Deepak Gupta is the founding principal of Gupta Beck PLLC, a national appellate litigation and policy boutique in Washington, DC. He specializes in Supreme Court and appellate litigation, with an emphasis on class actions, consumers' and workers' rights, and constitutional law. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at both Georgetown and American universities, teaching courses on public interest and appellate advocacy.
Deepak has briefed and argued cases on a wide range of issues before the U.S. Supreme Court, several state supreme courts, and federal appellate courts nationwide. He argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion (2011), a landmark case at the intersection of arbitration, preemption and class actions that has been described by the Washington Post as "one of the court's most important on consumer rights in years" and by the Federalist Society as "one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions in many years." Most recently, in February 2013, Deepak argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in McBurney v. Young, a constitutional challenge, under the Privileges & Immunities Clause and dormant Commerce Clause, to a Virginia law denying nonresidents the right to access public records.
Before leaving the government to start his own firm, Deepak served as Senior Litigation Counsel and Senior Counsel for Enforcement Strategy at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the new federal agency's historic founding in 2011-2012. As the first appellate litigator hired under the leadership of Professor Elizabeth Warren, he was instrumental in launching the agency's amicus program, defending its regulations in court, and working with the Solicitor General's office on Supreme Court matters. His duties also included providing advice on legal issues including preemption, arbitration, and administrative and constitutional law.
For seven years previously, Deepak was a litigator at Public Citizen, where he founded and directed the organization's Consumer Justice Project, collaborating with advocates nationwide on class actions and appeals. Before that, he served as the Alan Morrison Supreme Court Project Fellow at Public Citizen, coordinating assistance to litigants in public interest cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Deepak has worked on voting rights litigation at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, church-state litigation at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and prisoners' rights litigation at the American Civil Liberties Union, and spent two years as a law clerk to the Honorable Lawrence K. Karlton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. He received his law degree from Georgetown, studied Sanskrit for one year at Oxford, and received his undergraduate degree in philosophy from Fordham, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and competed in numerous parliamentary debate tournaments including the World Universities Debating Championships in Manila, Philippines and Athens, Greece.
In addition to his litigation work, Deepak has engaged in legislative and public policy advocacy, appeared on television and radio programs including CNN, FOX News, ABC's World News and Good Morning America, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and been quoted by publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the National Law Journal. He frequently speaks at national legal conferences and law schools and is co-founder of the Consumer Law & Policy Blog.