John Freedman is Arnold & Porter’s Senior Pro Bono Counsel and devotes his practice to litigating significant civil rights matters in trial and appellate courts. During his tenure at the firm, John has always maintained a significant pro bono practice. In recent years, he has led teams that successfully challenged the proposed addition of a citizenship question to the decennial census, the proposed rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and the use of a criminal background employment screen by Washington Metro. He was also a member of the trial team in the successful challenge to Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered congressional map.

Prior to assuming his current position in 2020, John was a partner in Arnold & Porter’s litigation group, where his practice focused on complex commercial litigation, government investigations, white-collar criminal matters, and parallel proceedings involving simultaneous civil litigation and government investigations. John’s litigation experience includes representing corporations, accounting firms and accountants, broker-dealers, investment advisers, corporate boards and committees, and individual corporate officers and directors in securities fraud litigation and investigations; representing clients in shareholder derivative and other fiduciary duty litigation; defending corporations in antitrust class actions and merger litigation; and other commercial litigation, including real estate, contract disputes, intellectual property, false advertising, civil rights, employment, and other commercial matters in federal and state courts, as well as in arbitrations.