections decision.

“A tragic pattern of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions is leaving individuals who have been seriously injured and whose rights have been violated with no remedy whatsoever,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley law school, told CNN. “Rights are meaningless without courts to provide remedies when they are violated.”

“The court said that the states had an important interest in barring transgender girls and women from participating because they would have a competitive advantage and because they would create a safety issue for other players, Writes Dean Erwin Chemerinksy. “The problem with this argument is that it was unproven.”

“On the last day of the term, the court pleased conservatives by allowing states to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in sports corresponding to their gender identity, but, importantly, it also invalidated Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“This is a new way of doing business,” said Seth Galanter, an attorney who worked for OCR under the Obama and Biden administrations and is now a senior fellow at the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at Berkeley Law. “There’s no nuance,” Galanter said. “There’s no inquiry into whether there’s a hostile environment. They say, ‘You have a policy, and the policy violated the law and yeah, you’re in trouble now.’ That is not something that prior administrations would have done.”

“It is ironic for the court to make this ruling during the week in which we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which was written as an objection to unchecked executive power,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“If the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is to have meaning, it
must be to recommit to these enduring principles and to act upon them in our time,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“The disastrous war in Iran reveals the brilliance of the framers of the Constitution in creating a government based on separation of powers — and the folly in abandoning that framework.” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“A series of Supreme Court rulings this week share a disturbing theme: closing courthouse doors and leaving religious prisoners, cancer victims and asylum seekers with rights on paper but almost no way to enforce them,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

While the details of the interagency agreement are vague, director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy Catherine E. Lhamon said the shifts are sure to slow down civil rights claims. “An agreement to further slow down the work is unconscionable.” 

“Moving the work to a place that has no expertise in, has no history in doing the same work for anyone on any issue in any school is a problem in the best of times, and in these — which are very far from the best of times — demonstrate why,” said Catherine Lhamon, executive director of The Edley Center on Law & Democracy. “Giving the Department of Justice jurisdiction over all of these issues, will only further weaponize the rights and only protect a select few of us, rather than all of us under the law.”

“Sometimes well-intentioned laws are unconstitutional,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “That is the case for a bill that recently passed the California Assembly to prevent children under the age of 16 from opening social media accounts.”

“We’re experiencing now an unprecedented assault on the Constitution, on the First Amendment, and of freedom of speech,” said Dean Chemerinsky at the 2026 Berkeley Art, Law, and Finance Symposium. “The closest analog that I can think of would be in the early 1950s during the McCarthy era, but that was not led by the president of the United States.”

Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said the barrage of investigations amounted to “performance art” that grabbed attention but had little impact. After pushback from schools, she said, the Trump administration is backing off. “It stopped putting itself in a position to lose,” said Lhamon, who now leads the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California, Berkeley.

“President Donald Trump’s deal with the Department of Justice raises corruption to a level never seen before in this county,” write Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Burt Neuborne, founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “It can — and must — be stopped.”

“On an almost daily basis, we are seeing the failure of the Constitution to provide adequate checks against a president determined to use the enormous powers of his office for the sake of retribution,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. 

Catherine E. Lhamon, Executive Director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy and Former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, delivered the distinguished keynote address at the 132nd commencement for UC Berkeley’s School of Education on Thursday, May 21, 2026.

“Much rightly has been written criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively nullified Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But one point that has not received sufficient attention is the decision’s blatant inconsistency with the principle that federal courts should not alter the conduct of elections soon before they are to occur.”

In this episode of Equity Leadership Now!, Catherine E. Lhamon joins host Jabari Mahiri to discuss her role as the inaugural Executive Director of the Christopher Edley Center on Law and Democracy and pressing issues surrounding democracy in the United States.

“Constitutional amendments that were adopted to protect the civil rights of Black individuals were used by the Supreme Court to deal a devastating blow to voting rights for people of color last month.” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“After all the court had done in its earlier decisions to limit the protection of voting rights, the one potent tool for protecting voting rights that remained was Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But as Kagan said, the court’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”

“Justice Thomas is the most radically conservative justice to serve on the Supreme Court in modern times,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “I say this because ​in addition to being conservative he has taken positions that would dramatically change the law that the court never has accepted.”

“The Voting Rights Act is, simply put, one of the most important federal laws adopted during my lifetime,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“The Ten Commandments do not belong on the walls of public school classrooms. This was the conclusion of the Supreme Court in 1980, and that ruling is binding on every court in the country,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But in a stunning decision on April 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, by a 9-8 vote, upheld a Texas law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. For many reasons, this decision is wrong.”

“The courts should simply hold that the War Powers Resolution requires the president to end our involvement in the war with Iran unless and until Congress authorizes it,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “This shouldn’t be — and isn’t — different than any other injunction on any administration to comply with the law.”

Dean Erwin Chemerinksy weighs in on a recent speech given by Justice Clarence Thomas in which he said that the rise of progressivism since the beginning of the 20th century has caused great harm. 

“Federal courts should not be used for collusive litigation. They should not handle cases where there is a manifest conflict of interest, which certainly exists when Trump would be settling suits with his Justice Department,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Burt Neuborne, founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s civil rights office under both Biden and Obama, said she found the Epstein correspondence stunning. “When I saw that text in the Epstein files, my jaw dropped,” said Lhamon, who now leads UC Berkeley Law’s Edley Center on Law and Democracy. “It is very surprising to me to see the crass and dismissive terminology, as reported, from the White House about survivors of discrimination … and the ugliness of the explicit planning and strategizing and which of our kids in school our federal government disdains.”

“Chiles v. Salazar is not the first time the Supreme Court has had to deal with a First Amendment challenge to laws that regulate speech by professionals in advising clients and patients,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “What is striking about the decisions is their inconsistency.”

“Senate Democrats are absolutely right in doing everything they can, including holding up funding for the Department of Homeland Security, to impose limits on behavior by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But it is not enough.”

“There just is no constitutional power for the president to really get involved in the election process at all,” said Professor Dan Farber. “The framers of the Constitution clearly saw elections as a state function, and they’ve really only allowed these very limited exceptions.”

“However unpopular such companies are at the moment, they are being held liable for their speech and that is unconstitutional,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

“Conservative justices constantly say the Constitution should be interpreted based on history and its text and its original meaning,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinksy. “All of these sources make the Trump executive order on birthright citizenship unconstitutional. The Supreme Court decision should be unanimous in striking it down.”

The Supreme Court case “could upend her life’s work,” said Catherine Lahmon, executive director of the Edley Center on Law and Democracy. “It has potentially devastating consequences for the country. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and she’s eyes wide open about what that means. And, to her credit, this is not just academic for her.”

“The fate of the SAVE Act in Congress is uncertain despite the strong pressures from Trump,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But if enacted, it is sure to be challenged in the courts. While requiring photo identification for voting would likely be upheld, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote seems clearly unconstitutional.”

“I don’t think it should have ever gotten to a jury trial,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and an expert on the 1st Amendment, which also protects the platforms. “All media tries to keep people on [their platform] and coming back.”

“Calling it a constitution is entirely rhetorical,” Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of U.C. Berkeley’s law school, said, since, although you can call anything a constitution—a city charter, a corporate mission statement—the word “constitution” signifies to most people a popularly written and ratified document that limits what a government can do.

“As is so often the case with ballot initiatives, Uber’s Protecting Automobile Accident Victims from Attorney Self-Dealing Act is being promoted in a very misleading manner, as if it will help automobile accident victims,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “In reality, it just will help businesses like Uber and automobile insurance companies.”

“Under the First Amendment, the press decides how it wants to report the war. The government cannot control what the press says,” explained Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. Chemerinsky’s fear, he continued, is that the worse the war goes, “the more it [the administration] might escalate pressure on the media.”

“The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, aggressively championed by President Donald Trump, would be an unconstitutional restriction on the right to vote that would keep many citizens from voting—with little benefit for our electoral system,” writes Dean Erwin Chemerinksy.