Jonathan Markovitz is a Free Expression and Access to Government Staff Attorney. He joined ACLU SoCal in April, 2021, after nearly eight years at the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties.
During his time at ACLU-SDIC, Markovitz worked in many core ACLU issue areas, including racial and economic justice, police practices, immigrants' rights, and conditions of incarceration. He was also engaged in legal advocacy in a series of issues at the intersection of racial justice and free expression.
Before law school, Markovitz earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, and taught sociology, communication, ethnic studies, and writing at UCSD and other southern California universities. More recently, he has been an occasional lecturer at UC Irvine School of Law, where he has taught "Racial Violence and the Law." Markovitz is the author of Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory (University of Minnesota Press) and Racial Spectacles: Explorations in Media, Race and Justice (Routledge). While in law school at UCI, he externed for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Upon graduation, he clerked for Judge John C. Coughenour of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle, before starting at the ACLU as a Skadden Fellow.