Nicholas Espíritu

Nicholas Espíritu

Carr Center Fellow
Nicholas Espíritu

Nicholas Espíritu is a civil rights attorney with the National Immigration Law Center and a Lecturer at the UCLA School of Law where he teaches Voting Rights and  an Immigration Policy Clinic.  His legal career has included challenges to President Trump’s travel ban targeting immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries and Arizona’s anti-Latino and anti-immigrant law SB 1070. Nicholas was part of legal team that advised undocumented youth in their push for the executive action that later became the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and defended that program against legal challenges by various states.  Before joining NILC, Nicholas was attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where his focus was on voting rights, including challenges to state redistricting plans that diluted Latino voting strength, efforts to impose voter identification requirements, and efforts to exclude noncitizens from legislative apportionment.

Nicholas' research focuses on the intersection of critical race theory, individual substantive rights claims, constitutional structure, and immigration law to address questions of the relation of rights claims, equality, participation, and democratic legitimacy for marginalized communities, be they noncitizens or racial minorities. 

Follow him on twitter @NicoEspiritu9