10h 15min, jul 13, 2020 y - BEST LAWYERS ROBBIE KAPLAN High Court Merit INTERVIEW

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High Court Merit

In progressive legal circles, the name Robbie Kaplan has emerged as an omnipresent force for equal and human rights.

By Tracy Collins Ortlieb

In the past three years, Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan cofounded the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, filed a lawsuit under The KKK Act of 1871 against 24 neo-Nazi and white supremacist leaders responsible for the 2017 Charlottesville violence, and successfully challenged the City of Starkville’s refusal to permit an LGBT Pride Parade. Her current client list includes Moira Donegan, creator of a widely circulated list of media men accused of sexual misconduct, actress and women’s rights activist Amber Heard in her ongoing legal battles with ex-husband Johnny Depp, and author E. Jean Carroll in her defamation suit against President Donald Trump. Kaplan is further taking on Trump in a separate case: alleging he and his children used their family name to promote sham marketing opportunities to her clients via “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Most notably, Kaplan successfully represented her client Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor, ultimately arguing the case before the United States Supreme Court. In Windsor, the Supreme Court ruled that a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violated the U.S. Constitution by barring legally married same-sex couples from enjoying the benefits of marriage conferred under federal law. The consequences of the Windsor decision were both swift and profound: Just two years later, marriage equality would be enjoyed nationwide. Her book on the experience, Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA was named a Best Book of 2015 by the Los Angeles Times.

Speaking with us during lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kaplan discussed her background in commercial litigation, how she and her team choose which public-impact cases to pursue, her preparation for and reaction to the Supreme Court victory, and how feminism guides both her case selection and the ethos of her firm, Kaplan, Hecker & Fink.

Between Moira Donegan’s Media Men list, your representation of Amber Heard and E. Jean Carroll, and your prosecution of the Trump family for fraud in the Southern District of New York, you’re ubiquitous in progressive case law. Given your work on cases like these, particularly when taking on the Trumps, has you or your team faced any harassment?

The short answer is there have been threats. Obviously, the most violent of those threats was the Charlottesville case, where we made a motion. If something good can be said to come out it is that one of the reasons we’re so far ahead in being prepared to shelter in place for COVID-19 is because we had to deal with all these security issues in connection with the cases that we’re in.

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