Robert Rubin, Adjunct Faculty

Robert Rubin, a civil rights attorney for the past 32 years, is Senior Counsel at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights where he serves as Director of the California Voting Rights Institute. From 1979-81, Rubin was ACLU staff counsel in Mississippi.  In the area of immigrant and refugee rights, he has successfully litigated more than 20 class action suits, including the Prop. 187 case that successfully challenged the threatened expulsion of undocumented children from school.  In the voting rights area, in a case that reached the US Supreme Court, Rubin secured the first injunction in the nation ordering a state to comply with the “motor voter” law.  In two other cases decided favorably by the Supreme Court, he was counsel to Latino voters in Monterey County opposed to at-large elections.  The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the at-large system violated the voting rights act and in a second ruling, rejected California’s argument that the act was unconstitutional and the at-large system immune from review.  During the 2004 Presidential election, he successfully challenged Ohio’s refusal to provide provisional ballots to persons who had requested, but did not receive, absentee ballots.  Rubin filed and successfully resolved the first six cases filed under the California Voting Rights Act resulting in the conversion of electoral systems of city councils and school boards from at-large to single-member districts.