Samuel Bagenstos

In Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, Bagenstos filed a brief challenging Ohio’s voter purge procedure, criticizing the Trump Administration’s reversal of longstanding U.S. Department of Justice policy on the National Voter Registration Act.

In 2018 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Michigan Supreme Court.

He has argued four U.S. Supreme Court cases, representing the plaintiff. In Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools, 137 S. Ct. 743 (2017), he won a victory for a girl with cerebral palsy who sought to bring her service dog with her to school; the Court reversed a lower-court decision throwing the case out of court. In Young v. United Parcel Service, 135 S. Ct 1338 (2015), the Court established new protections for pregnant workers. In United States v. Georgia, 546 U.S. 151 (2006), the Court upheld the constitutionality of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as applied in the case of a prisoner who used a wheelchair. And in Chevron v. Echazabal, 536 U.S. 73 (2002), the Court rejected the plaintiffs argument that he should be the one to decide if chemicals in the workplace posed too much risk to his health, given that he had hepatitis.

He is the author of Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement (Yale University Press 2009), and a Foundation Press casebook on Disability Law, along with numerous articles.

He has been a member of the faculty of Harvard Law School, and a visiting professor at UCLA School of Law and Michigan Law School. He was a professor of law from 2004 to 2009 at Washington University in St. Louis, and from 2007 to 2008, Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development there.

Bagenstos has been married to Margo Schlanger since 1998.

Bagenstos is a long-time civil rights lawyer, who began his career in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division in 1994. His work has focused particularly on voting rights, disability rights, and workers' rights.

Bagenstos graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1990, and then received his J.D. in 1993 from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude. He received the Fay Diploma (awarded to the person ranked first in the class) and was Articles Office Co-Chair for the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the Ninth Circuit for one year, and then joined the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He served as Law Clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1997/1998 Term.

Samuel Robert Bagenstos (born 1970) is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, a job he returned to after serving for two years as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez.