Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Margo Schlanger

On January 25, 2010, Secretary Napolitano welcomed Margo Schlanger to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as its new Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Ms. Schlanger was appointed by President Obama to lead the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Ms. Schlanger brings to the Department expertise in constitutional law and civil rights. Prior to her appointment, Ms. Schlanger was a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan where her research and teaching focused on civil rights, tort, prisons, and equal employment litigation. She also ran the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Ms. Schlanger had previously been a Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, and an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard University. She earned her J.D. and her bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Yale University. She then served as law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from 1993 to 1995. Ms. Schlanger was also a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she worked to remedy civil rights abuses by prison and police departments and earned two Division Special Achievement Awards in the process.

Ms. Schlanger is a leading authority on prisons and prisoner litigation. She was the reporter for the American Bar Association's revision of its Standards governing the Legal Treatment of Prisoners; served on the Vera Institute's blue ribbon Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons; and worked as an advisor on development of proposed national standards implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

As the Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, she has testified before Congress, chairs the Interagency Coordinating Council on Emergency Preparedness and Individuals with Disabilities, served on the first U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Universal Periodic Review, and met with community leaders and groups across America to ensure that their perspectives regarding civil rights and homeland security are considered in the Department's policy process.