Deepak Gupta (attorney)

Deepak Gupta
Born	(1977-09-14) September 14, 1977 (age 46)
Education	Fordham University (BA) University of Oxford Georgetown University (JD)

Deepak Gupta (born September 14, 1977) is an American attorney known for representing consumers, workers, and a broad range of clients in U.S. Supreme Court and appellate cases and constitutional, class action, and complex litigation. Gupta is the founding principal of the law firm Gupta Wessler LLP and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he is an instructor in the Harvard Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. ^[1]

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 in England. He served as a law clerk for Judge Lawrence K. Karlton. ^[2]

Career

He teaches as a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, where he is an instructor in the Harvard Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and was previously a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow, and is a former adjunct professor of Law at Georgetown Law and American University's Washington College of Law. In 2011, Gupta became the first appellate litigator hired under Elizabeth Warren’s leadership at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. ^[3] After leaving the CFPB in 2012, he established the firm now known as Gupta Wessler LLP. He previously worked for seven years at Public Citizen Litigation Group, where he was staff attorney and the founding director of the Consumer Justice Project and the Alan Morrison Supreme Court Assistance Project Fellow. 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 Open Markets Institute, the National Consumer Law Center, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. ^{[4] [5] [6]} Gupta has worked in the U.S Department of Justice Voting Rights Section and at the ACLU's National Prison Project and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. ^[7]

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. ^[8] 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." ^[7]

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). ^[5] In November 2018, he was invited to brief and argue as amicus curiae in support of the judgment in Smith v. Berryhill. This was a Social Security case from Kentucky. ^[9]

In 2021, Gupta argued and won a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial Dist. , on the jurisdictional limits under the Due Process Clause for consumer product liability lawsuits. ^{[10] [11] [12]}

In 2022, Gupta secured a $125-million nationwide class action settlement in a lawsuit that he led against the federal judiciary, challenging fees for access to the PACER electronic records system. ^[13]

In Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman , Gupta successfully represented retail merchants before the United States Supreme Court in a First Amendment challenge to state laws, enacted at the behest of the credit-card industry, that hid the cost of credit cards from consumers. ^[14]

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. ^[15]

Selected publications

• Deepak Gupta, The Consumer Bureau and the Constitution, 65 Admin L. Rev. 945 (2013) ^[16]
• Deepak Gupta, Leveling the Playing Field on Appeal: The Case for a Plaintiff-Side Appellate Bar, 54 Duq. L. Rev. 383 (2016) ^[16]
• Deepak Gupta & Lina Khan, Arbitration as Wealth Transfer, 5 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 499 (2017) ^[16]

References

1. "Gupta & Wessler".
2. "Deepak Gupta, Appellate Advocate, Principal at Gupta Wessler". guptawessler.com. Retrieved 2017-11-27.
3. "Who is Deepak Gupta? Ex-CFPB employee emerges as leading anti-Trump litigator". November 28, 2017.
4. "Deepak Gupta". 25 November 2020.
5. "ALI Members".
6. "Deepak Gupta Gets Call to Argue Position Trump's DOJ Abandoned".
7. "Law360 In-Depth". www.law360.com. 2017-11-06. Retrieved 2017-12-05.
8. "Biden Takes Time Weighing Next Pick for D.C. Circuit".
9. "Deepak Gupta Gets Call to Argue Position Trump's DOJ Abandoned". November 6, 2018.
10. Liptak, Adam (March 25, 2021). "Ford Can Be Sued in States Where Accidents Occurred, Supreme Court Rules". The New York Times . Retrieved March 26, 2021.
11. Frankel, Alison (January 20, 2020). "Stakes are high for businesses, products liability plaintiffs in Supreme Court's new Ford cases". Reuters . Retrieved March 26, 2021.
12. Frankel, Alison (October 7, 2020). "Supreme Court struggles over broad jurisdictional rule in Ford crash cases". Reuters . Retrieved March 26, 2021.
13. "Electronic filing coming to the Supreme Court". WTNH Connecticut News. 2017-11-11. Archived from the original on 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2017-11-27.
14. "U.S. top court throws out ruling that upheld N.Y. credit card law". Reuters. 2017-03-29. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
15. "LA Times - Consumers' right to file class actions is in danger". Los Angeles Times . 5 November 2010.
16. "Harvard Law School publications".