The Equal Justice Society announced that John Bonifaz has resigned from the EJS board of directors after more than 20 years of service. He will remain part of EJS as a member of a new advisory board.
John joined EJS’s founding board together with the late Prof. Charles Ogletree (founding board chair), Maria Blanco, James J. Brosnahan, Kate Kendell, Prof. Margaret Russell, Tobias B. Wolff, and Prof. Eric K. Yamamoto.
The EJS board of directors is a dynamic combination of veteran and new members contributing to the strong leadership of the organization:
- Kelly Dermody, Managing Partner of San Francisco office, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP
- Fernando Gaytan (Board Chair) – Senior Attorney, Earthjustice
- Michael Harris – Retired, former Senior Attorney, Juvenile Justice, National Center for Youth Law
- Lisa Holder – EJS President
- Raymond C. Marshall – Partner, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP
- Pamela Perkins-Dwyer (Board Secretary) – Major Gifts Officer, Los Angeles Master Chorale
- Donald K. Tamaki – Senior Counsel, Minami Tamaki LLP
- Sheila Warren – CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation
“Among all of our board members and staff, John has been with us the longest, and we are deeply grateful for his unwavering dedication to our organization,” said EJS President Lisa Holder. “John played a pivotal role in securing two of our earliest foundation grants and has provided invaluable counsel on a wide range of issues and initiatives. His guidance has been especially crucial as we navigated our role addressing critical national challenges, from preserving our democracy to combating authoritarianism.”
“It has been a true honor to have served on the Equal Justice Society’s Board of Directors,” said John Bonifaz. “EJS is at the forefront of the fight for racial justice and democracy in our country, and I am proud to continue to stand with it as a member of its new advisory board. Now more than ever, the fight must go on.”
John Bonifaz is a constitutional attorney and the Co-Founder and President of Free Speech For People (https://freespeechforpeople.org). FSFP remains committed to the fight for our democracy on multiple fronts: challenging big money in politics and unchecked corporate power; protecting the right to vote and our elections; holding social media companies accountable when they amplify threats of violence and disinformation on their platforms; confronting corruption at the highest levels of our government, including in the White House with this next Trump administration and at the Supreme Court; and lifting up the promise of political equality for all.
He previously served as the executive director and general counsel of the National Voting Rights Institute, an organization he founded in 1994, and as the legal director of Voter Action, a national election integrity organization. He has been at the forefront of key voting rights and democracy campaigns in the United States for more than three decades.
John is the co-author with Ron Fein and Ben Clements of The Constitution Demands It: The Case For The Impeachment of Donald Trump, published by Melville House in 2018, with a foreword by John Nichols.
He is also the co-author with Congressman Jamie Raskin of two seminal law review articles (Yale Law & Policy Review-1993 and Columbia Law Review-1994) and of The Wealth Primary: Campaign Fundraising and the Constitution (1994), which all argue that the current campaign finance system violates the Equal Protection rights of non-wealthy candidates and voters.
John authored Warrior-King, published by Nation Books in 2004, with a foreword by the late Congressman John Conyers, Jr., which chronicles the 2003 case, in which he served as lead counsel, challenging the US military invasion of Iraq as illegal under the War Powers Clause of the US Constitution.
He has also served as co-counsel in international human rights and environmental litigation, including litigation to hold the Chevron-Texaco oil company accountable for its widespread destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazon.
John is a 1992 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1999 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.