Leah C. Aden

Leah C. Aden serves as Deputy Director of Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where she uses litigation, policy, and public education strategies to ensure that Black people have equal access to the political process, environmental justice, and employment opportunities.

Leah was a member of LDF’s litigation team in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, a high-profile case in which the U.S. Supreme Court rendered inoperable Section 5, a core protection of the Voting Rights Act. Over more than four decades, Section 5 previously deterred, scrutinized, ameliorated, and blocked proposed racially discriminatory voting changes that certain jurisdictions attempted to implement.

Across the American South, Leah has represented Black voters and civil rights organizations in challenges to vote suppressive schemes like photo ID laws and limitations on early voting (including at Prairie View A&M University), as well as dilutive voting practices like at-large electoral methods for a county commission, school board, and state court. She advocates for the abolition of prison-based gerrymandering and felony disenfranchisement laws nationwide, and has represented formerly incarcerated people in challenges to these racially discriminatory schemes. And Leah has represented Black individuals and an organization, challenging environmental racism and barriers to employment for people with criminal backgrounds.

Leah has authored or otherwise significantly contributed to numerous friend-of-the court briefs before the Supreme Court and other federal courts related to voting rights and economic justice. She authored Democracy Diminished: State and Local Threats to Voting Post–Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, which details proposed and implemented state, county, and local voting changes since the Shelby County decision, and continues to track post-Shelby County voting changes following publication of that report. Leah also has led in the development of much of LDF’s public education guidance on the 2020 decennial census and post-2020 redistricting process.

Prior to joining LDF, Leah was a litigation associate in the New York office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, LLP, having earned the prestigious Fried Frank/LDF Fellowship. Leah served as a law clerk to the late Honorable John T. Nixon of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. Leah received her J.D. from Howard University School of Law and B.A. in History and African-American Studies from Columbia University.