Joshua P. Thompson

Staff Attorney, National Litigation Center
(916) 419-7111

Practice areas

Background / Education

Mr. Thompson graduated with distinction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002 with a triple major in political science, international relations, and German. After receiving his Bachelor’s degree, he went to Germany on a Fulbright scholarship.

Following his Fulbright year in Germany, Mr. Thompson began law school at Michigan State University. After his first year of law school, he was a Koch Summer Fellow in Washington, D.C., where he clerked at both the Federalist Society and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, specializing in the latter’s White Collar Crime Project. In May, 2007, Mr. Thompson graduated cum laude from MSU, where he was an Associate Editor on the MSU Law Review. He also was active in the MSU Federalist Society and a member of the school’s Trial Practice Institute.

Mr. Thompson has published extensively in legal journals and newspapers throughout the country, specializing in equal protection law, the Voting Rights Act, Proposition 209, and school choice. He regularly speaks and debates on these topics as well, and recently presented at Stanford Law School’s Redistricting, Race, and Representation Symposium concerning the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. While his practice focuses on race and individual rights, he has also done some work in PLF’s environmental practice group, most notably arguing Keating v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr. Thompson is admitted to the bars of California, the United States Supreme Court, and numerous federal circuit courts of appeals.