HOLDING COURT
A 2025-2026 SUPREME COURT PREVIEW
CLOSING REMARKS
Tuesday, September 9th 6:00 PM ET
HANK JOHNSON
RACHEL ROSSI
TARA MALLOY
DEEPAK GUPTA
ALLEN MORRIS MARY GAY SCANLON
STASHA M. RHODES
CONGRESSMAN
CONGRESSWOMAN
To Holding Court
Welcome to our fourth annual event, ‘Holding Court: Supreme Court Term Preview.’
Our speakers will discuss some of the cases that will be argued during the 2025-2026 Supreme Court term and the potential implications that could arise. The Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in cases that could have significant impacts on voting rights, trans rights,
EMCEE AND MODERATOR:
Rachel Rossi
President of Alliance for Justice, and Alliance for Justice Action Campaign
Rachel Rossi serves as President of Alliance for Justice (AFJ) and Alliance for Justice Action Campaign (AFJ Action), where she leads the organization in its bold and unwavering commitment to justice, equity, and defending democracy. Appointed following a nationwide search, Rossi brings a career defined by fearless advocacy, principled leadership, and a deep dedication to civil rights.
A trailblazer in the legal and advocacy communities, Rossi most recently served in the Biden administration’s Justice Department as Director of the Office for Access to Justice, where she led national efforts to expand access to legal representation for underserved communities. Prior to that, she was Deputy Associate Attorney General, where she also served as the Department’s first Anti-Hate Coordinator under Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.
Rossi’s legal career began in the courtroom, where she spent nearly a decade as a public defender in Los Angeles County and in federal court, defending thousands of low-income clients and standing on the front lines of the fight for justice. Her passion for systemic reform led her to Capitol Hill, where she served as Counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Richard J. Durbin and played a key role in advancing the historic First Step Act.
In 2020, Rossi made history as the first former public defender to run for Los Angeles County District Attorney, earning nearly half a million votes and widespread grassroots support for her progressive vision of justice.
Raised in Los Angeles by immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic and Greece, Rossi’s personal story fuels her deep commitment to the communities she serves. She holds a J.D. from Pepperdine University School of Law and a bachelor’s degree from Bethany University, also having attended Azusa Pacific University and Vanguard University.
Hank Johnson
OPENING REMARKS: Congressman (GA-04)
Congressman Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. has served Georgia’s Fourth Congressional District since 2007, currently representing parts of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. Elected to his 10th term in 2024, he has championed legislation that strengthens civil rights, consumer protections, judicial transparency and accountability, and community safety.
As a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee and ranking member of its Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet, Congressman Johnson has been a national leader on court reform, pushing for accountability and ethical standards for Justices seated on the United States Supreme Court. His legislation includes the Judiciary Act, which would have added seats to the U.S. Supreme Court; the TERM Act, which would place term limits on current and future Supreme Court justices; and the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, which would mandate a binding and enforceable code of conduct for justices, with gift and travel reporting requirements equal to those followed by legislative and executive branch officials.
Congressman Johnson has stood against the threat to civil rights caused by unrestrained over-militarization of police departments across the country by authoring the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act (SMLEA), which would stop the transfer of military grade weaponry from foreign battlefields to our streets. The SMLEA became the basis for Executive Orders issued by the Obama and Biden administrations and was adopted as part of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Congressman Johnson was born in Washington, D.C. and earned his B.A. in Political Science from Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University) and his J.D. from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. Prior to Congress, he practiced law for 27 years in Decatur, Georgia, specializing in criminal defense, civil rights, and personal injury law. He also served as a Magistrate Judge for 12 years, and as a DeKalb County Commissioner for five years. He and his wife, DeKalb County Commissioner Mereda Davis Johnson, have two adult children.
Tara Malloy PANELIST:
Senior Litigation Strategist at the Campaign Legal Center
Tara Malloy litigates a wide range of campaign finance and election law cases in courts across the United States, and has expertise in campaign finance, political disclosure and ethics issues.
Tara has represented parties or amici curiae in many recent campaign finance cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, including Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, as well as in political disclosure cases involving laws from various states and municipalities. She frequently provides media commentary on campaign finance issues on behalf of CLC. She has appeared as a legal expert on various news programs, including MSNBC, PBS, and NPR, and is frequently quoted in national news publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. Prior to joining CLC, Tara served as an attorney with the New York City Campaign Finance Board, advising the board on the administration of the city’s public financing system and representing the board in state and federal courts. Previously, Tara worked in the litigation practice at Debevoise & Plimpton.
A former Fulbright Scholar, Tara is a graduate of Yale Law School and Emory University. Tara is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the State of New York, as well as the bars of the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits. Tara Malloy joined CLC in November 2006.
PANELIST:
Stasha M. Rhodes
Founder and President of Antaeus
Stasha M. Rhodes is a veteran movement strategist, organizer, and the Founder and President of Antaeus, a social impact firm focused on revitalizing grassroots power and bridging progressive movements with the communities they aim to serve. With over 20 years of experience, she has led high-impact national campaigns on democracy, Supreme Court reform, and gun violence prevention.
Inspired by her grandparents’ fight for justice as former sharecroppers in Louisiana, Stasha has dedicated her life to community empowerment. Stasha founded United for Democracy, a coalition of 160+ groups confronting the threat posed by the far-right Supreme Court.
A trained organizer through the Industrial Areas Foundation, Stasha began her career with Together Baton Rouge and later led public health campaigns with the American Heart Association. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vox. She is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and teaches Social Welfare Policy at Smith College. Stasha is a proud graduate of Southern University and Southern University Law Center, and lives in Washington, D.C., with her three children.
Allen Morris PANELIST:
Director of Policy at the National LGBTQ Task Force
Allen Morris, (he/they) serves as the Director of Policy at the National LGBTQ Task Force, where he leads national efforts to advance equity through legislative and administrative advocacy. Prior to joining the Task Force, Allen built and led the first policy team at the largest immigration nonprofit in Texas, driving forward reforms that uplift immigrant communities.
Allen holds a Master of Arts in International Law and Human Rights and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science. With over a decade of experience in public policy, immigration reform, criminal justice reform, and human rights, he has worked across legal, corporate, government, and nonprofit sectors.
He began his career as an entry-level staffer in Houston, TX, and credits his grandmother for instilling in him the values of hard work and treating everyone with dignity — regardless of background or status.
Allen believes that while many can attempt this work, few are truly called to it. His journey has led to multiple policy victories and collaborations with key figures across the Civil Rights Movement. He is widely recognized as a fearless advocate for directly impacted and historically marginalized communities.
His work has been featured in Business Insider, The Advocate, The Washington Blade, BBC News, The Hill, Spectrum News, ABC, and other outlets.
PANELIST:
Deepak Gupta
Founding Principal of Gupta Wessler LLP
Deepak Gupta is the founding principal of Gupta Wessler LLP, where his practice focuses on Supreme Court, appellate, and complex litigation on behalf of plaintiffs and public-interest clients. Deepak is also a Lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he co-teaches the Harvard Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.
In 2025, the National Law Journal observed that Deepak “has steadily become a mainstay of the Supreme Court lectern and the go-to advocate for consumers and other plaintiffs with cases before the justices.” Over more than two decades, he has led high-stakes cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, all thirteen federal circuits, and many state supreme courts, focused on ensuring access to justice for consumers, workers, and communities injured by corporate or governmental wrongdoing. He has also testified before the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.
Before founding Gupta Wessler in 2012, Deepak was Senior Counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where, as the first appellate litigator hired under Elizabeth Warren’s leadership, he launched the agency’s amicus program and worked with the Solicitor General’s office on Supreme Court cases. Previously, he spent seven years at Public Citizen Litigation Group, where he founded the Consumer Justice Project and served as the Alan Morrison Supreme Court Assistance Project Fellow. He also worked on voting rights at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice; prisoners’ rights at the ACLU’s National Prison Project; and religious freedom at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He clerked for Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California and studied law at Georgetown, Sanskrit at Oxford, and philosophy at Fordham.
CLOSING REMARKS: (PA-05)
Congresswoman
Mary Gay Scanlon
Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon has dedicated her career to serving the most vulnerable — first as a lawyer and now in Congress. She was first sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives on November 13, 2018, following a special election, and currently represents Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District.
Congresswoman Scanlon’s legislative priorities include voting rights, access to justice, education, supporting economic growth for her region, common sense gun safety, women's rights, and ending hunger. All these priorities align with Congresswoman Scanlon’s main goal as an elected official: protecting and improving the lives of America’s children, families, veterans, and seniors. She currently serves on the House Committee on Rules, House Judiciary Committee, and serves as Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. She also chairs the House Caucuses on Access to Legal Aid, Youth Mentoring, and Foster Youth.
As a staunch believer that everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law, Congresswoman Scanlon previously worked as national pro bono counsel at a major U.S. law firm, where she directed and supervised over 600 lawyers across 15 offices in providing more than 50,000 hours of pro bono legal services annually to low-income clients and nonprofit organizations. Under her leadership, the pro bono program worked on critical issues, including voting rights, child advocacy, immigration, public benefits, and criminal justice reform.
Before her election to the U.S. House of Representatives, Congresswoman Scanlon also served as an attorney at the Education Law Center, president of her local school board, and co-chair of the Voting Rights Task Force of the Association of Pro Bono Counsel. She is a graduate of Colgate University and University of Pennsylvania Law School. The Congresswoman and her husband, Mark, reside in Swarthmore and have three adult children.
SUPREME COURT PREVIEW
Louisiana v. Callais / Robinson v. Callais
majority-Black district. The controversy stems from the state’s adoption of Senate Bill 8 (S.B. 8) after a 2022 federal court ruling found the previous map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election practices that dilute the voting power of minority groups. The new map, designed to comply with the Voting Rights Act, drew a second majority-Black district, but opponents argue it constitutes unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, claiming the map prioritizes race over other considerations, such as political interests.
The Supreme Court’s ruling could have broad implications for both the Voting Rights Act and redistricting practices nationwide. A decision upholding the lower court’s finding of racial gerrymandering may limit the scope of the Voting Rights Act’s protections in future redistricting efforts, potentially making it harder for minority groups to seek judicial intervention when electoral maps are drawn.
West Virginia v. B.P.J.
West Virginia v. B.P.J. is a pivotal test of transgender rights. B. P. J., a 14-year-old transgender girl, has begun to receive puberty blockers and hormone therapy, and would like to compete on the girls’ cross-country team at her middle school. She sued West Virginia after she was banned from doing so under the state’s “Save Women’s Sports Act.” She argues the ban violates Title IX’s prohibition on sex-based discrimination and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The rights of transgender athletes have become a subject of “culture war”, as reflected in the back-and-forth decisions on the case. The district court first agreed that B.P.J. was likely to succeed and temporarily ordered the state to allow B.P.J. to compete, but a U.S. District Judge later ruled for the state on summary judgment. On appeal, the Circuit Court put the summary decision on hold, but barred the state from enforcing the law while the case continued in the lower court.
The Supreme Court’s decision will likely shape the legal status of more than two dozen anti-trans sports bans across the country and determine whether transgender youth can fully participate in public education without being singled out and excluded for who they are.
National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission
In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court will reconsider its 2001 ruling in FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, which upheld vital federal limits on political party coordination with candidates in campaign advertising. The challenge – filed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and then-Senator J.D. Vance, now Vice President – claims these limits violate the First Amendment and are inconsistent with the Court’s more recent, deregulatory campaign finance decisions. Alarmingly, even before the Court has ruled, the Trump Administration’s FEC and DOJ have declined to enforce the existing law, undermining federal campaign finance safeguards.
Although contribution limits to political parties remain significantly higher than those to individual candidates — $44,300 to national parties versus $3,500 to candidates in the 2025–2026 cycle — a ruling in favor of the NRSC would effectively render individual limits meaningless. It would allow wealthy donors to funnel unlimited funds to specific candidates under the guise of party support, further weakening already fragile guardrails designed to limit corruption and undue influence. If the Court dismantles these restrictions, it would mark another blow to campaign finance reform and give even more power to the ultra-wealthy at the expense of democratic accountability and the public’s voice.
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