Beth Brinkmann is Senior Litigation Director for the U.S. Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights. She leads the Center’s litigation strategy in courts across the country to establish greater protections for reproductive rights. 

Beth began her career as a public interest litigator focused on civil rights, prisoners’ rights, capital punishment, and consumer rights. She next worked as a public defender, including more than a dozen jury trials. 

Beth served for more than 15 years in appellate leadership positions in the U.S. Department of Justice -- first, as an Assistant to the Solicitor General before the U.S. Supreme Court, and then as Deputy Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Department’s nationwide civil appellate litigation.

Beth has argued 26 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Beth led the Appellate & Supreme Court practices at two major law firms – Covington & Burling, and Morrison & Foerster. 

Over the course of her career, Beth has been involved in a wide range of reproductive rights cases, including:

·      protecting access to abortion clinics against violence under federal and state laws;

·      defending individual women against prosecution based on drug use during pregnancy;

·      protecting access to medication abortion;

·      defense of contraceptive insurance coverage;

·      defending federal government funding of stem cell research;

·      advising corporate clients on implications for employee benefits, data privacy, and other issues from the overruling of Roe v. Wade.

Beth is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and Yale Law School. She served as a law clerk for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court, and for Judge Phyllis Kravitch on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.