Indian-American Vanita Gupta, the Associate
Attorney General of US, will quit from the post in February 2024. She is the
first woman of colour to serve as the Department of Justice’s third-highest
ranking official.
Vanita Gupta led its “Reproductive
Rights Taskforce to defend the reproductive freedoms that are protected by
federal law,” said a statement by Attorney General Merrick B Garland.
The 49-year-old has served as the
Associate Attorney General since confirmation by the Senate in 2021 and will
depart from the post in February 2024, according to the Department of Justice
(DoJ).
Acknowledging Gupta’s “extraordinary
service”, Garland said her commitment to the “pursuit of justice and relentless
focus on bringing people together to find common ground made her an incredibly
effective leader in dealing with some of the most complex challenges facing the
American people.”
The highest-ranking Indian-American in
the department, Gupta spearheaded issues from building police-community trust
to safeguarding reproductive freedom, increasing support for victims of gun
violence and other crimes, promoting competition and economic opportunity, and
expanding community violence intervention programmes, according to the DoJ’s
website.
Gupta supervised the department’s civil
litigating divisions, grant-making components, Office for Access to Justice,
Office of Information Policy, Community Relations Service, United States
Trustees Programme, and Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.
A former acting assistant attorney
general and one of America’s best-known and most respected civil rights
attorneys, Gupta chairs the department’s Reproductive Rights and Opioid
Epidemic Civil Litigation Task Forces and is leading its work to combat unjust
and unlawful fines and fees practices.
Gupta previously served as the President
and Chief Executive Officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human
Rights, the oldest and the largest coalition of non-partisan civil rights
organisations in the United States, according to the department.
She also served as the Deputy Legal
Director and the Director of the Center for Justice at the American Civil
Liberties Union.
Gupta graduated from Yale University and
received her law degree from New York University School of Law, where she later
taught a civil rights litigation clinic for several years.
PTI
