Jessica Levinson '05
Jessica Levinson LMU '01, LLS '05 is a clinical professor of law at LLS, specializing in constitutional law, the law of the political process, including election law and governance issues, and the Supreme Court. She is founding director of the Public Service Institute and director of Journalist Law School. Levinson served a five-year term as president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, 2013-2018. She regularly appears as a legal and political expert on television, radio, podcasts, online outlets, and in print. Before joining LLS faculty in 2009, Levinson was a litigation associate with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in Los Angeles at the Center for Governmental Studies. A double-degree LMU alumna, she was valedictorian of the undergraduate Class of 2001.
Sara Rohani '20
Sara Rohani ’20 is assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the country’s first and foremost civil and human rights law firm, based in Washington, D.C. She was part of the litigation team that successfully challenged Louisiana’s House and Senate maps as violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. She was also on the litigation teams in Robinson v. Landry, the federal lawsuit that enjoined Louisiana’s racially discriminatory congressional map, and Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court case defending the remedial map that followed. Rohani is currently part of the litigation team in League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump, a federal challenge to President Trump’s executive order seeking to displace states’ mail-in voting laws. Before joining LDF, Rohani was a staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, where she successfully advocated for electoral reforms across Southern California. Before earning her law degree at LLS in 2020, Rohani studied modern Middle Eastern history at Wesleyan University.
Judge D. Zeke Zeidler '91
Judge D. Zeke Zeidler was elected to the bench in 2004 as the first openly gay man to serve on the Los Angeles County Superior Court. His caseload is concentrated on the welfare of children. Previously, Judge Zeidler served for six years as a juvenile court referee. He is a statewide leader on issues related to judicial education, child welfare, anti-bias, and LGBT domestic violence. Prior to becoming a judicial officer, he was an attorney representing children and parents in child welfare cases. In addition to being founding co-chair of the National Lesbian and Gay Law Student Association, (now the Law Student Division of the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association), Judge Zeidler served four terms as president of the International Association of LGBTQ+ Judges. He regularly trains and mentors newly appointed judges on diversity and LGBT matters. A graduate of Cal State Northridge with a bachelor’s degree in English, he earned his J.D. from LLS in 1991.