Deepak Gupta (attorney)

Deepak Gupta (born September 14, 1977) is an American attorney, known for representing consumers, workers, and a broad range of clients in Supreme Court and appellate cases and constitutional, class action, and other types of litigation. Gupta is the founding principal of the law firm Gupta Wessler PLLC and a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

Early life and education[]

Gupta earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Fordham University and a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center. He also studied Sanskrit at the University of Oxford. He served as a law clerk for Judge Lawrence K. Karlton.^[1]

Career[]

He teaches as a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, where he was also a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow, and is a former adjunct professor of Law at Georgetown Law and American University's Washington College of Law. Before entering private practice, he was a senior official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. After leaving the CFPB in 2012, he established the firm now known as Gupta Wessler PLLC. He previously worked for seven years as a staff attorney and the founding director of the Consumer Justice Project at Public Citizen Litigation Group and, before that, as Alan Morrison Supreme Court Assistance Project Fellow at Public Citizen Litigation Group. He is an appointed member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and an elected member of the American Law Institute and serves on the boards of several organizations and academic research institutes, including the board of directors of the Open Markets Institute, the National Consumer Law Center, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Deepak Gupta has been considered a potential nominee for a federal judgeship to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Joe Biden.^[2]

Law360 called him "one of the emerging giants of the appellate and the Supreme Court bar," a "heavy hitter," and a “principled” and "incredibly talented lawyer."^[3]

Notable cases[]

• In 2019, Gupta became the first Asian-American invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to argue as a court-appointed amicus (in support of a judgment left undefended by the U.S. Solicitor General)
• Gupta leads a class action lawsuit against the U.S. government challenging fees for access to the PACER electronic records system.^[4]
• Gupta was retained to lead litigation against President Donald Trump in 2017 based on alleged violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. He was chosen by Norm Eisen and Richard Painter, who respectively served as White House ethics advisors to the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations, in their capacity as counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
• Gupta represented the family of a Mexican teenager fatally shot by a U.S. border patrol agent, successfully persuading the United States Supreme Court to reject the officer's hindsight-based immunity defense.
• In Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman, Gupta successfully represented retail merchants before the United States Supreme Court in a First Amendment challenge to law designed to hide the costs of credit cards.^[5]
• Gupta argued the case of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion for the respondent before the United States Supreme Court. This landmark case concerned the validity of forced arbitration clauses used by companies to suppress group claims of discrimination, harassment, wage theft, deceptive practices, and predatory lending. Gupta is a leading advocate against forced arbitration clauses.
• Gupta represented Leandra English in her 2017 lawsuit to halt the appointment of Mick Mulvaney as head of the CFPB.^[6]

References[]