Christine Sun, Legal Director of the States United Democracy Center, visited Texas Law as the fall 2021 Lives in the Law speaker. Originally founded during the 2020 election as the Voter Protection Program, States United is a nonpartisan organization advancing free, fair, and secure elections. Sun provides legal services to pro-democracy state and local officials, including the offices of governors, attorneys general, and secretaries of states, on election protection, accountability for democracy violators, and political violence prevention.
During her visit to the law school, Sun spoke about her work protecting democracy and reflected on her career as a civil rights lawyer. Ranjana Natarajan of the Texas Law Civil Rights Clinic, currently on leave and serving Senior Counsel at States United, moderated the post-talk conversation.
Sun has worked on civil rights issues with a range of legal organizations. She was Special Assistant to the Attorney General of California Xavier Becerra; Legal and Policy Director of the ACLU of Northern California; and senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. Before moving to California, she was Deputy Legal Director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where she directed SPLC’s economic justice work and worked on behalf of the LGBT community. She also served as senior counsel for the national ACLU’s LGBT and AIDS Project, where she was lead counsel on numerous cases. Immediately after law school, she clerked for Judge Robert L. Carter on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and then worked for several years in private practice.
The “Lives in the Law” speaker series focuses on the work and lives of lawyers who strive to improve the lives of others through litigation, advocacy and public service and is hosted by the Justice Center and Career Services Office each semester. Sun’s visit was cosponsored by the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association (APALSA), OUTLaw, the Public Interest Law Association, and the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights.