Matt Coles

Matt Coles is the Deputy National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. From 1995 until 2010, he was the Director of the ACLU’s LGBT Project. Matt was counsel in Romer v. Evans, which resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Colorado’s ban on laws protecting LGB people from discrimination, and counsel for amicii in Lawrence v. Texas, which resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down laws against same-sex intimacy. He’s argued cases challenging the ban on LGBT people in the military and bans on adoption by gay people and he has tried discrimination cases. Matt was the primary drafter of California’s law banning sexual orientation discrimination and he wrote the nation’s first domestic partnership law. He is the author of Try This at Home, a do-it-yourself guide to passing LGBT discrimination laws.

Matt Coles is the author of Reinhardt is Right; Perry is a Case About California.

Roberta Kaplan

A partner in the Litigation Department of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, Roberta (“Robbie”) A. Kaplan has been chosen by the National Law Journal as one of the top “40 Under 40” lawyers in the United States, as a New York “Super Lawyer,” and as one of the 500 leading litigators in the United States.  In addition to representing major corporate clients such as Fitch Ratings in complex, high profile matters.

Ms. Kaplan currently represents Edith Windsor in a case challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), a federal statute that defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. Having prevailed at the District Court and the Second Circuit, Ms. Kaplan will argue that case before the United States Supreme Court on March 27, 2013. Ms. Kaplan is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School, and served as a law clerk to the Hon. Judith S. Kaye of the New York Court of Appeals and the Hon. Mark L. Wolf of the District of Massachusetts.

Roberta Kaplan is the co-author, along with Jaren Janghorbani, of Proof vs. Prejudice.

Ruthann Robson

Ruthann Robson is Professor of Law & University Distinguished Professor. She is the author of the forthcoming book Dressing Constitutionally: Hierarchy, Sexuality, and Democracy (2013), and a collection of legal creative writing entitled Instead, as well as the books Sappho Goes to Law School (1998); Gay Men, Lesbians, and the Law (1996); and Lesbian (Out)Law: Survival Under the Rule of Law (1992), and the editor of the three volume set, International Library of Essays in Sexuality & Law(2011). She is a frequent commentator on constitutional and sexuality issues and the co-editor of the Constitutional Law Professors Blog.

Ruthann Robson is the author of Thirteen False Blackbirds.

Karin Wang

Karin Wang is the Vice-President of Programs and Communications, where she oversees APALC’s direct services, litigation, policy, leadership development and communications work.

Wang is active in local, state and national organizations that seek to improve the legal system for immigrants and low-income communities. Currently, she serves on the board of OneJustice and is a member of the State Bar’s Council on Access & Fairness. She also is a past president of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Los Angeles County; past board member of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Association; former chair of the State Bar’s Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services; and past co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) Pro Bono & Community Service Committee.

In addition, Wang has been involved since 2005 in the struggle for marriage equality in California. She is a founding and current Steering Committee member of API Equality-LA, leading the coalition’s media efforts against Proposition 8 in 2008 and also helping to file several amicus briefs in the California Supreme Court in support of marriage equality, including one brief on behalf of 63 Asian American organizations.

Before her current position, Wang directed APALC’s immigrant rights project and helped file a landmark civil rights complaint against Los Angeles County on behalf of limited English speaking welfare recipients, leading to major reforms to the department’s services to immigrants and payment of $1.7 million in back benefits. Wang also ran the first Los Angeles field office of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office for Civil Rights, enforcing federal civil rights laws across the Southwest. After law school, she was a litigation associate at Morrison & Foerster LLP in San Francisco.

For her activism and leadership, Wang has received the Lambda Legal “Liberty Award”; the “Pioneer in Community Service” award from the Taiwanese American Citizen League/Taiwanese American Professionals; the “Local Hero” award from KCET in Los Angeles; and the “Woman of the Year” award from California Assemblymember Mike Eng. She also was named by NAPABA as one of its “Best Lawyers Under 40.”

Wang graduated from the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Asian American Law Journal, and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

Karin Warn is the author of When Litigation Collides with Grassroots Organizing: The Impact of the Perry Lawsuit Through the Eyes of Asian Americans Organizing for Marriage Equality.